And the final post today. Promise!

I forgot to post the pictures of my Tour de Fleece project; so here they are!




This is the merino tencel blend. I hope you can see the colors; I'm so in love with them. I'd love suggestions on what to do with this; I only have about 2 ounces, and I'd say it was a thin fingering weight.

This is the chocolate alpaca. Oh it's sooo soft! I'm really pleased with the way it came out. Again, I have no idea what to do with it; this one is about 4 oz. A hat, maybe? Or a neck warmer; I know this will be very warm!

It was a fun challenge, and I only missed two days, when my knee was really bad. I reduced my fiber stash right? Of course, I increased my yarn stash....

Tour Crash

Well, I was going gangbusters for a while there. I spun the two ounces of tencel wool blend and I love the results. I'm 7/8ths done with 4 oz of chocolate alpaca (YUM!) when BOOM.... the knee flares up again.

I was finally feeling hopeful. Monday, the WHOLE day, I walked sans limp. No pain. I walked without a waddle, without the ache. I was gleeful. Giddy even. Then Tuesday evening came, and I could feel the joint getting tight, swelling up by the minute. By Wednesday night, I was considering pulling out the cane. Sigh.

So, fortuitously, I had a follow up with the esteemed surgeon. He said "Considering what we found when we got in there, this isn't really surprising. This will not be your last surgery. Care for some cortisone shot?"

I'm ten weeks post op, for crying out loud! I really had expected to be better than this.

I declined the shot, as I'm afraid of the "kickback" effect he described. It's better today and really, it's not so much painful as distressing. I'll hold off on the cortisone until it's more severe. After all, Monday was so good! If it got there once, it'll get there again, right? So I do my exercises and ice and hold my breath a lot.

But it has cramped my spinning. Rats. Maybe this weekend I'll be able to get back to it. I hope so!

OUCH!!!!!!

No, I didn't poke myself with a DPN. Much, much, much worse.

I frogged my Mystery Stole.

153 rows completed, and I just wasn't happy with it. I'd made a few mistakes, and that defective yarn thing just made the whole stole look sloppy and ick. So I bit the bullet and with tears rolling, I frogged the entire thing. Cut off the first 100 yards or so of the triple ply, and already I'm back on the horse. (Man, I'm using a lot of aphorisms...)

I am so glad I did it.

The second attempt is coming out so much cleaner looking. I'm using size three needles instead of the fours I was using, and instead of the addi circ, I"m using some Crystal Palace bamboo straights. The points are much more suited to the lace weight yarn, and it's not sliding the way it did on the addi's. I'm thrilled. Ok, so it was two weeks worth of work; I'll be so much happier with the finished product.

For those who don't know, and probably don't care, I hate ripping out. Tinking back a row, well, maybe; but to actually RIP out rows where you have to go back and pick up the stitches again? YIKES! I'd rather start over. And with this project it really was best.

So now I"m excited about the MS3 again.

Oh, and I've kept up with the Tour de Fleece; I finished the tencel blend and I love it. I think I'm going to keep it as a single; it seems fairly well balanced and I don't want to mess up the colors. With only 2 oz, I don't know what to do with it though.

Now I'm trying to do a lovely chocolate brown alpaca in lace weight plied... we'll see!

Pics when able.

Tour de Fleece

Ok, so I haven't done much spinning of late. My knee hurt too much until about two weeks ago. I was so happy when I found I could spin again, I jumped right in and spun too long, and my knee ached for days. So I decided to limit the time spinning per day. Which was ok. But I've been spinning this CRAP fiber that I'm so disappointed in. I need to look up where I bought it because I never EVER want to buy fiber there again. I got it directly from the shepard's farm. The breed is Polypay. It's sticky (despite two washings and a dyeing), it's full of VM and coarse black hairs, which I could live with, but it's also full of neps. I mean FULL of neps. I end up pulling out a huge pile of unspinnable fiber every time I spin it, and it just not fun. I finally finished one strip of purple koolaid dyed fiber, washed and skeined it, and it's horrible. I had wanted to use it for the Sheep Thrills hat exchange, but no way would I wear a hat made out of it; it's far too coarse and itchy.

So when I started the Tour de Fleece, (and I haven't missed a day yet!) I finished the purple, started on the red. But this was duty. This was labor. This was a miserable time. Last night I decided if I was going to commit to a project like this, I should enjoy it, dammit! So I took that bobbin off the Majacraft and thought "what would I love to spin?"


Ohhhhh my. I bought this roving at the Santa Monica Fiber and bead Fest last August and have been afraid to touch it. The colors are so amazing! So I threw caution to the wind and loaded up a fresh bobbing and oh my I am in LOVE. The fiber is Tencel and Merino and it feels and looks like silk. The color is copper and brown and purple and green and just gorgeous. My husband thought it looked like a coil of copper wire, but soft! I can't wait to spin this stuff and I finally remember why I love to spin.

The lesson being get good fiber! It's such a shame that the Polypay is such a mess, and purely the shepardess' fault in carding, I think. I have a pound of the roving, and I'll spin it all eventually, but it's too icky to make anything to wear, so I'm wondering why.

Anyone with a suggestion on what to do with it? Compost heap? Maybe dog coats? Rug?