Look look look!

I am almost done with spinning my “Ocean Rain” fiber!

I was actually super duper prompt about taking my four little turtles of singles and winding them on my ball winder into two ply balls – each with two plies. I did this last Saturday, and a week later I’m finished one and well into the second of the balls.

I honestly think I could be done with this yarn in a few days, and I’m really excited to skein it, wash it, and add it to my yarn wall. I love the shine from the fibers. It’s 50% Exmoor Blueface, 30% Devon Bluefaced Leicester and 20% Devon Wensleydale, so it’s not the softest yarn, but it looks sturdy with a lovely drape and it’s not harsh.

My progress on plying might have been a little quicker, except I helped out a bit at a Green Bag Lady event for part of Wednesday and Thursday. They had a stand at the Berliner Visionen, a textile and design event. It’s geared towards business, designers, etc… and not so much individual crafters, so the goal was to get contacts and support from companies who could donate materials or potentially space and hands to make bags.

Green Bag Lady Germany had a stand with two machines set up, so I helped sew up bags, freeing up time for others with more experience and better German to do the circuit of the room to make contacts.

We actually got some on the spot donations of fabric samples of sold out fabric designs. We turned these small pieces into pockets on some of the bags. This was a great example of “reuse” since otherwise these fabric scraps would likely have gone straight into the trash.

My company grants each employee one paid day per year to do some sort of community or charity work, so I used my 8hrs for this event. Ironically, while I wasn’t using just personal time for the event, this still meant less time for my own spinning because a) I had to travel to and from Berlin on the train, and knitting was easier and b) hours at the Green Bag Lady stand meant hours I wasn’t on work calls getting in a few minutes of spinning here and there.