Drove out to Wamego yesterday for my first Spinsters Club–and my first spinning–in forever. I’m pretty sure my last spinning was when I started spinning Gringo’s fur, over a year ago. It was such a drag that it turned me off spinning completely. It’s still a huge drag–I truly can not think of anything I’d like to spin less. Cotton, maybe? We’ll say cotton. Maybe. But, tedious as it was, the company was wonderful and it was satisfying to get some more of that shitty work out of the way.
The fiber is from my dad’s favorite child, Gringo, a Portugese water dog. Gringo goes everywhere with my father, even in the plane back and forth to Chile, where my dad spends about half his time. He’s a service dog. My dad’s diabetic, but he had the dog trained and certified more so that he could spend every waking minute with the creature than because he actually depends on the dog. But with my dad’s near-complete inattention to his health, a backup plan can’t hurt. Anyway, my dad collected the beast’s fur and sent it to me for months until I finally said: enough with the fucking dog hair, already.
I agreed to card, spin, and knit my dad something from Gringo’s fur. My dad can’t fathom why anyone would want to spin anything but Gringo fur, ever, for the rest of their lives, but after spinning half a batt, and loathing every second, I was very firm that he was absolutely not getting anything beyond a hat. Maybe a Gringo hat will help him mind meld with the dog, and he’ll be content with that instead of badgering me to make him a full suit of dog hair clothes. That’s about the next logical step in their relationship.
Aside from having nice company to sweeten the odious dog yarn, I also came home with a lovely fiber swap present! Normally we do a swap at the December meeting, but shitty weather postponed our holiday swap a month. I got a crazy wool batt, a dyed mohair batt, some dyed mohair roving, all in a cute ravelry sack! I’m psyched it didn’t get swiped!
