Fiber Deliveries

My blog post for this week is a little early as I'll be taking off tomorrow morning for a weeklong spinning workshop at the John C Campbell Folk School. It's been quite the week for fiber deliveries. Take a look.

First off a big Thanks! to Lisa for accommodating an emergency order--a skein of her Angora/Merino in Mars Quake. It's fun to start a new project when you're gone and this will be just perfect. It's destined to be mittens (or gloves) and perfectly matches my new winter jacket. Love it!
Oh, and did you hear? Lisa will be carrying Heartland Knits patterns in her booth at Stitches West! Whee!

The next day the mailman brought the box of goodies my personal shopper at Madrona picked up for me. She found a lovely skein of Chasing Rainbows Bombyx silk in Moody Blues. The fibers are so fine it scares me. ;) Then, there's the Merino/Angora she called me from Tacoma about--asking if I could raise my $ limit because it was incredible. Let me tell you, if Kerry says she found some wonderful fiber, Believe her! This stuff is to die for!
And, she also sent along some of the gorgeous mohair she bought from Persimmon Tree at MS&W last spring. I can't wait to spin that up.

Next came a dark chocolate brown Polwarth fleece from Treenway. This picture isn't quite representative as it is a deep dark brown and only has some lighter tips.
The staple is quite long and I'm wondering if I should take those tips off. They didn't seem brittle on the one lock I pulled out but I'm wondering how they'll look in the spun yarn. It was hard not to sit down and try it out but it's a busy, busy day and there just was no time.

The only spinning I managed this week was plying this skein of laceweight yarn. I spun the singles last summer. It's one strand of Merino and one of Merino/Silk--both in Lisa's Wild Things. I never thought I'd finish plying it and I fear I was in too much of a hurry at times. It measures 40 WPI and there's just over 2000 yds in the skein.
And, here's the start of a hat out of my Blue Moon Novelty yarns. I took Lara's excellent suggestion to pair it with navy blue. The navajo plyed stuff is really nasty yarn--you can't see all the corkscrew bits but I sure could feel them while knitting it. And, you can see how muted down the colors look compared to the slub yarn.

I'll have to finish knitting the hat on the plane. I wanted to have something made out of novelty yarns to show Patsy since that was the subject of the workshop last April. This year we're going to be spinning cotton, silk and flax. I can't wait!

And never fear, I'll be back with pics for all of you next week.