handmade by stefanie

I already shared my individual results, but since the winner of Spinzilla won't be announced until October 23 (?!?) I wanted to share the accomplishments of my awesome team, the spinners of #TeamLouetNA. This year, we had a lot of familiar faces from previous years, plus some new-to-us spinners. Everyone was super excited for the event, and our team thread on Ravelry was filled with lots of chatter - sharing fiber prep tips, updating everyone on their spinning progress during the week of Spinzilla, and cheering one another on. It's such a great group of people, I feel lucky to be their captain. For the first time ever, we had 100% participation from all 25 spinners (in previous years, there has always been one or two who drop off and forget to send in their yardage, despite my persistent harassment!). Just look at all of these beautiful handspun singles and skeins: You might be wondering how this year's total yardage compares to that of years past - but fear not!...

The fates seemed to be against me for Spinzilla this year: For the first 3 days, I was at an intensive work conference downtown and had extremely limited time to spin. Once I was back to my normal work schedule, I hit more stumbling blocks due to forearm and hand pain from way too much typing. The magic combination of rest, ice, and a very nice massage on Friday night was enough to get me back into spinning form for the final push. On Saturday, I spun through all of the fibers that I thought would be easiest on my arms and hands - I'm pretty sure the lovely merino/tencel I was spinning played as much of a role in my pain as the typing, so I opted for some of the fluffly fibers I bought at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool festival last month. On Sunday, I managed to transform all of the singles from the week (which wasn't much) into beautiful yarns: My grand total was a paltry 1964 yards - that's a personal worst, as you can see from this chart: I'm hoping m...

Spinzilla starts today and I am flying by the seat of my pants! On Sunday, I just barely managed to finish spinning singles for the project I had on the wheel and then ply a bunch of random leftover singles into a frankenyarn to clear out some bobbin space: Plying the gradient 2-ply yak/silk will be the first order of business once Spinzilla starts (obviously, I will only count the yardage once for the plying, and not the spinning of the original singles, which occurred before the start time); my first official spinning project for the week will probably be this merino/tencel that I predrafted yesterday: And the rest will (hopefully) just work itself out as the week progresses. I'll be severely limited in spinning time til Wednesday night, so I am really pinning my hopes on a productive final push at the end of the week and over next weekend. Good luck to everyone spinning this week!

Can you believe that Spinzilla is just one week away? Quite honestly, I can't - it's totally snuck up on me. As the Captain of Team Louet North America (the reigning champs two years in a row, if I may toot our own horn), I should probably have a better plan in place for my own spinning next week, but I regret to inform you that I'll probably be winging it. Work has been crazy, and although my team captain duties are not overwhelming per se, making sure all of our spinners are prepared for the week ahead is definitely a top priority ahead of my own spinning plans! I'll be attending a conference right at the start of Spinzilla that will create some difficulties in finding time to compete, so I'm trying not to get my hopes up for a personal best when it comes to spinning this year. I've always wanted to break the 4,000-yard mark, but have yet to do so. In the back of my mind, it's a goal, but a more realistic one is to at least spin a Monster Mile (1760 ya...

Today's a special blog post, just so I can do a bit of bragging: my Spinzilla team won the Golden Niddy Noddy! I couldn't be more proud of Team Louet North America . What a tremendous group of spinners! To reblog from our team sponsor's post announcing our team's stats: 24 of 25 registered spinners reported yardage & will be receiving our Team Thank-you gift valued at $100! We’ll be creating a special fiber pack for our hard-working spinners which includes two 1/2 lb. bags of Merino Silk, a 1/2 lb. bag of Dyed Merino and a Lavishea Spinzilla lotion bar! 21 of 25 registered spinners are in the Monster Mile Club! This means that they will receive an additional gift from us (their choice of in-stock fibers valued at $100)! Eight of our spinners reported 5-digit yardage! As a team, we spun a total of 271,607 yards – that’s just over 154 miles, or the equivalent of 5.8 marathons! We’ve far surpassed our team total from last year (156,853) as well as the win...