Spinning blues

The Corriedale is up in the shop, and I'm very pleased with the pictures this time (for once), not to mention the yarn itself. You already heard all about the insanity that came with getting this yarn ready for sale, so I won't go into it again, but I did promise pictures, and pictures I have! You can see some at the yarn listing here, but I have more. Oh, do I ever. I had such fun photographing this.

First, about half of the 8 oz on my spindle. I am guessing that, uh, had something to do with the breakage. You can see my miserable attempts to turn my beloved spindle into something workable even after it broke -- a rubber band to try to catch the yarn so it didn't slip onto the hook all the time (sooo annoying, and I had no sharp knife readily available, so I couldn't carve a notch) and a crazy jury-rigged winding system. Sigh. The good news is, it works! Just not as well as one might have hoped.

This next picture is a shot of the big skein (for some reason that seemed like a good idea at the time I made two small skeins and one big one. Any ideas on what I was thinking there? Anyone?) hanging to dry. You can see my extremely high-tech yarn drying system!

Yup. I hang it on a doorknob. Since I tend to only overply a little bit, and the fiber relaxes when I wash it, I hardly ever need to block my handspun. Sometimes I'll hang a weight on the end of the skein but this just didn't need it.

Both of those pictures are fun, but neither really shows what the yarn actually looks like, so here are some close-up pictures. Pretty self-explanatory. Shiny yarn.



Now I am in the enviable position of a free spindle and a bunch of different fibers. Do I want to spin 2 oz of BFL? Or a pound of merino? Or maybe 14 oz of alpaca? Some combination of the aforementioned? WHAT DO I DO NOW.

I'm thinking I might spin up the BFL and make something for myself out of it. What, I haven't the foggiest idea, but knitting with handspun is caaaaaalllllling my naaaaaaame...

Also, I'm designing a bunch of things that start with s. (Ever notice how many things you knit start with s? Shawl, scarf, sweater, sock...) More on that later.