Rejoining the Flock

Last weekend was the annual Black Sheep Gathering here in Oregon.  I was lucky enough to attend with my pals Carson & Val. 

I got to watch my first fleece judging, which was tremendously informative, and lots of fun.  The downside to watching all those fleeces be unrolled and discussed is that no matter how much you don't need one, you will fall in love with at least one of them and become determined to make it your own.  And making one your own is not necessarily easy at Black Sheep, because lots of other determined spinners are probably also in love with that fleece, particularly if they saw it win a ribbon, too.

We did all right though:

Imagine how many we would have had if we didn't have such great self-control?  Carson is going to process his Corriedale and his Shetland himself.  We elected to send the Merino and the other Corriedale out for processing before splitting them three ways, since each of us already has raw fleece(s) waiting for our attention at home.  And then we decided that our next adventure together would be a fleece processing party, rather than going to the next event (where we might accidentally acquire yet more fiber). 

And when I got home, I spent some quality time with Wheely:

I've been on a self-imposed spinning diet for the last year, while I wrote a book.  I hated to do it, but I had to in the interest of limiting my distractions.  I had no idea how badly I'd been missing it.  Yesterday I made this:

Huckleberry Knits Falkland roving, in a colorway called "Catching Fire". 

Spinning is so good for me because I have intentionally lowered the bar for myself.  In knitting, everything has to be as close to perfect as physically possible.  It's all about precision and control.  There are a million rules, because every time I knit something, the idea is to be able to tell others to make the exact same thing.  With spinning though, I don't give myself any rules at all.  I let the fiber be whatever it wants, however it wants, and focus on the delight of discovering what the wheel wants to give me.  Denying myself that space of freedom was harder than I realized.  I'm not going to do that again, if I can possibly help it.  I'm so glad to be back in the flock of spinners again.

Art Yarn. Or possibly, Bob Yarn.

What do you get when you cross Shetland with Crosspatch?

Twice as much two-ply as you might have had, spinning them alone!  I took the morning off to ply up these singles, and see what all the fuss is about with yarn that is intentionally bumpy, irregular and unpredictable.

I asked myself, "Would I buy this skein of yarn if I were just now seeing it for the first time?"  And the answer is "I'm not sure.  Is it on sale?"

But then I laid aside my smoothness prejudice ( I really like it when I know what size each stitch is going to be), and tried to embrace my inner spinner.  She's only 2 years old, after all, and there is still a lot she has to explore about spinning.

I decided that I like the colors, especially the surprises of the odd bright blue or lavender speck.  I think I dig it, as a skein, but I might like it less, once knitted.  On the other hand, knitted yarn is so much different than skeined yarn that they are almost different species, so I really should suspend judgement.

There are going to be about 300 yards of this, once finished.  Bigger brains than mine should suggest what to make with it...

The Unbearable Softness of Cormo

I would like to state categorically, for the record, that nobody at my house who is supposed to be writing a book did any spinning over the weekend.  Because, if they did, that might display a lack of self-discipline.

And while I am making sweeping proclamations, I would also like to state that the person(s) at my house who did NOT make yarn this weekend, because doing so would be setting a bad example for the children, also did NOT ply and finish 473 delectable yards of same.

Which is good, because if said person(s) were to spin and ply 473 yards of delicious three-ply Cormo over the weekend, then that yarn would be as soft as dandelion fluff, that is wrapped around a baby bunny butt and then put on the "Fluff" cycle.  The yarn that might result from such wanton dereliction of duty could possibly be the softest and fluffiest substance yet known to man, causing unrest and discord amongst the population of the world, as all fought to come over to my house and touch it.

And if there were really 473 yards of such luscious, buttery, sproingy handspun available to our kind, we might just leave off all productive activity in pursuit of getting our greedy hands on some more of it.  Enough, say, for that fluffy Aran sweater we've been dreaming of. 

If the first three hypothetical bobbins produced 473 alleged yards of dream-yarn, then a person who allowed herself to think about such things might just calculate that she only needed about 9 or so more bobbins worth of spinning, and she'd have enough.  To knit a sweater that she's not at liberty to make, due to book deadlines. 

So it's a good thing that none of that happened around here last weekend.  Just saying.