The basket it was used to be on my desk. At some point, I or a cat knocked it off the desk and it was wedged between the wall and my portfolio case by the window. If I ever bothered to draw anymore, I’d have found it weeks (months?) ago. It has been reunited with its mate in yet another basket, but this time in a visible location where I would immediately notice if it were knocked off. I’m pretty sure this is the culprit as I’ve found her picking her way across my desk when she thinks no one is looking.

On the knitting front, I’m nearly finished with the second ball on the Comfort Shawl. While I love spinning and knitting tencel blends, I don’t have the same affection when it comes to 100% tencel, particularly when spun into a low twist single. Mixed with wool, tencel acts much the same way as silk. On its own, there’s an artificial shininess that in no way resembles silk. I’ll be glad to finish out the tencel rows and move back to the squishy goodness of wool.

Now that everything is dry, I can say without a doubt that this is yarn and not FSM.

There’s about 800 yards in this skein. Short of my goal, but more than enough for the intended project.

This yarn is slated to become a Spring Things shawl with the modifications made by kelp!

Realizing that the average person can only look at a shawl in progress so many times before their eyes cross, I took a look back at my MP08 list to see if there’s something I could use as a side project. I noticed line item number four which says that I will “spin every bit of roving and top purchased up to the end of 2007” and realized that I haven’t done any spinning in months. This is the item that I thought I’d have done ages ago.

Instead of dwelling too long on why I have only been dusting my spinning wheel, I determined to begin working oldest to newest in terms of fiber stash. Of course, despite what my husband thinks, I don’t really have much of a fiber stash. The llama does not count as stash. I probably have less than 4 pounds of prepared, ready to spin fiber. Honestly. Ask Jen.

Opening my closet, I saw this little number which has been aging for over a year. I’d initially planned on turning it into a shawl, got distracted and then forgotten about it. This is 10 ounces of wool top in Gold Hill.

After popping in a DVD, I did something else that I’ve ignored since purchasing wheels. I pre-drafted. Initially, I wanted to produce a 2ply fingering to lace weight yarn, but chatting with Jen convinced me to go for singles with this third and then use the remaining fiber for a 2ply. This is the fiber left to be spun after my first spinning stretch.

Yet another movie went into the DVD player to keep my occupied while spinning. I made a valiant attempt to spin the entire 3+ ounces into laceweight singles before bed. I started spinning at 11pm on Monday night. Stop laughing. It may have even sounded a little crazy to me.

I got around 70% spun before I gave up and went to sleep. The next night, another DVD and more spinning. I watched the movie, Once, a second time (because I freaking love that movie) to finish spinning and get the singles skeined. Freshly spun singles can look a little…spaghetti-like.

It also made a pretty festive hat, but I didn’t think to take a photo of that before dropping it into a sinkful of water. There will be photos of the finished yarn as well as my plans for it once the wool dries.

The Comfort Shawl remains an interesting knit, although I’m still not sure how I feel about the piece as a whole. There are sections that I adore, like the blue next to the green, and other parts that I feel “meh” toward. I suppose I’ll reserve judgment until it’s all done and blocked because if I say that I don’t like it now, I’m probably just going to have to retract that later. For a change of pace, here’s a real, non-camera phone photo of my progress.

The blocks of color started getting more narrow with the green merino and the current soysilk section will be even more narrow as it is more uniformly thick throughout and less lofty than the previous section. Even though I’m unsure of the shawl as a whole, I’m loving knitting so many different fibers and seeing how they all knit up. This is definitely a good way to make up a sampler. I’m pretty sure the spindle spun silk I posted last week will knit up very similar to the soysilk and I can’t wait to get my hands around it.

I think I can get a couple more rows out of the soysilk, and then it’s on to the adult alpaca you see on the outside of the next ball of yarn. If memory serves, this ball will be adult alpaca, superwash merino, tencel and then BFL.

As I mentioned (ranted about) in a previous post, I have my fingers in an awful number of pots and as a result am not getting much done anywhere. The result of this soul searching is that I’ve scaled back on some of the things I’ve been doing to include withdrawing from the various baking challenges. I still bake regularly and often weekly, but baking several loaves of bread versus a particular recipe that I’ll just end up taking to work with me so that we don’t eat it all at home works better right now.

Since that post, my studio still isn’t clean. I’ve read several books and, as you’ve noticed, regained a bit of my knitting mojo with the handspun shawl. Yesterday, I began tackling another task that I’m now enjoying instead of regarding with dread. Around a year ago, my husband happened, over the course of work, to be at a little fair in the city where he works. Another gentleman that worked with the city brought some of his llamas with him. He and my husband got to talking and over the course of the conversation it came out that I was a knitter and spinner. When asked if he thought I might like to have some llama to spin, my husband responded in the affirmative. Last week, my husband came home with a box from Jimmy & Sheri Monger of Magnum Llama Farms full of fleeces.

Last night, I went outside to try my hand at getting fleeces ready to wash. Even before they’ve been washed, these fleeces are disgustingly soft. There’s 7-8 different fleeces altogether.

The first fleece I pulled out was mostly free from vegetative matter and just needed some shaking and light picking.

I fell in love with a black fleece which seemed softer than most of the others.

So I washed a few ounces of it and this is what I had in the morning.

Which I went after with a flicker brush, giving me a nice little pile of goodness.

I think I’ll be devoted to cleaning llama for a while and I know what I’ll be spinning for the next eternity. Anyone want to come over and help me process fiber?