Crafty Day

I have a bad habit of taking workshops and then never doing anything with the information or techniques I learned. But since Dick left early today to take his mother to the doctor and Marie ran out of the house shortly after 10 (literally! - she thought she was scheduled to work at 2. Nope. The boss called at 10:15; Marie was supposed to have opened the store at 10. Oopsie.), I had the whole place to myself. So I sat down at the wheel and Navajo-plied all the singles I have stacked up around my studio.

The first skein was actually the best balanced of the lot - but I held the twist so tightly while I was plying that I couldn't even move my poor thumb when I was done. I worked on relaxing on the next skein and it got a lot better. This was spun from batts we made at a guild workshop last July. Susie had us combining various colors of wool on drumcarders, a la Deb Menz. Some of the color combinations were, um, interesting. I spun all mine together, one after the other. I really like the resulting yarn. I'm not sure how many yards I have; hopefully it will be enough to make a block for my blanket project.

This skein is more reddish than the blue/purple my monitor shows. I spun this a long time ago. I was surprised when it appeared on a bobbin, under the sparkly yarn I thought was the only thing on there. There's not much of this one, but the spinning is really even and I'm pleased I found it.

This was spun from roving I got from Bountiful (I think). I love how it sparkles. I remember how pleased I was when I was spinning this; it was my first successful attempt at making a consistently thin yarn. And I'm pretty sure I have more of the roving. Somewhere.

It's hard to see in this photo, but this represents a couple of the techniques Gwen taught this weekend. The thick brown yarn is a thick-thin slub that takes everything you've learned about making a consistent fiber and throws it out the window. It was a lot of fun - and very liberating - to make. This bobbin held all the different fleece types we worked with on Sunday so there was no consistency of color. I took a silver sparkly novelty yarn that Susie gave me and carried it along as I Navajo-plied the wool. There's not much of it, but I'm thinking I could use it in my blanket as the center of a square, with another yarn around it. We'll see.

And lastly . . . . . another square for my block-of-the-month afghan. This is Waldo's Puzzle by Chris Simon. It looks a lot harder to make than it is. The only tricky part was weaving the last circle around the first three correctly. It took a couple of tries, but I finally got it. I love the 3D effect. Four blocks done, only eight to go.