Thursday, May 04, 2006

Free-Free-Free!

Thanks to B for the title today. It's my second day of retirement, and I've been spending most of the time getting estimates from movers, or really taking movers around the house so they can write everything down and then work on an estimate. It's looking like the move will be happening during the 10 days right after Memorial Day, with 3-4 days of packing and loading, then 5-7 days for it to get cross country. I'll fly out, and Adam will be driving cross country with a family member.
Last weekend I went to a Fleece to Hat weekend in the Catskills, and here is the result. You see the fleece after washing and dyeing, the finished hat, and the leftover yarn. I dyed the gray-brown Romney and white Montadale in Cushings Blue, keeping out some of the Romney in it's natural color. The blue overdyed the gray Romney to a dark color, and the white Montadale to a bright blue. The lavenderish pink wool is more Montadale, which aI popped into the dye solution that had broken a bit, and was not fully exhausted. The wool was carded on hand cards in roughly equal proportions, then spun into a soft woolen 7wpi two ply. The hat was knitted on size 8 needles, and I'll card and spin the rest of the wool in the next couple of weeks. Thanks to Claudia of Countrywool for the great weekend.
Here's the merino/silk/angora of a couple of weeks ago all spun up, and posing on the clock skeiner. It still feels lighter than air, so I'll have to think of something great to do with it. For now, just feeling it every so often is pretty good.
Isn't this great? Claudia was selling bags of carding ends, all different colors and fiber mixes. Most have a little angora in them, and almost all have some Romney, so they might make a wild Navajo-plied sock yarn, going from color to color. I'll have to do this before too long.
I'm off to MDSW tomorrow, to help set up the Spirit Trail booth. I'll be helping out there most of the weekend, so stop by and visit us. No special plans to buy any specific thing this time, though who know what I might come home with?