yarnporn.com

I owe Opal a huge thank you for recommending some wonderful knitting podcasts on her blog, listening to other knitters and spinners has kept me sane through the final stretch of gift knitting and spinning. Between marathon movie sessions with the husband and kids and podcasts I’ve been able to keep on track and ahead of schedule.

Ahead of schedule means that I get to play a little, of course, luxury fibers don’t live unspun in baggies for long and I broke into the (drum roll please..) cashmere down.

OooOooh.

Cashmere.

I love it.

I am revelling in my accomplishments and spinning cashmere is the cherry on top of the sundae. Half a pound of lace-weight moorit Shetland. Merino sock and fingering weight yarn abounds– virgin white; waiting for the warping board and dye pot. Falkland wool hanging neatly in rows. Balls of camel singles waiting patiently for plying and washing. And freakin’ cashmere on my bobbin.

Cashmere is champagne for the fingers, effervescent and light. Best to sip it slowly and enjoy the delicate flavor of cashmere.

I’m a miscreant spinner, there’s a lot of do as say and not do as I do in spinning. With almost anything else I sample in small quantities; knitting is swatched and washed and measured constantly, wood turning I’ll happily cut chunks of wood, weigh, and turn a ball or something simple just to get a feel for the grain and resistance, when I weave I do a quick test run, even when I sew I make small samples and check my angles prior to ever setting blade to fabric.

But misbehaving spinner that I am I have this habit of considering anything around an ounce a sample in itself– and a small one at that, so my way of sampling this cashmere has been with the intent of spinning up the whole ounce in my possession and finishing the yarn to see if I like it. I didn’t tear off a foot length of single to wrap around a bit of cardboard for comparison (which I do for some yarn but not this one.) I didn’t carefully divide the fiber by weight so as to have two mostly equal balls, I didn’t spin up and ply and wash a couple of yards to have a final yarn. I haven’t attempted to card or comb it.

I’m just grabbing little balls of delicious fluff and spinning away. It’s a cohesive lace-weight single so I’m spinning it fine enough and some how managing to add enough twist despite spinning it on a double drive. I love cashmere.

I could swim in the stuff

If I ever come into huge amounts of cash I’m going to knit myself some cashmere longjohn and a cashmere camisole and live in a cashmere house. If I ever need an organ transplant I would knit the missing organ from cashmere.