SpinnySpinny

There are a few posts to catch up on so I’m going to try to get some of them out of the way while it’s still too early to be up and making noise around here. And, yes, there will be pictures now that the camera situation has gotten straightened out.

A mysterious package arrived at the mailbox this week and it contained holiday gifts. (I’m not going to comment on schedule because several of ours are still sitting here waiting to be packed up.) It was from The Boyfriend’s brother and his wife, whose wedding we attended last summer. And there were Textiles! Which is totally cool. Really, really nice ones. They went to Scotland for their honeymoon and clearly did some shopping. These are commercially spun and woven but I’m going to post them anyway.

Here’s the first, a large Shetland wool throw. It’s pale green heather single both warp and weft in plain weave, with warp fringe. It’s nicely finished with the felted fringe that won’t get all skanky after a few washings.

The second item is a cashmere scarf, which I couldn’t resist showing with the new tweed jacket. There was a comment made how somebody felt like he should be off rambling the moor.

Cashmere is seriously warm, so this is actually a very practical travel item for those Italy trips.

I finished two of the millspun copies and added the new pictures. I spun the fat single for the Brown Sheep sample and then had to go back and remove twist because it had too much. Ick. Now I guess I’ll start on the next one, I’ll do both from commercial Merino top. The others would have come out smoother if I had done that, but I had to use fleece to match colors.

I’m waiting for the water to boil to steam more blue yarn for a second attempt at the Andean swatch. I hosed the warp tension so badly I gave up and pulled it apart. I can still use most of the yarn but I need more blue and white for the pattern. If I’m going to re-do the white yarn anyway, I am going to go get some different fleece out of storage. The Blue-faced Leicester is nice, but the staple length is shorter than I’d like. I think the Shetland will do. I hope to get it warped by this weekend so I can work on it at a local spinning event Saturday.

This winding skeins business is getting really old. I’m doing fast skeins right now, so it seems like I get two new ones finished for every one wound.