Still going

I've felt a little like that ever-ready bunny lately. I'm still washing, sorting, remembering and trying to organize my handspun yarn and in between washing skeins of yarn, I've been dyeing some roving in preparation for the Kentucky Wool Festival in Falmouth, which is fast approaching. It seems just a few days ago, I was packing up stuff to take to the festival in May. It's been a miserably hot summer around here and I couldn't be happier that it's time for a fall festival (though it might be good to be a little better prepared).

After my last post, there were some questions about what I was planning to do with all that yarn and I've been thinking about that. The weights and yardages in the skeins is all over the place. Some are small amounts left over from previous knitting or weaving projects and some are larger amounts that were spun up because I loved the color or the particular animal the fleece came from and then just never made it onto the needles or the loom. I'm going through those skeins now, counting yardage, weighing and labeling and I'm going to put them in a big basket and sell it all by the pound. That way, someone can put together lots of small skeins for a fair isle hat or mittens made with all natural or hand-dyed colors or a truly individual vest or sweater or just pick up a few small skeins to use as an accent with a commercial yarn.

The thing is, I love to spin. I love the tactile-ness of every stage of the process. I get a thrill from looking at my animals fleeces while they are still wearing them, on shearing day when I'm skirting those fleeces, later still when I'm washing and spreading them out to dry and then sitting down at my spinning wheel and feeling those precious fibers slipping through my fingers and magically becoming yarn. So, Alice, just because you have a lot of skeins already, does not mean you stop or even slow down with the spinning!

Sorry, I got a little carried away with the pictures there! I'm into washing the handspun, hand-dyed skeins now and am loving the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) color shifts in these skeins.