Rare New Post

I seem to be posting on a monthly schedule:) There has been a lot of spinning and knitting and fibery things going on here. First there was Spinzilla for which I spun a pile of  yarns, much of them singles on purpose. I will now have to learn to be comfortable using singles:

I also have been carding and spinning a Dorset Horn fleece I purchased from a friend who was destashing some. I am trying to be fairly monogamous towards this project and am planning a four ply yarn to be used in something cable-ey or something Gansey-ey. I have been distracted though. Two long term purchases (I put the orders in months or years ago) arrived in the same month!
First to arrive was my new Attache Charkha from the Bosworths . I LOVE it. Such a beautiful piece of precision machinery. It spins like a dream and is a thing of beauty. I will definitely be increasing my cotton output!

Then I received my MOOSIE spindle, also from the Bosworths. The whorl is made of moose antler and the shaft is walnut. I have been on the waiting list for over a year and it was so so worth it. It spins differently than my spindles with wooden whorls. I am not sure if it is denser or what, but it is a tactile pleasure to handle and spins wonderfully.

Finally I attended a class at the Textile Center of MN on how to dye with Indigo. One of the pieces I dyed was a two stranded skein of Columbia wool I spun on low whorl spindles and planned to ply off a skein hanging off my arm. It was a success, and I was able to ply it in the Andean way, off the skein and while "tossing" the spindle after using my two palms to get it moving very very quickly. I learned this by watching Nilda Callanuepa's Andean Spinning video and was inspired by seeing Abby and others start a spindle and/or ply this way at Stringtopia String Thing this past spring. I seem to be always learning or practicing something new these days.