Tackling the Backlog

While I was spinning up my SPAKAL yarn, I let my Crown Mountain Farms fiber club shipments pile up. Fortunately, I had caught up during the Tour de Fleece, so that only meant three months' worth, the most recent of which arrived in only the past few weeks. I decided to tackle that one first rather than go in chronological order, mostly because I was most excited about the colorway.

Here's what it looked like when it arrived on my doorstep in mid-to-late August:

This is East Frisian top, a breed I'd not spun before, in a colorway called Summer of Love. The fiber had a bit of grip to it and was more on the rustic side of wool (it's not supersoft); it seemed like it would be fairly hard wearing. I decided to spin my default three-ply fingering weight. Because of the color, I thought it would be good for a certain toddler I know who loves purple. I was right, because when she saw the finished yarn hanging in "her" bathroom, she wanted it right away.

The finished yarn is indeed fingering but only about 279 yards. Pretty pathetic yardage for me, but it'll work well for its intended use as a Slouchy Butterfly Beanie for Rainbow. I'll have minimal leftover yarn once I knit this up, which is good because -- as I reaffirmed last night while doing a bit of a clean-up of the stash room -- I have a really hard time getting rid of all but the tiniest bit of leftover yarn. (You will be proud of me, though, when I tell you that I did toss four balls of eyelash yarn that were part of a giveaway, I think, years back and that I'd been holding on to for no apparent reason.)

Now that September's shipment is taken care of, I've moved onto August's -- Manx Lockton (or Loaghtan) in a colorway called Cyclon or 3 of 4. I spun up the first bobbin's worth on Friday evening and am hoping to finish up bobbin #2 (of 3) this afternoon while Rainbow is napping.

This stuff is really fun to spin. It reminds me a bit of the Jacob fiber I spun up during the TdF -- very woolly, with a bit of VM here and there to pick out. This should spin up in the sport/DK weight, and I'm thinking that it'll make some lovely mittens that will get felty and warmer with wear rather quickly.