Back to Work

After nearly 6 weeks, I'm finally back to work. It was good. although I have to admit I did not at all mind all the time I had to heal. I needed it, too. This last week I had a minor infection in one of my sutures, which made life pretty miserable. That's pretty much healed now, though.

I even went back to the farmer's market this Saturday! Thankfully I had Ana there to do all of the heavy lifting for me! I got out a chair and the card tables, then Ana hauled out everything else. It's great having friends to rely on in situations like this. I had missed going to the market!

In other exciting Farmer's Market news, we're having a Customer Appreciation Day this Labor Day weekend, complete with free ice cream, and they have asked us to do spinning demonstrations. I see this as an awesome way to bring in customers, and show them exactly WHY that yarn is so expensive.

So in anticipation, I've been busy.

I spun up four skeins so far, three in this brownish roving I overdyed with red and purple, and one in roving which came already with brown, black and white wool.



I dyed some of the licorice twist yarn with coffee, which produced a 4-ply yarn, one ply which took up the color faster than the rest. It smells great too, like caffeinated sheep!

For the spinning demonstration, I dyed some white and black roving. The roving I"ll be spinning is actually not nearly as nice looking as this, it's in smaller chunks which are just fine for spinning, but not great for selling. But they're the same dye lot, so to speak, so to the customer I can pretty much say it's the same color. They'll get the same results, and they'll be able to see what it looks like going from fluffy roving to smooth yarn

While I had the crock pot out and the kitchen clean, I also dyed sock yarn, but this is for Mom K's Christmas socks this year.

And I've been busily working on socks for Dad for Christmas. He wanted plain beige. Well, they're plain on the front. . . and just a little bit of cabling down the sides. Here they are, modeled on my feet. His are pretty much the same size, but a bit wider so they'll be just right on him.

I'm hoping to make up some froggy feet, but I may just opt for more handspun.

Extremely lemoney

I'm so glad my mother-in-law likes lemony yellow. That makes this the worlds most perfect birthday gift for her.

Fortunately, I don't think she checks this blog terribly often, but if somehow you are checking this blog, don't read this post!

To be safe, I"ll post something else first. I started on some socks in a lovely Jitterbug, and had the first one done at the beach. I started the second one and realized it wasn't striping the same way. At first, I thought it was just my tension. Nope. I look at the first sock in nice, true daylight. . .



Something seem odd from the cuff to the heel/foot? Yeah. Nice. The lovelies at Colinette decided to tie in a different dyelot. grrr.

Okay, sourness out. Now for the lemony goodness!



Very happy with this. Can't wait to see it on my MIL!

More lemonade

After a week at the beach, I am more healed, and feeling pretty good.



I made the decision to take my wheel to the beach, thinking that if I didn't feel very good I could at least sit down with my spinning wheel. It turned out to be quite a good idea to bring, as well. My nephew Ben (4) is absolutely entranced by it. One afternoon, my mom and my SIL (Ben's mom) wanted to go to the store just quickly to get some dinner supplies. Ben was NOT happy that he didn't get to go in the car, and started crying, which started his little sister Ally (1.5) crying. I asked Jeff to go get my spinning wheel and roving and immediately, Ben just started watching me "spin my wheel" When big bro stopped crying, so did little sis. So Ben and I spent the afternoon talking aobut how a spinning wheel works and learning all the parts. My favorites are the "fwyer" the "tweadle" and the "muddewofaww

I got a lot of spinning done too

Here is a yarn I spun intentionally for a shawl out of Spin Off magazine. It's a really cool tie-shawl, and I'll post pictures as that progresses.


I also branched out and tried my very first 3- ply.



I think I'm in love, but I've decided I probably will NOT be doing 3-ply for sale. It takes too darn long!

And last but not least, I finished Tubey. Well, all but weaving in the ends. But that doesn't count, right? It won't take too long.