My amazing wonderful husband is weaving!

Vince sat down and finished his first project on his new 32 in. Rigid Heddle loom! It's a pretty wrap that will be perfect for fall with 100% wool used as the warp and bushed mohair and sparklies used as the weft. It came together really nicely. I love it so much that I snuck on etsy and started shopping for some new yarns for him, and he liked it so much he started pestering me for yarn so much we had to run out to the store and get him some to tide him over until what I ordered gets here. Crazy. I may have created a monster but in a good way.

Just soaking up the baby goodness

Well my little man is home and I am loving it. I'm still a little anxious and he spends the majority of his time in his sling because I can't bear to be away from him but we are all doing well. The kids adjusted to having him much better than I thought and so far there hasn't been any major jealousy or other badness. I am starting to get going dying and carding and spinning again, and I've got a ton of things to post about as I have time so there will probably be more than one in a day sometimes. Anyway, here is a picture of my guy. We named him Cassius.

Officially Phat!

Well today I bandaged up the fingers so that I could get some work done. It stil hurts and I have some amazingly huge blisters ( I know, gross) but I am coping. I have finally finished my phat fiber contributions!!! Yea me! I had meant to take more pictures but honestly I put so much work into them that by the time I was done I just wanted to put them in the box to be done with it. I am exhausted, spun two yarns today and got a bunch of other things done too on top of the last of the phat stuff. It's been a long day. I am saving things up for a huge March update so that when the phat boxes come out my shop won't be empty. So far I have two art yarn rovings and four handspuns done plus fiber in natural colors and I am hoping to get a bunch of stuff dyed up in the next few days. Then I will start updating like crazy! The husband has grudgingly pitched in, sanding yarn sticks for me and keeping me (mostly) sane. I really do like working this hard. It's so awesome to have a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day and luckily my yarn does not unspin itself in the way that the house seems to unclean itself. Oh well, I am off to take a nice long soak in some of my bath salts and try to relax...

My Great Camel Adventure!!!

Okay so about a week ago I came across a man

in possesion of a camel and after talking for a while this wonderful, nice man he offered to let me come and attempt to get some fiber off of said camel. So I thought long and hard about who I could possibly tell about this potential adventure, I don't know alot of local handspinners and I was just so excited I had to tell someone, so I told my friend Anne, who lives pretty close to me and we had been emailing for a while but we had never actually gotten to meet and we decided to go on our great camel adventure together.

So as the day was approaching I was starting to worry, I realized that I have never even touched a camel, and I couldn't find any information about how to remove the wool from a camel, not to mention that I had never met Anne in person, so anyway, I was kind of freaking out.

The day comes and I am prepared. I have scissors, and brushes and we meet and head out. Turns out Anne and I have so much in common that we talked non-stop all the way there and back (and it was a four hour round trip). So we get there and The camels owner was nice enough to have caught him and brought him into a trailer to shelter us from the brutal winds blowing that day. As we approached the camel, I was a bit intimidated, trying to figure out how we are going to get this fiber off of him and into our bags without angering the camel, I walked up and started petting and it was SO soft! So I grabbed a small handful and gave it a light tug, and it came right out!! So we started just plucking away, just like he was a giant rabbit! So here's where I am thinking, oh thank god Anne is with me, Because she also has rabbit plucking experience, and we are standing there plucking this camel, practically jumping up and down with joy over how soft and wonderful this fiber is and how amazing it is that we can pluck it off just like a rabbit and how awesome this camel is. So after we were all done and had taken some pictures we thanked Roy and started on our long trip home. When we got back we split the fiber 50/50 and said our goodbyes and agreed to talk again soon. I am so excited to have met Anne and I can't wait for our next adventure. When I got home I weighed my fiber and I had 12 1/2 oz.!!! So that means we got roughly 24 oz. of the softest camel fiber that I have ever felt and all we had to do was drive out and pluck it. Who would have thought it would be so easy?!? It came right off! Just like a rabbit(albeit, a couple hundrend pound rabbit) It was arguably the best day that I have had in a long time and I am still so excited about my fiber! Oh, but what to blend it with?

Handspun with Love

There is a new page explaining about our little "Handspun with Love" project, you can click on the link in my sidebar to go see it and to get to the photo journal for the project.