Countdown to Chile

Well, this will be my last post for a week and a little bit more!  We're packing right now to go Chile tomorrow!  It will be an adventure and I'm sure there will be much posting about it!  We'll see if I can post on my iphone while we're there...

Catch up and early bday

It's been awhile since I last posted...  Last week I caught a head cold that became an ear infection that moved into my chest for a little bit.  I was really not feeling like doing anything but sleeping and even that I had to do on a pile of pillows so the coughing would let up.  Due to the brilliance of modern medicine, I'm feeling much better even if I'm still a little congested.  At least this didn't happen next week when we're going to be in Chile.  Anyways, I finally finished spinning another spindle full of singles so I was able to ply them together to become my very first handspun yarn.  Here's the pic:

It's still on the spindle, I have yet to use the back of a chair to put it in a skein.  Maybe, I'll put it into a ball and Tempe Yarn and Fiber tomorrow.  My homemade lazy kate worked beautifully!  And the larger spindle (3 oz) (the one I used to ply it and in the picture) held just about the perfect amount of yarn.  I must say though, that I'm glad I learned on the smaller spindle(1.3 oz) because the larger one was much more wobbly, although it did spin longer, I noticed.  I'm going to make a headband out of this yarn (it matches some of my clothing very well).  On to other exciting news, my mom was really sweet, she knew that I was keeping a bit of a birthday list and told me over the weekend that I could go ahead and order what I was wishing for.  One of the gifts (some wonderful yarn for a pair of awesome knee-highs) is backordered and a spindle that I ordered is handmade by the workman and won't be finished until sometime mid June.  So those gifts will be here around my actual birthday.  Yesterday, I received the other two gifts in the mail, they are wonderful!  (My mom was kind enough not to torture me with them - I'm a very lucky girl!)  One is a Golding spindle, it has a 2" whorl and weighs .6 oz, made out of walnut.  It's such a beautiful spindle and it spins great, too!  I'm excited to really get to play with it.  The other gift was some roving... 8 oz of virgin wool in the colorway Iris and 8 oz of the colorway Eggplant (Laurie is so going to steal this from me).  So these will keep me busy for awhile!  I'm so excited to be spinning!  Although, my mom was concerned that Laurie would feel left out with me spinning now, encroaching on her territory...  I'm hoping we'll be getting her a wheel soon.  But right now she's been really busy with work and school so it doesn't seem like the right time to do it.  (That and money-wise with the trip to Chile and the new house...)  At school, she's had to fill in for a teacher that was fired and has been working teacher hours teaching English.  It's nice that she's home at night but I think I like the other schedule better, three day weekends are really nice.  Anyways, I'm off for a nap, still a bit tired with the end of this cold. 

(the Golding spindle)

(spindle and Iris roving)

(eggplant roving - isn't it beautiful?)

Building things and playing around

I had some fun yesterday building somethings and trying out some of my new toys.  I've been lusting after a lazy kate for spindles from the company that I hope to get my next spindle from and came across a very cool solution to not spending $150 dollars right now as a beginner.  (I do hope that sometime I will get the beautiful spindle lazy kate.)  I saw this design on a Ravelry thread and I'm excited to try it out.  For those of you who don't know what a lazy kate is, it's a device that holds your bobbins of spun single threads in one place to be neatly plied to form a finished yarn.  My lazy kate is made out of a shoe box and bamboo skewers.  I've already been using toilet paper rolls as bobbins so this worked out perfectly!  Now, I need to spin another spindle full of singles to ply with what I already have...

I also had some fun with my new hand carders, and since I promised, here's the first pic of what I've blended.  Just one batt so far, and actually it's blended far more than the picture shows because Laurie wanted the first batt to be as blended as possible.  So I gave her that batt and I'm planning on blending it to look like the picture here.

And last but not least, I could not resist showing of my newly spun single, it's still thick and thin but it's a lot more even and looks way better than what I first spun... With any luck, I'll be good at this soon.  Although I did notice that I spin better while listening to an audiobook or talking with someone and not when I'm solely concentrating on just spinning.  Relaxing makes me much more consistent. :)

New toys and such

On Friday, I was very excited to go to our local yarn store hang out because our friend Mandy was back!  Yay!  Things just haven't been the same without her!  I was also excited because I got some new toys that Laurie picked up for me on Thursday, a pair of hand carders (pic below).  We are planning on taking some more spinning classes in June, when Laurie will not be working on week nights.  I'm planning on taking a luxury fiber class (learning how to spin silk and alpaca and bamboo and camel and anything else you can think of) and Laurie is taking a class on blending.  Since we have the carders now, I'm going to mess around trying to blend and make some pretty yarn with my lovely drop spindle.  At the yarn shop, we picked out some roving that I want to blend to make a variegated yarn (the roving is shown in all it's color glory below, too).  I'm hoping that it turns out!  I will definitely post when I've blended a little and then again when I begin to spin it.  :)