J'aime tricoter!

My GOD! I'm like a junkie. I AM a junkie. I stayed up until 2 am on a weeknight finishing this yarn. I spun some creamy alpaca . . . (really chunky and irregular) then took the colored stuff and spun that up (thanks to Kathleen for all of her amazing help. Truly. The advice, the links, the inspiration! Thanks to everyone one of you who encouraged me!!!)


Then I took both yarns and spun them up into this glob. I know - it's a ball of yarn that only it's mother could love, but I am in love. It's amazing. I've only got about 24 yards but if I knit on some big-ass needles, I think I can stretch a hat out of it. I may blend it with my yummy chocolate alpaca I got from my best friend . . . who, by the way, has moved away from me all the way to Texas. (hello Skype)

And I ordered some roving with money I. DO. NOT. HAVE!!!!! (don't worry, DyeabolicalYarns the check won't bounce.) It's diabolically green and I'm loving every inch of it!And about that best friend who moved away - we're planning a rendezvous in France for our 40th birthdays. (She says Italy, but she also says Tomahto and Pohtahtoe). So I'm off to learn French while I knit.

Au revoir!

Keep on a-spinnin'.....

Hey there.

I'm back from a great little vacation with the family. I made a trek down to St. Louis, MO for a my sister's wedding reception (another one). There was quite a fuss - it was a 'big fat Italian wedding' reception with kids, aunts, cousins, grandmothers, uncles and food and wine. A lot of food. I ate so much that I was feeling rather large and lethargic for the majority of the weekend.I brought my knitting and knit furiously through Iowa - cruisin' on my sleeves until I came to the increases and realized I had left my pattern back home. Hmph. It was a little like torture to look at that knitting bag and know that I had nothing to knit. To make it worse . . . I was about 2 miles from The Loopy Ewe and never made my way over there! I didn't have my own car and the family was too busy preparing and entertaining. Bringing myself to ask someone to drive me to a yarn shop (which was probably closed anyway) was out of the question. AND we stopped in Hannibal (the boyhood town of Mark Twain) briefly and as we were about 15 miles out of town I read in a brochure that they have a knitting shop with hand-painted yarn. OH, the misery.

While up in Ely, I did the rest of my spinning. It was about 3-4 oz. of creamy soft alpaca roving. My results were . . . well take a look.
It's a spindle full of strange, fat and skinny, soft alpaca yarn. Now what? I have no idea what to do next? And how do I know how much yarn I have? I suppose I can wrap it around something and measure it. As frustrating as it is to spin, I think I have found another passion. It's really fun. I have a wad of colored stuff here:...but I'm not sure how to separate it and proceed. I'm going into my LYS (local yarn shop) for a lesson this fall. My family was watching me with my awkward drop spindle and said, "Why don't you get a spinning wheel instead?"

A spinning wheel is $600. A drop spindle is $10. That's why. For those of you who don't know what a drop spindle is - it looks like a top with a long handle. You hang some fiber from it and spin the top while letting it hang in the air. That's it. Sounds easy, right? Yeah. Right.

Just keep spinning, just keep spinning . . .

Hey folks! I'm writing to you from downtown Ely, Mn. That was our sunset last night. Yup - loons and all. Very picturesque.

This post will be full of myself because. . . well. . . I am full of myself - and why, you ask? Well take a little looksey at this!



That's right! Blue ribbons, baby! YEAH! don't know what that pink ribbon is for. It might mean I'm sort of second place blue ribbon. And, well, I think my socks were the only socks entered, so I was kind of a shoe-in. I think I actually competed with this little ditty. It was in the same lot as my socks. Hmmmm.That's right. Now you, too, can enter the county fair competition even if you can't knit. However, you will need a huge box of Legos.

And look at the cake winners. WOW! That is really impressive.

This was my favorite. Achem. I'm sorry to say it did not win a ribbon, which I thought it should have because of the very creative positioning of the pandas.

Panda Free Love!! Whoo hooo!

I'm back . . . again.

Thanks for all the birthday greetings. And I apologize for my very sporadic and lame attempts at posting lately. I've been so busy (lazy).
My BF bought me this scrumptious suri-alpaca yarn from Livingston, MT. It feels like down and the color is a rich dark chocolate. Problem: there are 50 yards so I'm not sure what to make with it. So, after "conversing" with Kathleen, I bought myself a little gift. Here, let me show you. We can open it together.


Yup. It's a drop spindle and some alpaca roving from Silver Sun Alpaca. Since I've fallen in love with alpaca and it's a bit too spendy to become a habit, I figured I should start spinning it myself. That's what it took . . . suri alpaca. I stayed up last night until about midnight spinning terrible, clunky, uneven, bulky yarn. About two yards of it!

I also watched several Youtube videos and I think I'm ready to start actually dropping my spindle (instead of parking an drafting . . . SEE!?!? I KNOW THE LINGO!) Wish me luck. Kathleen reassured me that actually dropping the spindle to the floor would be normal for the first few days.
That there is my lovely Central Park Hoodie. Knitting with wool this summer hasn't been the curse I thought it would be. Minnesota has had an unusually cold summer with almost NO humidity and temps below 80. Lovely and fall-like, but weird and foreign - and my tomatoes are STILL GREEN. Many believe Minnesota to be cool all year, but our summers are usually steamy and hot. I met a gentleman once on an airplane flying home to Minnesota. He was from Georgia and when we landed, he grabbed a WINTER coat out of the overhead bin. It was August!

"You're not going to need that," I told him.

Wild Tomato, I am still planning the ultimate furmiliation for my new cat, but she still has not forgiven the world for her transplantation. She hates us. She only comes out to play around 11:30 pm and then only with me.
Beware, Lydia, beware . . . mwooo hoo ha ha haaaaaaaaa...... to be cont.