The Wool Anniversary

Time flies when you're having fun.  Yesterday marked my 7th blogging anniversary!  Blogging is a lot of work.  Honestly.  But it's also one of the most rewarding things I've done.  Rewarding in the records I have of our life and our farm and farm family.  Rewarding in the good friends I've made from all over.  Rewarding in all I've learned and will continue to learn.  Rewarding in knowing that sometimes my crazy little world brightens up someone else's crazy little world.  It all matters.  

Since the 7th anniversary is wool, I used that (and the fact it was warm in the Wool House :-) as motivation to finally do some sample spinning with Rebecca Boone's pretty Cotswold roving.  I have big plans for her for the upcoming Ravellenic Games (formerly known as the Knitting Olympics).  More on that tomorrow.

"So, is this how you want me to pose?"

I have a little over 30 ounces of her 2013 fall roving.  That should be plenty.  Our little tomboy cleans up pretty well :-).

I spun a small sample and wound it off on my hand to Andean ply.  This is a neat trick and one I use for drop spindling and for plying small samples off the wheel.

Basically you wind the single strand into a center pull around your hand.  You gather up the front and back end of the yarn, pull your finger out of the middle so the yarn slips down onto your wrist and you can safely ply the two ends together without things getting crazy.  Usually ;-).

It's pretty, but I had a feeling it was too thin for what I wanted.

So I spun up another sample.  This time I had more yardage so I wound the center pull ball on my plastic ball winder. 

I liked this much better.

And then I pulled out a stitch book and sampled three different patterns.  I like the Eyelet Zigzag lace the best.  It's a super simple pattern and I think the zigzags look a bit like her curly locks.  It's a start!