grief spinning

 Ok, so my moods have been up and down the last week or so since the loss of our dear pocket friend, Arayti.  I've still been crafting every day, that goes without saying.

A mutual friend sent me a bit of Arayti's famous Cormo fleece.  Arayti had been sharing it far and wide since it's acquisition several years ago, and we fondly referred to it as Pebbles the Wonder Cormo!  I was next in line to get some when she fell sick 7 months ago.  I wasn't really put out about that specifically, there is plenty of wool in the world, but I did lament the loss of that connection to her.  Anyway, that friend decided to share some of her part of Pebbles, and I got it in the mail on Monday.  Tuesday I spent the whole day with it:

This was washed overnight, btw.  If I knew more about the whole process, I would have washed it again, and possibly a third time.  but it was fine.  It just had a lot of lanolin.  Lanolin is the oil that sheep produce to keep their wool healthy.  It's great for them, but it is kind of sticky and made the spinning a little bit difficult.

But I did manage to spin it up.

This is before I washed it, I did wash it and it bloomed a bit.  looks like lovely, lovely stuff.  And now, I've put it away.  It was a somber sort of activity, and it lasted all day.  But it was important, I think, to go through.  I'm glad for the opportunity.  It really made me excited about doing it in the future, with a larger bit of fleece.  Very Exciting.  Arayti would have loved that, by the way, her fleece inspiring people to want to do more of the things she loved.  She was always the enabler.

Anyway, since I last shared a proper post, I have been busy with a lot of spinning, vanilla knitting, and cross stitch.

Here is the rambouillet that came a few weeks ago.  I ordered it to replace the yarn that was lost when I lost my mushroom bag.  I decided to chain ply it last minute (originally it was a two-ply). I think I appreciate keeping colors together, rather than just letting them be.  The barber-poling in the original yarn was OK, but not really my style.  Also, I don't know if I mentioned it, but I was trying to spin more thickly, since I've been defaulting to a thinner and thinner yarns, it seems.  And this is indeed quite thick!  It's 295 yards in 116 grams.  Firmly a DK! I'm going to knit it into a hat, I think.  that's what the original was going to be, and I'm still keen on that idea.

Keen eyes will also see the difference between picture number 2 and 3 in that sequence.  That's before and after finishing the freshly spun yarn.  It's quite an improvement! It really plumps it right up and evens it out.  I daresay it's magic.

And I've been knitting.  I finished my vintage t-shirt:

I don't have an enormous amount to say about it.  I'm not particularly happy with it, just because I was hoping for a larger neck hole.  When I calculated the end size of the neckhole I should have added another 2-3 inches.  Live and learn.  I did add short rows to bring the back of the neck up, and I am happy with how I did them, but the neck hole really is too tight.  Also, the quality of the wool is not that great, and I can tell.  and I kind of hate that I can tell cause it makes me feel like a real snob, but alas, it's my curse. XD

It's just been sitting on my crafting desk since I finished it.  I didn't even block it.  It's sitting there, thinking about what it did!  I might just go back in and reconfigure the neckline, or I might not.  Having a higher neckline is a hallmark of vintage sweaters, so it's really quite authentic actually.  And I don't think they had Amazing yarn in the 40s either, but I don't know much about historical knitting.

Since I finished that, I went back to sock knitting for my vanilla knitting:

And I'm halfway through the leg now on sock number 2.  I'm really liking these, they are bright and happy and -almost- a rainbow, which is perfect for pride month.  I also like the stripe sequence, and I love how the heel fell in the sequence so you can't really tell that there's a stripe missing from the instep.

Finally, I've done a little bit of cross stitching:

The colors I ordered came in and I was able to get going filling in the background.  I'm not stitching white on the whole entire background of the piece, just around the title.  It's interesting, cause the shades of white seem completely identical, but the effect is pretty cool when it's all filled in.  Looks very pixelated in a good way.  nostalgic almost.

In future crafting plans, I do have yarn coming.  oops.  I sort of let my grief get a hold of me and I clicked order before I thought about it.  But, on the other hand, I've done some destashing of yarn, so there's space in my yarn trunk for a few fancy skeins.  Also, one skein is meant for a prize for a craft-along I'm co-hosting, so that doesn't really count as stash.

As for summer plans, we are kind of just hanging out, waiting for our house to be built.  I've also been taking Hazel to physical therapy twice a week for the last two weeks.  She has four more weeks of that, so that's something to put in my schedule.

Today is Hazel's eighth grade graduation!  And interestingly, the day I was meant to go in for that physical and meeting with the school district.  So, I probably would have had a bit of trouble getting to meeting, cause there's no way I'm missing such an important day in her life for nonsense.  Anyway.  water under the bridge.

Not a lot else going on, I'm looking forward to the crafting I'll do in the next few weeks and I'll be sure to share it with you.

Cheers!