Well, the fleeces have arrived at Spinderella's. Completely by coincidence, Spinderella has lowered their processing prices a bit and expanded their volume discount to cover the entire order, rather than just individual lots over a certain size. While none of my individual lots exceeded the minimum for the discount, the whole order certainly did. That was quite a nice surprise.
The stash is now living in a series of cardboard boxes. Tomorrow it gets loaded on a truck and sent off to my new home in Washington state. The drive to join my stash will take about five days of drive-time, plus I'll spend a day or two in Chicago visiting family before I go. I have two socks, a scarf and my Kiri shawl (which has another hole in it) as my travel knitting. I expect that I might get some knitting done while I watch the movers load the truck too. I really wish I had someone to drive me across the country just so that I could knit all day each of those five days. Oh well.... I do have a nice supply of books on tape to keep me company and that will just have to suffice.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Saturday, March 06, 2010
77.8 Pounds
I spent today organizing and packing up my spinning fleeces. By my reckoning, there are 77.8 pounds of fleece in my garage, divided into 9 boxes.
It's taken me a while to decide where to send the fleeces for processing, but I think I've finally decided on Spinderella's. Looks like the turnaround time is about four to eight weeks. That should work out pretty well with the moving in between shipping and receiving. They're also located relatively close to my new location, which should save on shipping. Now I just need to print out the order forms, fill out the info and get the boxes over to Mary at the UPS store.
And figure out what I'm going to do with the 50-ish pounds of roving I'm going to get back. Some of it I'll spin straight into yarn for which I already have ideas for thanks to Lisa Lloyd's book A Fine Fleece. Although I greatly dislike the poorly focused and sometimes poorly lit photos in the book, I do indeed like her cabled sweater patterns a great deal. I'm also quite curious how long it would take me to spin 1600 yards of a nice 2-ply DK or worsted weight yarn. I've never measured my handspun in the past.
Now that I have a drum carder, I might just try my hand at blending too. I've got some lovely alpaca, angora and silk that could be a nice addition to some of the soon-to-be-produced roving or to the already existing Merino roving I have stashed away.
It's taken me a while to decide where to send the fleeces for processing, but I think I've finally decided on Spinderella's. Looks like the turnaround time is about four to eight weeks. That should work out pretty well with the moving in between shipping and receiving. They're also located relatively close to my new location, which should save on shipping. Now I just need to print out the order forms, fill out the info and get the boxes over to Mary at the UPS store.
And figure out what I'm going to do with the 50-ish pounds of roving I'm going to get back. Some of it I'll spin straight into yarn for which I already have ideas for thanks to Lisa Lloyd's book A Fine Fleece. Although I greatly dislike the poorly focused and sometimes poorly lit photos in the book, I do indeed like her cabled sweater patterns a great deal. I'm also quite curious how long it would take me to spin 1600 yards of a nice 2-ply DK or worsted weight yarn. I've never measured my handspun in the past.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Final Final FLS Update
Sis has received the sweater. She was *very* surprised. She'd been expecting socks! I'm hoping she wasn't still expecting socks when she saw the size of the box that UPS kindly delivered yesterday. The report is that the sweater is gorgeous and fits perfectly. It's good to know that I guessed the sleeve length well. Sis is three inches taller than me, so has longer arms. I made the sleeves about 1.5 inches too long for me and apparently that's just right.
I told her that since I'd purchased a whole bag of Cascade 220 in Chocolate when we went sweater yarn shopping that I actually have enough yarn to make the February Lady Pullover too. So far she hasn't replied to that. Since I've already started the pullover, I'll pick it back up when I get done with the Sea Serpentine Socks.
Speaking of Sea Serpentine.... ripped them back out to the end of the toe shaping again and began working the smallest size. The foot was just coming out a tiny bit too large at the medium size (after ripping out the large size). I'm tempted with this yarn (Hacho) to go up to a size 3 needle. The fabric right now is a bit dense. Will have to consider that for the next pair with Hacho.
Since I now have an official signed/accepted job offer, I have gone ahead and ordered my yarn for the Evenstar Shawl. I decided on Blue Moon Fiber Arts Silk Thread II in Winter Solstice, just like the designer used. I love the glowing silver grey color. The second clue of the shawl just came out so I'm just a tiny bit behind. Perhaps the yarn will arrive late next week and I'll think about getting started. I'm also going to sign up for the whole Lord of the Rings mystery pattern series. The previews she's given look gorgeous!!
I told her that since I'd purchased a whole bag of Cascade 220 in Chocolate when we went sweater yarn shopping that I actually have enough yarn to make the February Lady Pullover too. So far she hasn't replied to that. Since I've already started the pullover, I'll pick it back up when I get done with the Sea Serpentine Socks.
Speaking of Sea Serpentine.... ripped them back out to the end of the toe shaping again and began working the smallest size. The foot was just coming out a tiny bit too large at the medium size (after ripping out the large size). I'm tempted with this yarn (Hacho) to go up to a size 3 needle. The fabric right now is a bit dense. Will have to consider that for the next pair with Hacho.
Since I now have an official signed/accepted job offer, I have gone ahead and ordered my yarn for the Evenstar Shawl. I decided on Blue Moon Fiber Arts Silk Thread II in Winter Solstice, just like the designer used. I love the glowing silver grey color. The second clue of the shawl just came out so I'm just a tiny bit behind. Perhaps the yarn will arrive late next week and I'll think about getting started. I'm also going to sign up for the whole Lord of the Rings mystery pattern series. The previews she's given look gorgeous!!
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