Thursday, January 8, 2009

Gonna have to face it, I'm addicted to...

Navajo plying. I just love it to bits. I love the roundness of the finished yarn, I love the trickiness of doing it, and I love only needing two bobbins to get finished yarn. As someone with a whole whack of bobbins that were (until last weekend) full of lots of lonely singles that didn't go with each other, navajo plying is the awesome answer.

How bad was it? I plied until I reclaimed 6 of my 8 bobbins. I have a short attention span when it comes to crafts, so I kept trying Neat New Fluff (tm), and then not making anything that corresponded with it. This ranged from some relatively heavy teal/purple mystery fibre, to a super-fine spun natural mohair/jacob blend, and the first of the fibre sent from the fluff of the month club I joined. (Mohair/alpaca/tussah/tencel blend that is just lovely and soft. Can we say "yum"?) I'm most impressed with the results of the latter; it is the first handspun that I've made that if I came across in a store, I'd contemplate buying. It's still not perfect, but I'm getting a helluva lot better. Squee!

On the "bitch bitch bitch" front, the huge bump of fluff I bought on Dec 22nd is still not here. *twitch* I really prefer not to misplace very large, expensive packages that certain expecations hinge on. USPS is non-helpful, as their last update was on Dec 27th as "Acceptance", and then it was eaten by their system. I did send an email to the woman I bought it from to see if she had any experience in terms of how long it normally took for stuff to get from Washington state to Virginia, but I've not heard back from her yet. Even taking the holiday into account, there has been 10 USPS business days from then until now and unless they are shipping it via donkey, it should bloody well be here by now. *fume* I am stymied, and I do not like it one bit.

Continuing in the irritation, I started spinning the red/dark red fluff I dyed, and it is sticky. Really sticky. And did I mention that my hands go all red after I spin with it? Insufficient rinsing. Meh. So, I'm re-rinsing (with the goo I forgot to use last time) to get the rest of the dyed fluff into a reasonable state. An astonishing amount of dye remained. It'll take some trial and error on my part to make sure things are better in the future. Of course, I'll do the chemical'y rinse right after the fluff comes out and has cooled down, so I don't have to keep re-drying it in my middle floor bathroom. I'm learning, but without new supplies, it makes things a little more difficult.

Back on the "yay" front, Daven and I head down to visit Darcy tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to. Geeking and big new toy and wine tasting and a yarn store visit. It should be a lovely weekend. :)

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