Two weeks solid of a parade of guests it turns out is bad for blogging time. If I wasn’t hanging out with friends and family, I was working (it’s a bit too busy at work at the moment for two straight weeks off – and I want some time left for TheEnabler and I to have some couples vacation).
The blanket was washed and hung to dry prior to leaving for Cologne, so this means it was ready in time for my sisters’ arrival the day we got back from Cologne. Here TheEnabler is holding it up for a final pic before we placed it her suitcase this past Tuesday night. I believe it’s currently hanging out with her and my aunt in Romania before she returns to the States.
My sister and I took a trip up to Rostock and Graal-Muritz to see the Baltic Sea. We also visited the Rostock Zoo, which included some fiber animals:
On the left are Bactrian camels and on the right is a llama.
She drove, which gave me time to finally make real progress on my Ergane cowl. I’m on color 4 of 5 in the fade and safely past ball #2 which seemed to be cursed.
On the left in the pic above is my first time doing broomstick lace, though I used one arm of my swift since that seemed easier to manage (and cleaner) than our plastic broom handle with a dusty broom at the other end. It seemed to take forever and then was suddenly done more quickly than I expected.
As you can see in the pic on the right, I am A) safely past the problem spots and B) alternating the skeins as I go a bit. I don’t really have any extra of any of the colors, so I’m making judgement calls as I get near the end of one ball on whether to do the next round in it or the following color. I don’t want to swtich colors mid-round unless it’s something like chain stitches that will be hidden by the following round. Rather like the blanket, it’s made this another project in which I can’t plan everything 100% in advance, but need to be ready to be flexible as I go.
Lastly – if you read Ply (and you should if you are a hand spinner!), I’m in the Autumn 2018 issue of Ply on Power! They just sent me a handy little image of my article for my self-promotion purposes.
I did an experiment to see how fiber prep and drafting method impact the speed at which I spin yarn using my favorite drop spindle. It has bar charts and all showing my results (which I won’t give away). This has impressed TheEnabler’s colleagues who are his fellow academics – also they are maybe a mite jealous of the pretty color photos and multiple pages I got.