Spinning

I have the most amazing sunburn ever. Blisters, puss, swelling, and amazing amounts of pain and grossness. Lee and I went on a 3-4 hour kayaking journey for 6 hours. Sunscreen does not last so long. Especially when it is on parts that are getting wet and have not seen the sun at all this summer. My knees. To combat the pain and requisite lying down, I started a test knit stole for Chrissy Gardiner, the Path of Flowers Shawl, which will probably be coming out not too soon after it gets test knit. I wanted something that would take my mind off of the pain of the sunburn, but not something that was amazingly finicky. As I was still on the first clue of the Mystery Stole and socks just didn't seem right, I started this one. It's really nice so far (I'm halfway through the first repeat, yay me) and I like the fact that though it is lace, it is only a 16 row repeat. The size 6 needles also make for not terribly finicky squinty knitting. Once getting back home, however, I felt confident enough to continue on with the Mystery Stole. I am halfway through the second repeat. Which means that if I only had started when the clues came out, I could have been keeping up. It is looking beautiful though; I love the silver beads! The wing sounds great and I can't wait until I am far enough along to start it. That was kind of my goal for this week, getting through Clue 4 by the time Clue 6 came out, so I can just wing it (hee hee) for the rest. Again with the stupid goals.

I did some alpaca spinning (another stupid goal, I was thinking to make my aunt and uncle socks for their birthdays THIS MONTH) and got almost an entire spindle full in the two hours I spun. The major problem with the spinning is that I have raw fleece. It needs carding. I don't enjoy carding. I'm not sure if I will ever get a raw fleece again due to my severe dislike of carding. Spinning is great, but carding, now carding should be done outside due to the bits of dust and loose hairs flying about. The llama and alpaca I have do not require scouring before spinning and are dusty. One of the llama fleeces is amazingly dirty, and I am considering doing something with it before spinning. If I could just take the time to card up the entire bag, give it an entire afternoon and just suck it up, it probably wouldn't be so bad. Then I could spin and spin to my heart's content, or I ran out of rolags. I suppose I really don't like carding because there isn't much else you can do while carding. I read while knitting, listen to music, watch movies, talk, but stuck outside having to watch the carding, there isn't much else to do. Boring and slow and just not as productive as I like activities to be.

I was carding three rolags, spinning them, then carding three last time, as the straight carding was annoying. I was also carding in the house (don't tell Lee!) over the Rubbermaid to catch any dirt since this was a pretty clean fleece. I got through nine rolags. I think twelve would fill the spindle, but I did not want to continue after nine. It was food time, and the hair was just getting everywhere and mixing with the aloe on my legs. Not cool. I want to make a pair of Thuja socks for my uncle and a pair of Thuja-inspired socks for my aunt. I love the pattern, think it would go very well with the alpaca, but want something to allow them to tell their socks apart. I'm thinking of taking the stockinette portions of the ribbing on the back of the legs of my aunt's socks and making them cables or twists or something. I'd like to spin some more today, but my legs are so gross that I really can't do that. I'm still not sure how many yards I'm going to get out of the spindle. I only need about 175 yards for a pair of Thujas, which really isn't much. I am planning on plying the yarn, two ply, as I'm spinning pretty consistently at half the size I want it. That's making me pretty happy. I need to spin 350 yards, then ply it to get about 175 yards. Not too bad, not too bad at all. If I'm spinning it similar to how I spun the llama that was last on the spindle (and I think I am), a full spindle is about 100 yards (if I remember correctly), and if a full spindle is twelve rolags, then I need 3.5 spindles at 12 rolags or 42 rolags total, and I've done nine, so about 33 more rolags to card. Yeah, I think I can do that in an afternoon. Probably Saturday. That sounds like a pretty good Saturday, carding up a Rubbermaid container full of rolags, then spinning them while watching a movie that evening. Sounds great to me! I'll be able to knit them at the Kenny Wayne Shepard concert on Sunday, and finish them during the week. I can spin the other pair up the next weekend, and the socks will be late but not too late. If I can only keep to my schedule...