Spin like a Pirate

Meet Captain Jack Sparrow, and his beard, which was a huge part of my inspiration for this yarn ;-)

This is finest black alpaca fibre, corespun, and containing bone skulls, bells, sea shells and pieces of some Pirates of the Carribean merchandise (a replica of the red kerchief Captain Jack wears). Arrr!

Tour de Fleece - Day 21

I haven't had much time for spinning lately, as was to be expected with all the stuff that's going on. We spent the past weeks renovating, and I spent the last two days studying for my exams and trying to squeeze in some house time (renovating again, and also getting some bills in order) in the evenings. Today was reserved for shop work, but I watched some documentations about Ancient Egypt while spinning :-) Twisted and some other friends gave them to me years ago, and I had already forgotten a lot, so it was nice to watch them again. It felt reasonable to combine spinning with some kind of learning/revising stuff that might be helpful. But enough about my studies, I'm going to show you the yarns :-)

 I carded some batts first thing in the morning and hoped to be able to spin them all up, which was indeed the case. I love the colours of all of them!

 Snow Daisies

I always love to use white fibres because their quality is somehow different than the dyed variety. Also, I don't have any dyed bluefaced leicester wool the texture of which is heavenly, so I like to use the pure white stuff. I combined it with only a small amount of green and yellow merino, shiny white alpaca and white lambs wool, and I spun in shimmering snowflake sequins and textile daisies. There's also a bit of commercial eyelash yarn in this one, and I used mother of pearl thread for even more of a shimmering, snowy touch.

This one is still without a name. I was thinking of naming it Koi Pond, but I think Twisted had a yarn once with this name, so I might want to use a different one. Maybe Sparkling Koi would be good since there is a lot of heavenly, peacock angelina (glitter) in this one. It's light fingering or even lace weight, though it looks sturdier in the picture.

 Bubble Gum

I'm not entirely satisfied with the name, maybe I'll think of something else. Bubble Bath is already taken, though the Bubble Bath yarn would also make a great Bubble Gum yarn due to its colour *g* Both the bubble yarns glow in the dark and feature these cute little glittery pompoms.

It's Tour de Fleece time!

I was so looking forward to this year's Tour de Fleece, and I thought I could make quite some time for it this year - but my plans have been thwarted once more. Not that the thing eating up my time isn't  a good one, but I'll come to that in a minute. I'll try to participate in the tour sporadically, and today was a good day (no, not to die - in case there are other Klingon fans here - but to spin!):

120m / 90g of heavenly soft corespun, with beads and sparkle and sari silk threads. I like corespinning, and though I have done it often in the past, I am astounded every single time at how long it takes and how wonderful the texture is. Can't get enough :-)

And now for the big stuff: Apart from polishing my thesis and learning for my final exams (hello, Middle Egyptian, among other things) we're very, very busy renovating. Not the flat we've been living in for the past ten years, but our very own house. Well, it will be our own once we pay off the loan ;-) We, in this case, means Twisted, myself, and our husbands. We have searched for a house for two years, and we finally found it. It was hard to find a house which could be split fairly, since the four of us don't want to live together but in two separate flats inside the same house, sharing the garden. Anyway, we're currently in the process of doing all the paper work, renovating, planning etc, and since my husband was able to take some leave, the Tour de Fleece time span will be filled with removing wallpaper, hanging new wallpaper, building a kitchen and a bed, and other fun stuff. If you'd like to see pictures, please come and visit our blog. It's in German, but if you want to know what we're talking about, maybe google translate can help. It's always hilarious to read the translations, in any case ;-)