Variety

Usually Thanksgiving is a relaxing holiday for me, but with us hosting this year, it turned into an exhausting one. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of fun and we'll happily do it again last year, but I didn't get as much time to craft as I have in years past, and what crafting time I did have was primarily when I didn't have a lot of mental energy left. Fortunately, spinning is perfect for those times, so I've been spinning a fair bit over the past few days.

My main project has been my sweater spin. The first skein was finished and washed last weekend and is just beautiful.

It's so hard to capture all the subtle shades in this yarn (6 oz. of HipStrings Buoy in Mussels). The yarn definitely fluffed up a bit in the finishing, so my final yardage was a lot less than I was expecting or hoping for -- only 350 yards. I blame the poofing and the BFL content; my yardage always seems to be on the low side when I spin BFL.

I'm already well on my way on the second skein, which is 4 oz. of Bay, the darker blue color. One bobbin is done and I'd estimate I'm halfway done with the second.

As lovely as this fiber blend is to spin, I do have a lot of it, so to give me a bit of a break, I've started another project (and this one shouldn't mess me up, because I'm spinning my singles to the same thickness). A while back, Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works was offering an Advent calendar of sorts in either yarn minis, fiber minis, or a mix of both. While I don't celebrate Christmas (and thus don't observe Advent), I thought the fiber option would be a fun little side project. It arrived a couple of weeks ago, and I have to give Lisa high marks for presentation. The minis arrived in a box that was wrapped in wrapping paper, and this is what I found when I opened the box:

I can't even begin to imagine how much time Lisa spent wrapping up each little bit of fiber, but it's so nice to have all those little presents to unwrap! I started spinning on Friday and did two bundles that day and two yesterday (and I'll try to fit in two today). So far, this is what I've spun:

BFL in Dragonfly

Polwarth/silk in Northern Lights

Falkland in Krasi (bottom) and BFL in Color Pops - Pink/Purple (top)

I'm spinning these little bits of fiber, which so far have ranged from 7 to 10 g, in the order in which they're opened onto the same bobbin. When the bobbin is full, I'll chain ply all the singles. The resulting yarn will be a bit crazy, but I kind of like it.

If you haven't had enough photos for today, I'll share one more. Yesterday morning, Rainbow and I drove out to the HipStrings studio for their Small Business Saturday event. Because I got such low yardage on my first Buoy skein, I decided to pick up one more braid of each of the three colors as an extra bit of insurance, and we picked up a few more things from her sale bins while we were there as well.

In the back (left to right) is some superwash Targhee that Rainbow picked out for me to spin and knit into socks for her, some cotton (yes, I may be crazy) to attempt to spin on my wheel, two skeins of sock yarn that I'm going to use for a baby gift, and some Polwarth/silk. Clearly I have a lot of fun spinning time ahead of me!