Let's Start With The Spinning

 I've been spinning up quite a bit of the fiber that I got at the fiber festival.This one is from the sample bag of fiber that I purchased. I sorted out a some of the roving into colours that looked well together and spun it up into this yarn. I have two skeins that come to an approximate total 160 yards. It was a fun yarn to spin as it was comprised of a variety of wools and I had to use different spinning techniques depending on what color I was  doing. I spun it on one of my older top-whorl drop spindles. It is a little bit heavier in weight, but that works very well with a thicker yarn such as this. After spinning I wound off into a center-pull ball and plied the two ends together. It ended up a nicely variegated yarn that should gently stripe when knit up.

 The romney I carded spins up into an absolutely lovely yarn! It has a very sturdy hand to it, I love the way it feels. The romney has an amazing sheen to it as well, almost like it has silk in it. I am so excited to see how this yarn knits up, but I plan on waiting until I get it all carded and spun before I start knitting. I'm enjoying the carding process though, not to mention I have quite a few Christmas projects in process right now, so it might be awhile before this yarn becomes a stole.

 This summer I was given a pound and a half of cream and a pound of grey-black Huacaya alpaca fiber. It was unwashed and a couple years old so I wanted to get it cleaned up yet this summer. I was visiting a friend and she kindly helped me wash up about 3/4 pound of my cream alpaca. We used mesh bags like before only we had twice as many so we were able to wash up the rest of our wool and also the afore mentioned alpaca. The alpaca fiber was quite dirty and dusty, but there was very little veggie matter and since alpaca fiber lacks the lanolin of wool it was much easier to skirt and prep for washing. The above photo is of the alpaca fiber when it was wet and the photo below is after it dried and fluffed up. What a difference, eh?

 I'm trying to get some w.i.p. done and off the needles. These are my Pavo socks, first blogged about here. I'm further than this photo shows. I just finished the gusset and now am at the heel turning. I don't like the bind off that this sock uses, it is to loose and floppy, so I'm going to just do a standard bind off. I would love to be able have a large stash of hand knit socks for this winter. I need to learn how to do two-at-a-time socks as I am rather bad about finishing the second sock.

And lastly, I'll leave you with some hand-painted yarn worked up in a new design. I'm excited to do a photo shoot and show you just what this is!