New Spindle

I've been trying to avoid getting caught up in the spindle buying frenzy that's been going around. But this week it finally caught up with me. Here perched in my latest fiber display is my new spindle made by Steve Kundert.

Isn't it a beauty! It's one of his new designs and has a walnut whorl and shaft and cherry, maple and walnut woods for decoration. The weight is 1.2 oz.

How does it spin? Like a dream!
It has a long spin time and it always reaches the floor before running out of steam. Some of the features I particularly like are the rather large wide hook, and a notch at 3 o'clock. I also love the tapered shaft. I think it gives it an elegant look and makes it very comfortable to turn when winding on.

So, this adds one more to the growing spindle collection. It ought to hold me until MS&W when the collecting will begin again.

Edit:
Fiber pictured above are Wild Things Dyed by Lisa in both Merino and Merino/Silk, Mojave Merino from Ashland Bay, a braid from Fleece Artist in Indian Summer and three batts of Corriedale from Grafton Fibers.

Perendale

I had hoped to post some photos of Huacaya and Suri alpacas I took over the weekend at the Spring Fling Alpaca show but encountered difficulty in downloading them from my camera.

So instead, here is a photo of the Perendale fleece that arrived from Treenway last month. It shows the wide variety of shades of grey it contained--from silver to medium to charcoal--all with caramel colored tips. It was really interesting to see how different the character of the fiber was in each section. I'd only had previous fleece experience with the lb of Polwarth that arrived early in Feb so this was a big learning experience. I've only spindled a tiny bit of it but love how it turned out. I've been busy washing it (and it's much easier to get clean than the Polwarth) but I'll probably wait to tackle combing/spinning it until the summer.

Sitting outside on a beautiful day preparing fleece to spin--now that's something to look forward to!

Friend Mittens

Yes, I've been a really bad blogger! Lately the computer has not been my friend as I've been trying to deal with website construction (which hasn't been going well) and consequently have been avoiding the machine whenever possible.

So, no, the Torino sock pattern has not been finalized yet. I do thank everyone for their comments, though, and will write another post trying to answer the questions.

But, I do have a photo to share that a friend sent to me. She calls these her Friend Mittens because the yarn she knit them with came from the stash of a friend who passed away. Another friend of ours, Maureen, gave her the pattern which just happened to be one of my designs (Fanning the Flame Mittens from Heartland Knits). I met Elaine and Maureen at Stitches Midwest several years ago after being on several knitting discussion lists with them. It's always fun to meet people in person and put faces to names and it certainly was in this case.

Didn't she do a great job knitting the mittens!