Have you any wool?

I know it's been too long since I updated when I have to read my last blog post to see where I left off. ;)

March and April have been very busy months indeed. I knew March would be busy. My sister came to visit during March Break so between getting the place ready, getting caught up at work in hopes that I wouldn't have to work during her visit (which unfortunately didn't work and I had to spend a bit of time in the den during her visit.) and of course the visit itself.

All in all though, it was a nice visit. She was an awesome house guest. We did way too much shopping (Is that possible?) and she got her hair done at the salon. It would seem testing the limits of what hair dye can do runs in the family.

The grand finale of the trip was the Toronto AnimeCon (not to be confused with Anime North) The con was a bit of a disappointment. It was way smaller then Anime North, there were no real deals to be had (and any that were to be had were canceled out by the $15 you had to pay to get in the door.) But we still had a good time.

We all cosplayed this time. Shaggy went as a Jedi like always, I went as Aerith Gainsborough from FFVII : Crisis Core and my sister went as Near from Death Note (and got Shaggy hooked on Death Note in the process.)

Of course what's cosplay without pictures:

I've also been really busy with my spinning, knitting and crocheting. I got some new equipment. I needed a lighter spindle. But I didn't read the item description properly and got a much lighter spindle then expected. It's a pretty spindle, but I need to practice with something a bit heavier first before I can use this spindle:

It's a .6 oz Rose Quartz Butterfly Girl Designs Spindle from Spunky Eclectic.

I also got a wheel :) I finally found a used wheel in my price range (wheels can be quite pricey!) Shaggy helped me bring it home on the subway as it's quite heavy. It's a really old Louet S10:

And here's my first yarn on the bobbin:

And here's that yarn all plied up and dyed:

1/2 pound and 190 yards of Grey Coopworth wool, dyed with Grape, Strawberry and Changin' Cherry Kool-aid. I'm knitting it into a purse at the moment. It's knitting up nicely. There are a few over spun and under spun spots, but hey it was my first wheel spun yarn.

Of course I spun a bit of yarn on my spindle before I found the wheel.

1/4 pound 82 yards White Coopworth wool, dyed with green & blues Easter egg dye

45 Yards of Faux Cashmere & Alpaca dyed with Icing Dye

I also spun up more yarn on the wheel. The wheel is much faster then any of my spindles. I like to spin while watching Star Trek in the evenings. Especially if I have seen the episode before (Shaggy hasn't seen a lot of them. And I like watching them again anyway.) I was able to spin my second skein in less then a week. I needed to get it done for Guild Day. I bought the wool a week before guild day and it was spun and dry in time for me to go.

1/2 pound , 177 Yards of Blue Faced Leicester dyed with Acid Dyes

I dyed the skien during the guild day dyeing work shop. I also tried my hand at needle felting. We made pendant necklaces. I really enjoyed the needle felting and picked up some supplies to have on hand. It's a nice way to use up little bits and pieces of roving.


Wow, that was one super long post. But now I'm up to date and can stop procrastinating about updating. At least until I get behind again. :)

I *heart* my new drop spindle

After a few attempts at finding a decently priced spinning wheel on Kijiji and frustrations with my current drop spindle I picked up a new spindle at Romni Wools. A shiny new lacquered 3.0 oz Ashford top whorl drop spindle.

My biggest complaint with my Ashford Student spindle was that the yarn wouldn't stay put in the hook. It would come off the bottom part of the shaft and I'd have no tension while spinning. Two little notches in the whorl solved that problem!

That and well, it looks a lot nicer. :)

I spun some organic mohair/merino roving on it. The spindle doesn't even seem that full even with 3.5 oz of roving on it. And I'm sure if I had wound it better I'd get more. The yarn seems to be spun a bit better too. I'm was able to spin and draft at the same time, rather then park and drafting (spinning the spindle, stopping it, then letting the accumulated twist travel up the yarn instead of doing it pretty much simultaneously)

I'm going to ply this with some faux cashmere for a 2 ply yarn. I have some spun up, but I'm going to transfer what I have done to my new spindle and spin it on that.

It's snowing a ton outside right now. I'm so glad that I don't have to go into the salon to work this week. (I'm so glad I can work from home now!) Shaggy hasn't come home yet and I hope this snow doesn't make it hard for him to get home. I think I'm going to make some muffins tonight, it's a bit chilly in here (the living room have huge windows, so the air in front of them gets cold easily). The oven will warm the place up quite a bit. I baked a "chick'n" burger with rice "cheese" for lunch and the place stayed pretty toasty for a few hours. Usually it's quite warm in here, but our heaters just can't keep up with the cold and the wind. The rooms with smaller windows seem to be fairing much better. The pigs must be so glad to be in the den.

Shaggy and I spent the weekend in Waterloo attending our niece's birthday party. The snow didn't really help that either. :P We went laser tagging and I did ok (I placed third) I didn't feel very well, so that didn't help things along. We accidentally got her the same gift as her parents so we just ended up giving her $40 and some fun girly hair stuff. And now I have a copy of Pokemon Battle Revolution (copy of said game was opened before we knew so it's not like we could return it. Besides I was kinda wanted a copy myself.)

And people wonder why I tend to stick to gift cards. You can never have too many of those!

More fresh yarn

Ok, so I kinda sorta stayed up past midnight making yarn last night. :P But hey, who doesn't want to wake up to a nice yarntini?

The two skeins ended up making 54 yards. Not enough to make much of anything. :( But I think I'll have just enough to make a bag for one of my smaller tarot decks. What better to wrap your divination tools in then something you worked on for hours? Forget sleeping with your cards under your pillow, think of how much energy, focus and cursing went into the yarn and the resulting knitting.

And now more shots of the yarn, just because I can. :P

Now I just have to wait for it to dry a bit more so I can wind it into balls and start knitting with it. :)

Hopefully my next yarn looks better. I want to make thinner yarn and ply it so it looks a bit more like well, yarn. The vast majority of yarn is plied, and plied yarn is supposed to be a lot easier to work with.

That and I like the idea of dual coloured yarn. :)

Fresh Yarn

I finished a small bit of yarn today. The roving came in 2 oz braids so I'm dividing the yarn into balls that way. 2 oz doesn't quite fill up the spindle, but it comes close. I figured I'd rather process two equal halves then one really big half and one small half.

I've spun other bits of roving before, but they end result really didn't look like yarn. And I really didn't want to post pictures of it. So this isn't my first try at spinning but it's my first somewhat successful try. :)