Thursday, January 4th, 2007

Catch up

Ok, I bailed on you this week. Here’s what I’ve been doing aside from trying to clean things.

The Sea Silk stole, which isn’t looking as wide as I expected, but I have faith that it will block and relax a little.

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And I’ve been spinning some of the targee fleece

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I didn’t know what I was going to make with it, so I just started spinning a single I might ply into a worsted weight yarn. It looked very fuzzy. I started spinning thicker, to see if it would show off the colors in the wool better, and it also looked extremely fuzzy, in a weird way.

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Also, the wool grabs onto itself a lot, and it was really difficult to separate into a thick draft. (Am I even saying that right? I have no clue what I’m talking about, I’m just trying to explain it). I didn’t like the way that looked either, or how hard I was having to pull on it, so I decided to try laceweight.

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It is really easy to spin that way. It’s pretty. The fuzziness is less apparent, and it’s a strong single. So I’m spinning a little bit onto two bobbins. I’ll ply them together, set it, and knit a swatch to see if the yarn is nice. If so, I have a shawl in mind out of the Victorian Lace Today book I linked on Monday, but it’s huge and will take a lot of yarn, which means a lot of spinning.

Nate suggested spinning it up and making another pair of clogs, which sounds like an excellent suggestion. I might to that, too. There’s enough wool here.

Funny story, my friend Hayden was here last night (oh, and none of us threw up this week, thankfully) to knit. Towards the end of the night, when I’d had enough of trying to keep my place in the lace pattern of my stole, and remain conversational, I grabbed the rolag (carded wool to spin) off of my counter and sat at my wheel. Hayden said, “Oh, that’s what that is! I thought it was a huge dust bunny, and was trying to figure out why on earth you were keeping it!” Haha. That’s kind of embarrassing. I’m glad I started spinning it to clear things up.

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