So then I could spin again!

Why do I not believe that I will be a "full-time" quilter? There is just too many operations involved. And it makes more mess. There is like a lot of different stations you have to move between during the process. Ironing - drawing - cutting - sewing - then back to ironing. There where a lot of small pieces in this project and it took some time sewing it all together, but is was the stitching that was the most time-consuming part.

Late evening the day before December 1 I had it hanging with two wrapped gifts. It is not quite finished. I still need to sew on pearls and buttons and it was supposed to have some more quilting around the edge. But I had a hard time doing the actual quilting, because I had never done this before so I might do it by hand for next year. The kids are happy. I am afraid they are more (or maybe more correctly ONLY) interested in the gifts than in the calendar. But I am so happy I made it and I am even more happy that I can do other crafts for the rest of this year.

For two weeks ago we went to a Christmas market at one of our neighbors house. There was a lot of nice handcrafted items for sale and we ended up buying this gingerbread basket. Someone is reaching for yet another gingerbread.

And then I could spin again. First up is some sample of angora that I got from one of my new spinning-friends Rhonna. I used a Cascade spindle weighing 20 grams and it gave me a 2 ply yarn with 18 WPI. So this is my first lace-weight yarn.

Here it is lined up with the single tread at the right, the two-ply in the middle and the full skein on the left. I would really like to try out more angora.


Next I spun some ecru BFL( Blue Faced Leicester) that I wanted to ply with some multicolored merino I had spun earlier. For plying two full bobbins of 1-ply, I will need to change to the Jumbo-flyer. And it means some effort since I will have to change the front maiden as well, so I end up spinning half full bobbins instead. Oh well, I guess these are less than half-full.


I think it looks nice. It is like a modern version of raggsokk-yarn (one white and one gray traditional Norwegian sock-yarn).
And here I have winded it on the home-made Niddy-Noddy I made this weekend. I have a nice wooden Niddy-Noddy but it make very small skeins. But I guess I was over-doing it for this one :-)

After washing and drying it was time for weighing the final skein of yarn. Not very much - 43 grams. And I measured 12 WPI, so it means it is a light worsted weight yarn.


It is hard to capture the colors in a photo. But on this close up you can see that there is a lot of different colors in this yarn.


When one project is off the wheel, I off course had to start a new one. This time it is with a merino-silk blend in a very attractive color-blend called concord. It is bluish purple with silver I think. I am excited to see how the finished yarn will look like, but this time I will spin a full bobbin. One last spinning update from me: This very small peace of yarn is very special. I was cuddling my cat when I noticed that there was some shedding. So I groomed her and had a very small amount of wool in my hand. Being a eager spinning adventurer I of course had to try spinning it. And so I did. With a lite weight Greensleeves Loki spindle I made a 4ply yarn. I will try to keep grooming my cat and maybe have some more Turkish Angora wool for spinning.