handmade by stefanie

As I may have mentioned in an earlier post, my husband thoughtfully bought me a WEBS gift certificate for Christmas. After much internal debate, I placed a carefully-chosen order: 3 bundles of handpainted Targhee Top from Abstract Fiber in "The Gorge" colorway (the idea is to have enough finished handspun to make a large project of some sort!) 2 skeins of Terra from the Fibre Company in Blue Spruce (to make this cabled hat from Vintage Modern Knits) 2 skeins Valley Yarns Northampton Sport in Gray (this is for a top-secret  design project I'm currently working on!) After a small delay due to the insane weather this month, it arrived and I am dying to dive in! Alas, I find myself heading to Orlando today for business while Tyler holds down the fort. I'm pretty sure I'll be busting out the spinning wheel just as soon as I return home and get unpacked.  I also purchased a pound of Louet Dorper Top ; I'd spun some during Spinzilla last October a...

The Tour de Fleece ends tomorrow, which means that I am going to be spinning like mad this weekend. Before I left for vacation, I was nearly done with a merino/silk single to ply with one of the first singles I completed during the tour (Wine Country BFL/silk from the Sweet Georgia Fibre Club ). This week, I managed to finish what was on my wheel and ply the two together, and I am so thrilled with the results! I also took some leftover singles and plied them together, with not-as-exciting results: Today, I am going to try to finish the Polwarth that is on my Ladybug: And I am also going to try to finish the second Merino/Silk single that is on my Victoria so that I can ply it with this overfilled bobbin (I may have gotten carried away) of the same fiber and color: With any luck, I'll be spending Sunday plying up a storm!  Thanks for joining me for another Spinning Saturday! I'd love to hear about your Tour de Fleece progress in the comments!  ...

Note: I do realize it's not Saturday today! This was the post I wrote yesterday before my internet connection went haywire. I decided to take my Ladybug out to the back porch to spin up my Wensleydale top, and now that my internet connection has mysteriously righted itself, I am sharing this post today!  I'm still spinning up a storm! This week, I pulled out two fibers from my stash: the first, 5 oz. Finn top from Spunky Eclectic in natural cream that I've had in my fiber stash for several years; the second, a braid of very pretty hand-dyed Wensleydale roving from Northbound Knitting , which I purchased earlier this year. I thought it might be interesting to spin singles from both of these fibers and ply them together, but a lot of that depends on how the Wensleydale spins up. The Finn (also known as Finnish Landrace or Finnsheep) was surprisingly lofty - you can't really see the halo in the photo below, but trust me, it's there! It was really a dream...