Spinning for Sanity

Rainbow is home, and with her return comes the return of the hectic weekend schedule. The camp bus came more than an hour past when it was expected Friday afternoon, so it was a rush to get her home, unpacked, and showered before our traditional Friday night dinner at my parents'. Yesterday we did a quick shopping run to get some necessary items and birthday presents for the birthday party for two of her school friends (which was today) and then drove out to attend my sister-in-law's baby shower. Last night we went out for dinner at a Japanese steakhouse with all the grandparents to celebrate Rainbow's homecoming. Today, in addition to the birthday party, there were the usual chores and errands. And we still have to get Rainbow ready to start day camp tomorrow!

All the fun stuff aside, we also had some minor drama this weekend. First, when we got home from the shower yesterday, we found the Mister limping around the house with what he thought was a sprained toe from a fall he took during his run. As we were getting ready to go out to dinner, we got a call from my parents from the urgent care center, where my father was getting stitches on his elbow from a fall he took in the shower (he's fine, though sore, after a few stitches and a tetanus booster). And after we left dinner, the Mister decided that he should really go to the urgent care himself because he was in such pain, and it's a good thing he did, as it turns out his toe is broken. It never rains but it pours, am I right?

With all the craziness, it's been nice to regain my calm a little by sitting down at my wheel. I wasn't planning on starting any new projects before the start of Tour de Fleece, but that pretty purple gradient braid has just been sitting next to my wheel and taunting me, so I broke down and started spinning it. I figure that if I can give it a few good evenings, I might just finish it before, and if I don't, it'll wait for me to get back to it. I haven't done that much spinning since I first got it started on Friday, but I've already made a dent.

I'm spinning this fiber end to end and undoing the braid as I go, with the plan to chain-ply all the singles when I'm done. I'm spinning fairly fine, so I imagine the finished yarn will be in the neighborhood of fingering to sport, but the wool in this is Targhee, so there may be some poofage to contend with.

I also spent some time this afternoon prepping my fiber for the start of TdF next Saturday. I'm going to attempt to spin up a sweater's quantity of yarn from some Southern Cross Fibre Polwarth that I bought extras of last summer. I had five 110 g bags total, and I split the fiber in each bag into 16 little fiber bundles, much like I did with my combo spin earlier in the year.

The colorway, called Plot Twist, has a really gorgeous combination of greens, blues, and purples. I didn't really want obvious stripes (though I know that all handspun tends to stripe somewhat when knit up), so I figured my best best for mixing up the colors as much as possible was to split up the fiber as much as possible and then spin the bundles at random. I'm going for a traditional three ply, so I think I will just fill my bobbins with singles and then do the same with plying, splicing together the leftovers on bobbins as needed. With any luck, I'll get some good color blending.