Apparently, I didn’t clean out my fiber bag thoroughly before loading it with cream alpaca fiber. I have shadows of pink and green in the spun singles. Hm. It will be interesting to see if it shows up after plying or in the final piece.
This post is for bragging on my family. My Dad has, once again, done Herculean efforts collecting and processing sap to make maple syrup. To celebrate the best batch so far, my Mom had the idea to upscale the labels. I used my sister’s awesome watercolor painting, and my digital talents, to make a label design that my Mom can print and cut to apply to Dad’s maple syrup bottles. Team work!
This is quite exciting; it looks like the oak leafed hydrangea is budding! I would love for this particular plant to flourish and take over the shaded area between the trees in the front yard. It might take ten years, but buds on the twigs after the first winter is a good start!
My suburban princess cat likes to come into the backyard with us. She gets quite sassy about it, but has to be watched carefully that she stays in the fenced part. She did not grow up here, and is no match for the home-grown true country cats in the neighborhood, let alone the raccoons or coyotes or bobcats. Well, I wasn’t watching carefully and she slipped through a gap in the fence.
I finished the small bag I started. The initial ball of yarn was spun on a drop spindle using scraps of green colored roving from my Mom’s old stash. After spinning the single, I doubled it to make a 2-ply, fingering weight yarn (about 20 wraps per inch). I started with the opening using a single crochet, made ribbon holes by alternating single crochet and chain stitches, then the body of the bag is made of five chain lace with some picots. It only holds an apple, but its worth is more in the process, which showed me that my handspun, even with rougher wool, does fine as lace. And I still enjoy crochet.
Critters and Craft 