Custom Blend - Ice Caves

Day 169: I've had several bags of Corriedale top sitting in the spinning cupboard for some time now, not really wanting to spin it up plain and trying to figure out a way I could spice it up a bit. In the interim, I've been spinning a Merino/bamboo blend which is rapidly becoming my favourite fiber. As luck would have it, my primary fiber supplier recently put a 100% bamboo top on sale. It was only available in one colour ("Glimmerglass," a mix of blues with a tiny touch of lavender), but it was perfect for my purpose. I blended a bit with the Corriedale using my hand carders and spun up a sample using a tahkli spindle. Although I was pleased with the result shown here, I've decided to add a little more of the bamboo, bringing the content up to approximately 70% Corriedale/30% bamboo. That should be a good combination for long-wearing socks. That said, I've become a little spoiled working with Merino. The Corriedale fiber seems much coarser than I remembered. I've dubbed this shimmery blend "Ice Caves" because it reminds me of the blue light inside the old ice caves above Paradise (Mount Rainier National Park) which now no longer exist.

Cinnamon Twist

Day 62: I'm loving my cinnamon twist, and we're not talking about bakery goods here. My current spinning project is moving along rapidly. The finished yarn is two-ply, slightly lighter than standard worsted. One ply is white Corriedale and the other, a cinnamon-hued lamb's-wool I refer to as "honey-lamb" for want of a more specific or descriptive name. The Corriedale fibers are long, straight and silky, while the fluffy cinnamon has a medium-grade crimp with a glossy finish. The second skein is still on the spindle, waiting to be measured and hung wet to set the twist. The first skein weighs 4.3 oz. and contains 167 yards of luxuriously soft yarn. Unlike most of my hand-spun wool, the future of "Cinnamon Twist" has been preordained. It will become a sweater for my personal use.

A Twist On Honey-Lamb

Day 47: After assessing the cinnamon fleece I bought last weekend at the Ashford bazaar, I decided I'd put a twist on "honey-lamb" (as I'd taken to calling it as I was spinning it), extending the amount of yarn it would yield by plying it with soft, sillky Corriedale. The result is one of the prettiest yarns I've ever spun, warm brown and creamy white wrapped around each other like the stripes on a candy cane. There will definitely be enough for a sweater when I'm done, perhaps a matching hat and mittens, or even a scarf. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a "fiber fascist." With the exception of rayon (which, if it comes right down to it, is actually cellulose), I want nothing to do with manufactured materials. Give me cotton, silk, linen and wool in natural colours, and pitch that nasty polyester in the bin!

Two-Ply Corriedale Cross

Day 15: If you were to look around my living space, you'd see multiple projects of various types in different stages of completion. I like to have a variety of crafts going at once because (as I so often say aloud, sometimes in frustration at myself), I have the attention span of a gerbil. A week or two ago, I caught the spinning wheel glaring at me for having ignored it for an unreasonable period of time. I consoled it by completing the two-ply skein of grey yak hair it was holding, and then promptly began a new project of creamy white Corriedale cross wool. One four-ounce skein is finished except for washing and stretching, and the first ply of another is currently in the works. Underneath it, you can see a quilt in progress. It's taking far less long than I expected and I'm only a few weeks away from having it finished, but another quilt has supplanted it and must be completed first.

There are three of us, sisters-of-the-heart for lo, these many years. One lives in New Hampshire, one in New York, and then there's me, out here in the Pacific Northwe't. We haven't all been together for a decade or more, but our multiple daily emails are always shared. Very recently, the New York member of the contingent asked if I would be willing to do a huge favour for her: make a quilt using a top her grandmother had sewn by hand. I was inspired by the "heirloom" aspect of the project and agreed, somewhat along the principle of buying a pig in a poke. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. Alison understood that, and assured me that I could back out of the commitment if I so desired once I'd seen the quilt. It came in the mail ten days ago. I gave it a preliminary assessment, hatched a few ideas, ran them by Alison and we came up with a Plan. But, as plans of mice and men are wont to do (or I should say "of a Mouse and a needlewoman"), it went a-gley. There were problems with grandma's spacing (four inches between some appliqued plates and seven between others), and my designs just weren't working. I gave the project a serious chunk of think, and proposed a daring idea to my heart's dear sister. I would cut up grandma's quilt and reassemble it with coloured strips in between and a wide border to bring it up to king-size.

Needless to say, this has become a much larger project than initially anticipated, but with Mouse's approval, I went to town today and bought the additional fabric. I also bought some more Corriedale wool because I'm going to need a lot of breaks over the next two or more years.