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My goal was to get at least 600 yards of very fine yarn from 4 ounces. I ended up with more than 1600 yards of 2-ply lace weight, which totally explains why it took me a freakin’ month to spin it up. I assumed I was just out of practice and spinning slower. Turns out I am simply bad at formulating how fine a yarn really needs to be in order to get a specific yardage from a limited amount of fiber.

I should have photographed the skein with an object to give a better sense of scale. I’m hoping this picture with my hand in it works for that purpose.

Now I have to find the magazine that has the Icarus shawl pattern in it or buy the pattern again, because this yarn is just begging to be knit up into a lace shawl.

Finding my swift is higher among my priorities now. I dread going through those boxes but it has to be done. I tried to find a way to justify just buying another yarn swift so I could digging through or unpacking the boxes and I just can’t come up with a reasonable excuse. Unpacking means repacking, and that’s work. Also, I have a habit of not wanting to repack everything because I inevitably come across all my little tools and treasures that are not practical to keep out even though I would really like to have everything unpacked.

My white BFL is supposed to be on it’s way. It was a good thing that I got paranoid after accidentally ordering from the iffy seller that I immediately found two different sellers and ordered more wool.

The first new wool on the bobbin is 4 ounces of natural moorit Shetland. I’m spinning it fine, probably not quite fine enough to knit a wedding ring shawl out of it once it’s plied, but my goal is to get enough yardage from this fiber to knit a decent sized lace shawl from it. 600 yards should be enough, so the only issue is if I can actually get that much yardage from this amount of fiber.

I shouldn’t say the only issue is that of yardage. Time is also an issue. It always takes more time to spin up 4 ounces of fine yarn than 4 ounces of bulky and I have a new dog that needs my time and attention as well as trying to keep up with my regular routines. One of my goals is to participate in the county fair with my pieces this year, so I may have bitten off more than I can chew right out of the gate.

I’ll probably feel more positive about my choices when I feel better, I have a mild case of the sniffles right now.

I would normally complain bitterly about catching a cold at this point but I think it’s my body’s way of telling my brain that I need to rethink my approach to time management.

Time management seems to be some kind of important adult life skill doesn’t it?

I can only assume this means that UPS actually follows my twitter

I’m as shocked as anyone else, even as I typed the title my mind is still reeling. The above capture is from my twitter feed on the 21st. I believe now that the people at UPS do indeed have souls (for now, if they lose my crap from Amazon I may once again rethink my position on the subject.)

My wool was delivered Christmas eve. I was actually able to get my spin on Christmas eve and Christmas day, which was pretty cool and made me a very happy little spinner.

The brown wool is very fine, it’s also very freakin’ sproingy, and terribly difficult to photograph. My camera does not like it. My camera was convinced I wanted photos of the carpet, or the parts of the spinning wheel. It took a little persuasion and a few threats to talk the camera into trying to focus on the yarn, even then this was the best I could do.

I’m spinning long draw straight from the sliver and with no pre-drafting, which admittedly is an odd choice for such short stapled fiber. However, I’ve gone so long without spinning that I can’t help but take advantage of my woolly dry spell. It always felt weird to rest my left hand and control everything with my right. It’s not so weird after the hiatus though, and where long draw before was very angst inducing I’m now relaxed and accepting.

I put in a wool order with R H Lindsay on the 13th. I will have wool. Not fancy wool or expensive wool, but good clean carded sliver that I can actually spin. Depending on when they shipped it could arrive before or after the holiday.

I’m so relieved. I was starting to believe that the universe was conspiring to keep me from ever seeing spinnable fiber again.

Also, I’m unspeakably disappointed that they no longer have the camel down in stock. I emailed and the word I received back was that they wouldn’t be carrying it in the foreseeable future, which is truly sad because it means I have to try another (unknown to me) vendor and pay a lot more for about half the amount. I did bookmark the other vendor and I’ll be saving my pennies to try both their camel and yak down.

Wool!

I purchased 2 pounds of fine brown sliver, and 1 pound of gray (which is not fine, but pretty and a little longer staple length.)

This whole adventure, moving down here and trying to restart from less than nothing (and we really were at less than nothing financially) really sucked. It took a year between my husband agreeing to quit his business and for him to actually agree to quit it and almost another year for him to do it. We’re now renting a house smaller than the one we owned, and it just kills me that we’re not farther along in life than we are at this point.

Things sucked before the move too, for a long time prior. I chose not to talk about it, because I figured everyone has problems of their own and they won’t want to hear about mine until it’s done and handled. So I lost friends, not the best of friends admittedly, because had they bothered to look up from their own problems they would have seen that I was grasping for air like everyone else. No one is perfect, and no one’s life is trouble free 100% of the time. Still, when I needed someone to just be a friend, I didn’t have any and I wasn’t ready to pour every little thing out online. It sucks realizing that the person you spent three days comforting on the phone over the death of her cat won’t even listen to you for 10 minutes about the death of your grandmother, you start realizing this isn’t a healthy friendship at all.

My husband also had this fear, that he expressed in the form of accusations during arguments, that I was just on the phone with my friends or on Skype to bitch about him. I didn’t do that. That was something from his ex-wife and it’s screwed up, because it should have never been thrown at me, but I responded by not ever mentioning him but in passing in conversation or on my blogs. At which point during calmer discussions, he’d ask if I was hiding him from my friends. That shit is seriously disorientating because “Well you’re a freak about me even saying you exist on the phone.” is not the first answer that pops into my head, although its the truest one. Also because comparison of mates is actually (according to my sociologist sister) normal and healthy, I should be able to ask my married friends “Does your husband do this, what do you do?” and not fear that I’m somehow betraying his trust by being normal.

I coped with a lot of stuff by equating my self worth into the stuff I could make, my entire identity got wound up in dolls and yarn and craft projects, because I really can’t handle any more emotional hurt better than anyone else. I could talk about the wool on my bobbin without fearing criticism at home, I could show off the dolls I carved or the drop spindles I turned and get some desperately needed positive feedback from the outside world.

Not being able to spin hit me particularly hard. It was like this ultimate proof that I didn’t have anything going for me. After all, I started spinning because the yarns I could afford and the yarns I actually wanted to knit with had vastly different price tags. I could buy wool cheap, dye it on the cheap, spin it however I liked and make the things I wanted to make and I didn’t have to admit public that I couldn’t afford to buy a new bra let alone a skein of yarn.

As I spin up the camel and gold wool I have a growing concern that there might not be enough of this batch to make the hat. Then I filled up the second bobbin, there might just be enough. I was planning on doing contrasting bands in the natural color. I did dye some uncarded wool in a similar color, so I may have to card it up and spin that as well.

Can I just say now how cranky hand carding makes me without a drum carder? The mere thought of it makes me extremely cranky.

The first week of high school has gone swimmingly for Josey. His school is amazing, and I was informed yesterday that he wants to play bass guitar. Bass. Rhythm is genetic, I’m sure I read that somewhere (or just made it up) so obviously he got all his good genes from me. Of course, general awesomeness is also genetic (citation needed) so that was from my side of the family too– I knew my baby was too smart to be a drummer.

Deb from Come Yarn Over left a message for me asking if I could make my little sheep with tape measures inside as customers were asking for some. I haven’t called her back yet. First because I wanted to get a tape measure and see if it was possible (it is) and second because I wanted to blog about it.

This is the difference between men and women. Women think it’s a super cute idea and want to know if it’s doable, and if it is what kind of variations are possible. I’m going to paint with a broad brush here but in general crafty women get cerebral about design and want to help troubleshoot.

Men on the other hand (crafty or otherwise) overwhelmingly turn into immature little boys that think all things potentially butt-hole  related are fascinating and immediately suggest that the fob for the tape measure should come out of the sheep’s butt. This idea is generally hilarious to the men folk, and they think it awesome and good. I have no idea why but every single man that has heard about (prior to my prototype) or seen (post prototype) the sheep tape measure project has insisted that the tape should come out the sheep’s ass.

Here’s the deal fellows, if you want a tape measure to come out a sheep’s ass then you can order one ($9 + shipping) from me special. Email me. Otherwise they are going to be nice and not have anything come out the ass.