Yarn School!

It’s always makes me a little mopey when Yarn School’s over, but if I’m not too tired, I get an excellent kick of residual creative energy that I’m still trying to ride. And I can tell that I’m slowly by surely getting the hang of this thing because, for the first time after Yarn School, I didn’t have to sleep for a solid day! I went to bed a couple hours early and took in a more or less normal long night’s sleep to recover. Who knows? Maybe next time I’ll get normal sleep during the thing!? (Who am I kidding? I’ll never be that organized.)

Besides some general stuff I needed to catch up on (Sally cardigan KAL–did I mention how much I LOVE my Sally sweater?!–and my dad’s web site redesign), I also TC of some Yarn School-related B.

I finished about half of my dregs dyeing. That’s when I use only the dregs of leftover mixtures from Yarn School, recombine them, and dye up a mess of fiber for spinning and carding. We made up some big bins of wet fiber and poured the dregs onto them during Yarn School, then threw them in the roaster, but those were all really disappointing and washed-out, so I just overdyed them once they cooled.

This round, I did several semi-solids for carding, plus some superwash and nylon sparkle combos for socks. These will be Sock Sacks on etsy next week.

This was my favorite, an overdyed disappointment:

I also made some dregs batts, completely random junk batts from all the leftover fiber from the floor and piled around the carding table. This year, I mentioned junk batts, but didn’t actually demo one, which may explain the unusually large pile of fiber farts on the carding table this time. I told everyone not to throw them away when they clean off the drums–which they didn’t–and to card big handfuls of them later–which they also didn’t, as far as I can tell. Usually someone snaps up all the odds and ends for crazy batts. The floor fiber alone made one really big batt. I think if I also card the whole basket of mangled ends (leaving the unmolested fiber still unmolested) and spin all of the resulting batts, along with the abandoned rolags, I might have enough for a cardigan! Definitely chain-plying that yarn. Hm. Or am I?

As a side note, I really should make a carding video…

Yarn School Floor Batt, a monster carded on the Mad Batter (I know it’s technically “Mad Batt’r,” but I dislike arbitrary contractions, so in my house, it’s just Batter. But maybe I should give him a proper name? Maybe I should name them all. I do love naming things…)

I only ever use the Mad Batter (Oskar? Chuck? Or maybe it’s a girl? Hedwig?) anymore , so I decided to give my valiant little Ashford (Sammy? Liv? Pepe?) a crack at the dregs batts, and he tackled them nicely, thank you very much.

But enough about me! Yarn School was so fracking fun I could barf! I’ve been inspired to make up a big spinning to-do list like that big knitting list (wait, I’ll be someone has already made one–I need to ask the webbernet) and to catch up on my pound a month (that means 2.5 pounds this month to get me back on track–but Chris says she spins 5 pounds a month! FIVE POUNDS!).

BTW, I realized last weekend that I’m truly a crap photographer. I know it’s a poor carpenter who blames his tools, but I sure miss my old camera. It’s fanciness compensated my lack of skill.  You’ll find more and better pictures in the flickr pool.

Psst… Cherie’s now offering a fiber club for her marvelous mohair and hand-plucked bunny fiber!

Standing angoras look so regal and bizarre, like some deleted scene from Watership Down.

(I found out Erica’s a Scrabble player! We’re murmuring about a tournament next year….)

I need to put away all the equipment this week so 1) I can pretend I actually use the gym for exercise and 2) so I can quit sighing every time I pass the gym and see all the quiet carders and wheels. Le sigh…