Spinning my wheels......

I have been spinning my wheels, or wheel as the case may be.

Meet Katrina, my lovely Minstrel spinning wheel.

Katrina has been part of the family for over three years, joining us shortly after I learned how to spin. She is lovely, very traditional, but she also enjoys the new age fibers like the one that is on her today. Here is a bit of the fluff that I am spinning right now.

This is a Soy Silk and CVM blend, about a third soysilk, that I purchased at CNCH in 2004. I had a pound that sat in my stash for that long, and I recently pulled it out to spin, as part of the Lenten Sockrafice. For those who don't know, soysilk is made from the manufacturing byproducts of tofu production, and CVM stands for California Variegated Mutant. Although you could not tell by the name, CVM is a type of merino fleece, that comes off of a rather ordinary looking sheep that does not have more or less than 4 legs, 2 eyes, and 1 head, despite what the name suggests. Now, I have spun soysilk blends before and I have to tell you that there is something about these blends that is really interesting. The fiber goes on FOREVER! The thing that led me to buy this fiber is the softness of the CVM, broken by a streak of soysilk that runs throughout. The soysilk kind of GLOWS.....

Okay, now here is the fiber on the bobbin of Katrina. You can still see the soysilk glow....it's there even in this incredibly bad photo taken with my easier to use Treo650 camera. I do have a digital camera, that seems able to taken only photos out of focus, because it just takes too long to grab the picture. I have purchased a little ickle tripod, just for taking photos for the blog, at a exorbitant $9.99, but alas! it remains in my car awaiting its fate.

I feel that it is important to point out how far this fiber has in fact gone. I purchased 1 pound, or 16 ounces. Each of Katrina's generous bobbins hold about 4 ounces. That means I just need to spin 4 bobbins worth, and I am done, right?

WRONG! The bobbin in the photo is bobbin #6! not number 3 or 4, number 6! FOREVER!!! In fact, I had run out of bobbins, and had to ply some of the yarn off so that I could continue to spin. I did not want to do this, because I felt that the bobbins should mingle, mixing themselves up for a more consistent yarn. But No! It was not to be.

Actually, that is not true, I could have spun onto the last bobbin, but then would have been forced to ply on the Joy with its ickle bobbins that hold like 2 grams of plied yarn, which would have meant that I would have had a ton of ickle unJoyous skeins of this yarn about the house, and they might reproduce and I would be crushed under the weight of little soysilk mutants attacking me for underskeining.

But I digress. Here is a pic of the Mutant yarn. Notice the three eyeballs in the lower left. But seriously, the soysilk glow is still there. Isn't that lovely?

The yarn must dye! I don't know how or when, but it will DYE......****maniacal dyepot laughing****

Knitting Calendar entry today on April 11 is the Bit of Lace Magic Stripe Socks, done in a red, purple,black and denim blue self-striping colorway. Think chunky lace in the cuff, striped heel flap and what looks to be a star toe. They just look a bit awkward overall.