The Lee of the Stone, Part 1

Well, I've moved. I'm not necessarily moved IN, but I'm moved. However, I'm going to try to take things in the order as they've occurred since the last time I posted anything actually informational.

First, the Tour de Fleece ended in July (ohmygoditsseptember), and I managed to make more yarn than last year with less burn-out. Success! If you recall, I finished the Asti yarn near the beginning of the Tour and started on a Crown Mountain bump called She's Like A Rainbow 3.2 oz. bump of BFL in Harvest from Pigeon Roof Studios. (I can't believe I forgot an entire skein of handspun. Clearly it is time to start using it, if I can't remember it all! Thank goodness I have Flickr to save me.)

Now that I recall it properly, I am totally charmed with this yarn. It's thin and even and soft, and I daresay that if it were a full 4-oz bump, I would have topped 400 yards. Lately, that's been a challenge, so I'm quite pleased with it.

"Harvest" BFL, 340 yds., 2-ply
Pigeon Roof Studios

AFTER I finished the Harvest yarn, I started on the Crown Mountain Farms SW merino She's Like A Rainbow.

Seriously, this stuff spins like butter. It practically flies out of your hands, and I just love it. I love it so much that I may have bought another box during the summer sale and had it shipped to my new house - but I get ahead of myself. Ahem.

When I pulled this bump out to spin, I decided that I would chain-ply it to maintain the color distinction from the original dye job. That meant that I didn't have to weigh it out before I started, which was nice. It also meant that there was no inevitable little bit left over on one bobbin from traditional plying.
Unlike a lot of people, I enjoy chain-plying. I've never struggled with it and it's never hurt my shoulder - a common complaint. Maybe it's the nearly endless crochet chains I made as a child; my muscles know the gesture by heart and just make it a bit bigger. After spinning nearly two full bobbins of singles, I managed 633 yards of a respectable 3-ply:


And that's it for the Tour yarn! Overall, I made 1286 yards of yarn and used up 17.7 ounces of my fiber stash. And in addition to that highly respectable yardage, I am also not burned out on spinning like I was last year. Go me! I like making progress. But don't worry too much about whether I'll run out of fiber to spin on my fancy new wheel (I know SOME of you were worried, and you will be compensated appropriately!) I fell down the rabbit hole known as Laurs' Etsy shop, Bee Mice Elf. Go ahead, say it out loud to yourself; I'll wait.

Is that not the cutest name for a shop EVER? Also, she quoted me a price right off the bat for my special order and told me exactly how long it would take to get to me. And when it got here, everything was perfect and just what I wanted. I highly recommend Laurs for both her professionalism and her niceness - which is apparently a word, as Firefox doesn't put that annoying red line under it.

Since the Tour, I haven't done a huuuuge amount of spinning, but that's due in part to the move. I did start on the gorgeous Pigeon Roof Studios Falklands wool that Wise Colleen bought me at Stitches West. She told me that the colors reminded her of me, and I couldn't agree more. They're just my favorite greens, is all:

"Verbena" 8.2 oz (!!!)

I'm spinning it as thinly as I can, which is pretty thin, actually. It's mostly the Falklands wool though - this stuff seems to desperately want to spin into a super-fine single, and really, who am I to disagree with wool?


It is, however, slow going. Between the move and the fineness of the yarn, I think I've spun up maybe 25 grams so far. But that's a-okay with me now that I've got internet on my computer and can watch Netflix Instant Watch while I spin!

In addition to spinning like it's going out of style (oh, wait...), I've been doing a fair amount of out-and-about fiber exploration. At the end of July, my good friend Cynthia and I took a day to head to the Lacis Textile Museum in Berkeley. Oh, wow. That place made both sides of my heart - the historian and the textile nut - go pitter-pat.

Here are just a few of the pictures I took:

Both the clothes and the wax mannequin head are authentic to the late 1800's

Can you imagine getting married in this? How delightfully you would rustle down the aisle!

Something about all these crinolines floating in the air made me think of jellyfish

I'm telling you, that place is a-MAZ-ing; the rest of my pictures from the trip are here; they didn't turn out too badly, if I do say so myself. And I do, so there.

So that's about it for part 1 in our series of catch-up posts! There is at least one more to go, if not two; the month of August was a little thin on the ground in terms of crafting, but so many things have happened - and more importantly, so many good pictures have been taken! - that I just have to share anyway.

Here's a teaser!