all spinning, all the time

Well, that's not entirely true. The house is looking very sparkly and the lawn is getting a lot of attention. Spring cleaning is almost complete. The majority of the dust bunnies have been taken care of. There's still a few areas that I'd like to clean but I'm burnt out. The house is looking much better and just in time for Easter. The in-laws are in town and there's lots of stuff planned.

We hooked the de-thatching blade to the lawn mower last weekend and ripped up about a quarter of our lawn. We don't actually have a lot of thatch but we do have a ton of moss which the blade rakes out. So there's a huge pile of moss in the carport. With the old collection system, we would've filled all 12 garbage cans and put them at the curb for pick up. But the new system only picks up waste in city supplied containers. We are allowed one container for free and you have to pay $100 for every extra container. We bought an extra one so that we have two and they're huge but it's gonna take many weeks to get rid of the stuff and we still have to run the mower over the rest of the lawn. Then there's over-seeding, fertilizing, and lime-ing. Each step is a two pass process so I'm doing a lot of walking. I am very pooped.

The Lendrum has moved onto her permanent home. And she has a name - Lizzy. Her new owner has been spinning like crazy on it. I went over to her house and I showed her how to use her wheel to Andean ply the singles from her drop spindle. Then I got her set up to ply the singles that she'd spun on the wheel. I cut some felt pieces to slip into her lazy kate to add a little tension so that the bobbins don't spin too quickly. I'm going to make the same adjustment to my kate, too.

Before I handed Lizzy over, I spun a little fiber on her.


This is some really scratchy mystery wool from Shades of Narnia. I started spinning some of this on my drop spindle but the colours were a little blah so I put the fiber away. But I decided to finish spinning it on the wheel just to get it used up and out of my fiber trunk.


It didn't turn out too badly. It's 2 ply and approx 84g, 218 yds, and 16 wpi. As you can see, it's a little overplied. I still need to wash & whack it which will make it look better.

I went on a bit of a buying binge after finishing up my 3 ply sock yarn (first sock is almost finished - just need to graft the toe). The owner of a local LYS, Knitopia also dyes fiber. So I headed over there to buy some fluffy stuff and I came home with some superwash BFL.


The colours remind me of Hawaii - the ocean & the mountains. And it spins up into this:


I have 146g and I'm splitting it onto 2 bobbins and hoping that I end up with fingering weight after I ply it. The first bobbin is done and I'll be starting the second bobbin after Easter, taxes, and the lawn.

I've bought a new accessory for Matilda. I splurged and picked up a sliding hook jumbo flyer for my wheel on Wed. I also bought an extra jumbo bobbin. These things are supposed to hold 200g of yarn so 146g should fit nicely. I need to dig out the furniture wax and finish the flyer before I permanently install it.

And I'm sure some of you are wondering if I've been wheel shopping. The answer is yes. I'm trying to tempt Gladys into spinning so I've been keeping an eye out for another folding wheel. I haven't found one yet but I did find a NZ Sleeping Beauty Saxony in great condition (with jumbo flyer & jumbo bobbin) for only $160 last week.