Washing fleece and a well dressed loom

Strider and Beck Alpaca

Washing Fleece

Rug on Loom

Lovely weekend with spring like weather.  In progress is washing alpaca fleece.  I use buckets with Orvus surfactant and cold water from the hose to wash alpaca.  One long soak in soapy water then a couple of rinses and the sand and some of the vegi matter is out of the fleece.  Sheep fleece has lanolin that needs hot water, but alpaca is easy. One of the reasons I love alpaca.  The fawn in the above photo is Strider, and the white is Beck.  These are seconds, shorter bits and second cuts, destined to be felt.  Stay tuned...
Final photo is my well dressed loom.  It has been neaked for a long.... time.  In progress is a rug of hand spun wool.  The brown and grey are both from the stashes of deceased friends living on...

A few finishes from the world's slowest knitter

New Zealand Scarf

 

 

2010 socks

The scarf at the top is hand spun Border Leicester grey wool that I bought in New Zealand about this time last year.  We were nearing the end of our 12 day cruise down the east coast of Australia and up the east cost of New Zealand.  I had found and bought some lovely felted and knitted items, but found  no fleece or roving!  We were getting ready to watch a sheep show at the Agrodome and I left the gift shop with the tourist stuff knowing there had to be the good stuff somewhere nearby.  Sure enough, across the parking lot and around the corner, I found the building with the industrial carding equipment and lovely bags of roving!  Way cool!  The cream is alpaca wool blend from my friend Sharon.  On my list of things to learn was cables in knitting and I happened upon "The Very Easy Guide to Cable Knitting" by Lynne Watterson on a business trip.  The scarf is a sampler of cables and mock cables from the book.  There are lots of mistakes and several panels flip the front and back as I worked my way along.  I decided that I would learn and enjoy this piece even full of boo boos.  I love texture and  don't mind the flaws as the scarf is seldom flat.  The alpaca blend is so soft and snuggly and feels good against my neck. 
I always have a pair of socks in progress to work on during trips.  This pair took about a year to finish.  Toe up, one at a time in wonderful Japanese single yarn.  I didn't put ribbing in the top as I liked the way they rolled down.  This is something we can get away with in Florida.   Time to celebrate a few finishes in knitting. 

January Spin-in Post

View from 9th floor of the Palms

Sunset from our room

Friends spinning and sharing

Sharon's lovely roving spun

This week's post is from last weekend's January Spin-in at the Palms in Destin Florida.  Another couple of grand and glorious days.  The conference rooms are taken over by lovely fiber people, selling and buying, spinning and knitting, chatting and eating.   It is an annual occurrence thanks to two wonderful women who put on a heck of a party year after year.  Everyone sets up in spinning circles with stuffed sheep and bunnies and overflowing baskets of fluff around them!  The art-yarn group was set up next to us with HUGE bulky fliers and colorful bits of sparkle, eyelash, silk flowers and heavens knows what else to magically spin into fabulous yarns. The basket above is half a pound of BFL all spun up during the weekend.  It is going to be a lovely ring that morphs into a hat. The grey is some alpaca blend from my stash that I took to spin on a drop spindle.  Next year's theme is "Shawl we dance" so I also bought roving that will become a shawl for next year.  Photos later.