Saturday, February 19, 2011

Spinning, spinning, spinning

Lately it seems like all of my energy has gone into scrapbooking and spinning or knitting. I'm scrapping 2009 right now, with my beginning of the year goal being to get to scrapping current events by the middle of this year. I think I'm going to make it. ^_^ I'm beginning to take the scrapbooking pretty seriously, too. It used to feel silly, but now it absolutely doesn't. My oldest son is about to turn 10 (tomorrow!). I was flipping through his books recently (made before the digital cameras allowed the capture of every. single. thing.) and lamenting that I didn't have more to help me remember all of those precious moments and memories. I'm determined not to miss any more of them. And I'm doing it in a very organized fashion. I love the book "Get it Scrapped!" which is so wonderful for helping to organize photos and get things together to actually get your stuff done.

Now to my spinning. I love spinning. I LOVE spinning. People wonder if it saves money. Haha. HAHAHAHA. If my laugh looks a little crazed, then it came across accurately. There's no saving money in spinning your own yarn. And it takes hours and hours. And if you ask me why, I can only tell you that I just like the process itself. It's not about feeling extra smart when I knit with the yarn I spin, like, being part of the process from start to finish. Oh, it has nothing to do with that. Spinning is its own beautiful, relaxing thing. (Once you get past the initial cussing fit that learning this will cause you to throw over and over and over again.) But you get yourself a person standing over you and correcting what you're doing enough, and you eventually get it.

So here is my setup, complete with my new wheel. (Why, yes, I realize that the chair matches the wheel. It just makes it even more perfect.)

That's a SW (superwash) wool braid that I got from a good friend who was doing fiber destashing. It's my current spinning project.


I'm farther than this now, but here is some single on the bobbin. I began it this month hoping to finish spinning all four ounces of the braid by the end of the month. I'm looking at the date and thinking I might not make it. But I'll try. Now it seems unreasonably cruel that February has less days than the other months. It's like some ancient enemy of mine knew long ago that I would set myself unreasonable goals almost always during this time of the year and they cackled to themselves and said, "Hahaha... we'll divide the year so that THIS time always has less days!" I mean, I know it's highly unlikely. But the drama within suggests a dark, ancient conspiracy, and that suits me just fine.


And now to the real show. On Valentine's Day, I taught my husband how to spin. (Remember the beginner cussing fits? Well, this might cause an advanced spinner cussing fit.) Look at how much he had spun on the bobbin. I mean, literally. This man had NEVER spun before in his entire existence and here is the work that he had done:


...before his singles consistently looked like this:


He spun a tiny bit and NAVAJO plied his FIRST tiny skein of yarn into a yarn that is so cute and so consistent that I need to go take a picture and show it off. I haven't yet.


And, earlier in the month, here is my baby (the one turning 10 tomorrow) learning how to spin. He had fun, too.


Yeah. I need to do a scrapbook page.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Pics later

You know, I'd post so much more often if it weren't for how long it takes to get stupid pictures together.