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Day six Thursday July 12 : Photo got lost in limbo it appears. More of the alpaca, I’m sure.

Day seven Friday july 13: More of the Alpaca/silk

Day 8 Saturday July 14: Finished the alpaca silk blend. Washed it a bunch. Yah, that was a lot of dirt in there. Never assume your fleece is clean, no matter who it came from. That means I have a FINISHED SKEIN!!!

Aprox 208 yards of a an Alpaca/silk blend, probably 90/10. 4 oz total. That shadow in the corner? That is my pregnant belly casting a shadow (I was standing sideways as I took the picture.). The obnoxious yarn is just to hold it (and it’s obnoxious so I don’t loose it!).

Day 9 Sunday July 15: er, that was a day of rest.

Day 10 Monday July 16: Started on the soy silk. After mopping off the wheel. I spun this day even though it was the day of rest because I took the Sunday day of rest.  It all balances out!

Day 11 Tuesday July 17:’ More of the silks. Its intresting to see that the silks in fluffy form are pretty light, but the yarn is pretty dark….

Day 12 Wednesday July 18: The last of the first bobbin

Day 13 Thursday July 19:

This was one of those ‘spinning is cheaper than therapy’ days. I spun up a whole 2 oz of the soy/recalmed silk. Whoosh. Just like that. I do feel much better.

Both bobbins together.

I have been spinning with the soy silk on a spindle. It’s been to play group and a LLL picnic. It’s currently in the car.
And I have other fun stuff I’ve been working on- I made two dresses for Tiny out of mens shirts. They are so cute- unfortunately I need to take a pict as soon as I put them on her. She’s a bit of a messy girl.  But that’s ok. I’ve also got most of what I need for my birth kit, but that’s another post in different journal.

More silks today! And then I’m torn whether to keep playing with the silks or do some wool………

Ok so I’m behind on posting. I keep getting distracted by other fun projects. I keep carding fun stuff. And I still have to keep the offspring and husband (and self, for that matter) occupied, happy and fed. It’s a lot for a mama to do. But I HAVE been spinning……

Day Two: Soy silk.

I spun at church and surprisingly got no questions. I think I got more when I was knitting at church. I couldn’t keep it up for too long, I had to lean a little bit because of the skirt I was wearing and my back could only take so much of it. I should have spun more at grandmas but I was having more fun with grandma and tiny.

Day Three: The beginnings of the alpaca/silk blend. The alpaca is a little dirty….

Day Four:

More alpaca and silk and the spinning wheel moved into the basement. I like that my wheel is portable.

Day Five:

I finished the first two ounces of the alpaca/ silk blend and started a new bobbin. I’m spinning 4 oz so I do two oz on each bobbin. And generally when I ply, I get somewhere close to the same amount. Most of the time. 8-P

And like I said, I’ve been carding much too. These are in my ‘que’ to spin.  Because I have really high expectations of spinning during the tour de fleece. Ok, really I just got excited and was having a really good time carding and blending….

Someone gave me some Jacob’s sheep fleece. I cared up about 8 oz, this is 4 oz. It smells like sheep- I love it.

4 oz of Merino/ Sari Silk blend. What crazy fluff! I’ve never spun sari silk before, this will be fun to see how it turns out. I very meticulously cut the silk into about 2 inch lengths before blending with with the dyed merino. And it was a time consuming pain in my can.

This is the sari silk with soy silk. I took the sari silk over to my moms house and just kinda hacked at it with a rotary cutter. (mom has the fancy rotary cutter table, hence why I took it over there…) I tried keeping it about two inch lengthes. MUCH EASIER.

I’m doing one more sari/soy silk blend. This one I hacked at the silk with my scissors, and I hacked at about 1 inch lengths. Now I’m carding it with my fine carders. This makes it fray a little and look a little more like ‘fibre’. It’s also stretching so I’m still getting my 2 inch fibre lengths.  This one is in progress, I need to finish carding the silk and then blend it with the soy. But now I’m just playing and I’m in no hurry……

And one more picture, just because my tiny is a cutie pants…..

Helping mama card.

I should have spend the evening spinning. It’s the Tour de Fleece. But what was I doing instead?

Carving a rubber stamp.

met a fantastic metaphor for birth and labor at my child birth class last weekend… the labyrinth. A lot of times people will use climbing a mountain as a metaphor. That’s nice for some but has never worked for me- the first time I tried to climb a mountain beginning to end I gave up. Not something I want to think about in labor. A marathon is the other one that gets used a lot. I just shake my head at that one. I don’t run. At all. No no no. So this labyrinth is just perfect for me. It twists and turns and goes and there are no dead ends and you don’t quite know when it will end. Then when you get to the middle, well, you gotta work your way back out again. te he. I’m so happy. I GET IT.

I cut the imprints apart (that you see in the picture) and made some cards. Because I will need more than one thank you card by the time this whole pregnancy is over.
Then I discovered the stamp fits on an ATC. So I did up a few of those. This one is my favorite.

I just figured out that my labyrinth is backwards from what I intended. Whoops. No big deal. That just means you enter the labyrinth  from the right and not the left. I just love how imperfect the stamp looks. I really am liking this stamp right now.

And I’d better spin more.

So day one was yesterday, but yah right I’m going to blog about what happened that day at the end of the day. I went to sleep, thankew.

I have photos of the actual spinning. I say that because I did some other spinning related stuff, like carding and clearing off a spindle. And to keep perspective, there is always the non spinning stuff that goes on during the day- the morning drive/Tiny nap, Keeping Tiny Quiet while dad naps, giving Tiny another nap, lunch, dinner, slurpee run, etc.

I had to clear off this spindle- It had about 1 oz of soy silk already spun- and the spindle was getting kinda full. I just love soy silk. To pieces. I should have a pound delivered every other month or so. I would so use it.

This is some alpaca I was given. It has been in storage for a while, so it’s a little matted. Maybe compressed is a better word. It’s in a really nice roving, but there is a shocking amount of VM still in it. Between the matting and the VM I’m getting frustrated with it and may put it down for a while.

Today? The soy silk spindle is probably coming to church with me. I may not get much wheel spinning done. Unless I go up and be quiet while the Tiny sleeps.

And no, it’s not for Lamina.

I think I may join the Tour de Fleece unofficially. Which I guess means I won’t JOIN, I’ll just spin.  Which means since I have some stuff in mind I’d better prepare it. An afternoon of carding alpaca and silk just about killed my back, and I almost didn’t notice. You know how you get rolling on something, the Tiny is happily playing with her button collection, and you pause to suddenly realize you can’t move? Yah. That’s what happened. Still paying for it. But that’s all done. I chopped up some sari silk to use too. Stuck some soy silk and wool in koolaid to blend with said sari silk. Because recycled sari silk and soy silk? What a great combination! I think my midwife may enjoy it. So that soy silk I stuck in the koolaid? Kinda sad looking. I tried dying it before and something went drastically wrong. I must have fried it  or something. It kept bugging me. Something was really wrong with this soy silk. It’s not taking the koolaid. Sometime late yesterday afternoon it dawns on me- that’s not soy silk. That’s flax. Ok, now SERIOUSLY. That’s a dumb mix up. Really REALLY dumb. I obviously am OUT of soy silk. Hm, I wonder if the husband will let me go to SSS today…….

Ok, the sprout’s soaker is done! The i-cord was finished at the Mom’s SnB.

I still have 110 yards of yarn left. Which means this soaker only used about 120 yards of yarn. What’s sad is I had to open the calculator to figure it out…. and this was only 4 oz. He he, only.
I think now I just need to break out the tape measure and figure out what went wrong with the Dave’s knucks. Because I either got the gauge wrong or his hands are too big. Gaguge wrong= easy fix. Big hands= could be a little more difficult.

I keep tottering back and forth whether I want to join the Tour de Fleece or not. I have much to work on, I think I need to make some yarn for my midwife and the lady who will be teaching our birth class. There really is no shortage to stash or reason. I just worry that if I commit to spinning everyday something will blow up or melt down. Maybe I will just be a bystander and if I do it, rawk, and if not, nothing lost.

And because Nicole was asking:

the mess that is my TARDIS apron. It started as a plain blue apron. Because I need more aprons. Seriously, I think now I have three. I decided it needed something. I saw a really nicely done 8 layer stencil of the TARDIS. I think I can do in in only like 4 layers. The black layer is a disaster, as you may be able to see. I’m still working on it. I may throw it across the room or try again with freezer paper since you can iron freezer paper to your fabric. I keep thinking I need to write something clever on it but the only thing that comes to mind is something silly like “I’m in your kitchen, disobeying the laws of time and space.” Though part of me wants to write “The angels have the phone box” across the bottom. But that only makes sense if you’ve seen “Blink”.

So a quick run down:

Current Finished objects:

-The SOAKER!!

-TARDIS apron.

Current works- in- progress:

-Ren fest costumes. I keep waffling over whether I really want to put that much work into them or just go in something cool.

-Husband’s knucks

-Tiny’s baby doll

Current planning:

- Sprout’s blanket

I have one more thing to say but I am so going to bed. Because the AC is on in our room. ahhhhhhhh…..