It's not Monday, but I really need to do a fiber catch-up, plus two non-fiber photos at the end
The week started off with mail... the fun kind. As in a very large box that came from England, filled with:
Alpaca fiber! Yes, that whole box contains an alpaca fleece from a friend in England who has alpacas. It's beautiful.
So of course I had to get out a spindle and immediately try spinning it.
Next, I got a belated Christmas gift from W. this week as well. Look, my warping board!
This is so I can measure out warp for my loom. And he even made me a spool holder down there on the floor so that the spools of thread don't go rolling around as I measure.
Here is what is looks like in the middle of measuring a warp. I am very excited because this was the last thing I needed to really be able to make things on my loom all by myself.
I've also been doing a little (okay, probably more than a little) spinning. First, a while back I showed you those batts I had made and I had started to spin the yellow and orange one. Well, I finally finished it. I started with these:
And ended up with this:
I really like how all the colors evened out through the yarn, so it has a lot of different shades, but it still looks uniform. This is cable plied which is something new I tried. It is a 4-ply made by plying together two 2-ply yarns. It is supposed to make really sturdy sock yarn, so this may go into the to-be-made-into-socks pile. I don't think I have quite enough, so I'll have to come up with a second color to go with it. The thing that excited me nearly as much as the yarn was how even everything came out. This was all that I had left when I was done.
Just that little bit of yarn there on the middle bobbin. It's very satisfying.
My last spinning project was the dyed Jacobs fleece roving I bought in Arizona. Here is what it looked like before I started.
Which made singles which looked like this:
I liked the colors spun much better than I liked the dyed fiber. And here is what the finished yarn looks like.
I think it is much prettier than I was hoping it would be. This is chain-plied, meaning that it is a 3-ply yarn made by interlacing (or chaining) one single piece of yarn. This, I really do not have any plans for at the moment.
So as your reward for sitting through endless photos of yarn, first I found the pictures of the baby ducks swimming in the pond. I have no idea why they suddenly appeared, but now I can share them.
And, we had a storm roll in this evening that promised some high winds. J. and I ran out to herd the birds back into their coops and get the barn doors shut and latched. Of course, we needed to bring the horses in before we could latch the doors. (There is no shelter in the pastures for them otherwise.) Bristol and Emmy came right in, but Java and Vienna didn't seem to care that dinner was being offered. I had to go out and bring them in. I don't think I could have done this with Java six months ago. This is just a rope I threw over her neck. She is walking with me without any fuss or bother at all. But check out that sky!
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