This is a post of “finally”s. I finally got around to taking a picture of the progress I’ve made on my cowl. 
It’s a good five inches long, and I’m coming up on the end of yarn ball number one. The question is whether to continue on and make it really big, or just have a second ball of navy mohair laying around for who knows what.
I thought about making a matching hat out of it. One of those things that are sort of like tams, only a bit more floppy and mushroom shaped. Possibly with the same lace pattern so it will match!
What with the cold weather lately I’ve been wearing my merino/oppossum tam a lot, and I’ve gotten quite a few compliments on it. Enough to make me wear it every time I stick my head out of the door. And it’s nice and warm, too. I don’t notice it when it’s on my head, but when I take it off I get colder.
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Alright, I feel a little explanation is in order. After my stunning resolve to not go for more than a week without posting, I promptly up and left for almost thirteen days. The reason? I was in Texas. In Texas with fellow yarn and fiber lovers, running about to various yarn destinations and generally shooting my budget. So, I shall attempt to summarize the many and various things I bought and did.
First off, I took along the indigo-dyed merino and a spinning wheel, hoping to get a bunch more spun. Unfortunately, I didn’t spin quite as much as I’d planned, but I was able to teach a friend to use the wheel, and two others to drop spindle. Now the goal is to finish the indigo merino well before Christmas.
I didn’t spin as much as I had planned because I was working away at my latest pair of socks. The first one is done, and the second is well on its way to the end. I’m now in the “knit until sock measures x length from heel” stage. A little on the boring side, but it needs to be done so I can get to some of the stuff I bought.
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During the first week of August I was granted the privilege of having a very good spinning friend come to visit, and she brought her drum carder.
Behold the fruits of our labor.
And, not only did she bring the drum carder, but she brought some more Aussie fur, some llama, and some cotton for me! I was in fiber heaven with a marvelous friend to play with. (Thanks, Legossi!) Here are the cotton batts (the white) and some batts of from the Iowa fleece. They’re nice and fluffy!
The cotton batts were rather fun. Legossi brought lots of cotton from the inside of pill bottles. Some of it carded up really well, and some of it did a really weird sort of disintegrating lump thing. All in all I wound up with five or six of them. I’m eager to see how they spin up.
We did attempt a test to see if running the fibers in tip first, cut end first, or sideways made any difference. (In other words, after hearing that there were so many opinions I was dying of curiosity.) We found that, with this particular drumcarder, cut end first worked best. There didn’t seem to be much difference between tip or cut end first on the carding level. I don’t know how it would look on the spinning level. And we tried sideways and got a big mess.
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It’s a good five inches long, and I’m coming up on the end of yarn ball number one. The question is whether to continue on and make it really big, or just have a second ball of navy mohair laying around for who knows what. 