Which-Crafts?

I have been spinning quite a bit lately, and not knitting much - for more than one reason.

• I shouldn’t have allowed myself to get into a position of being pressured trying to get the socks knit for my mom (IOW I shouldn’t have offered), I hate the pressure and it makes me not want to do it.
• I have TOO many projects on the needles (plus more being planned in my head) and it makes me feel disorganized and it is hard to focus on a single project.
• The tiny sock needles on the projects I *should* be working on, hurt my hands when I use them too long, and in conjunction with all the extra hours I at work with my hand superglued to the mouse - I just am not out courting the hand pain and tendonitis.
• Spinning travels better than 2 socks at one time with 4 balls of yarn that are always twisted up. I can spin in the car with my drop spindle (and did all the way back from MN) and I proved last weekend that my spinning wheel is quite portable.
• Spinning has more of a zen quality for me. I can get started and once I get the feel for what I want to produce, it just flows and flows. No need to worry about the pattern or maintaining gauge or switching needles etc. Its all in the touch and plus the spinning feels all soft and cozy with all the fiber.

So well spinning . . . I am gearing myself up for spinning the fiber for my Dye, Spin, Knit-along project, I am working on my consistency and and finish trying to get finished yarn to feel the way I want it to. Soft, but not too fuzzy and sturdy but not harsh. I think the fiber that I picked to do the project in will help a bit with that, I plan on using Blue faced Leicester instead of the Corriedale or Merino that I usually spin with.

I have had some lovely results with the Corriedale and Merino though. After dying the fiber in October I couldn’t resist giving some of it a try. So I spun up all 6oz of the Barbieâ„¢ pink Merino. It isn’t quite as even as I would like, averaging a heavy sport weight or light worsted, but it has some lovely barberpolling, and for the most part is soft, and not very fuzzy. Not planning on having 6 oz of Barbieâ„¢ to baby pink yarn, I am not sure of what exactly to do with it. But doing something with it means I am back to knitting - I think I’ll leave that planning for later.

So this is about 1/2 of the post that would be in the category “oooooooohhhhh soft”, “picked it up for a song” is in the mail, so I’ll wait until it gets here to do that one. More later

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