It suddenly occurred to me that I completely forgot to share pictures of the April Phat box I received! Shame on me. Here they are, for your viewing pleasure. These are the fibers.

I hadn’t been expecting to receive a contributor’s box, as I hadn’t sent in quite enough samples, but it came anyway, to my great delight!

I’ve already started spinning up quite a few of the samples on my drop spindle. (Which I recently went after with my stash of calligraphy pens and inks and decorated it to within an inch of its life.) My current idea is to spin them all up and possibly knit a tam from them and the yarn samples. The colors are fairly well matched. Lots of rainbow-y themes and blues and greens. Sounds like the recipe for a lovely tam to me!

Part of the fun of the Phat Fiber box is seeing what everyone comes up with for samples. I’ve been getting sneak previews of what June’s box is going to be (Science Fiction theme!) and I’d really, really like to be in on it. I’ve got ideas for three Jules Verne batts, and Wall-E sock yarns. Due to lack of time and funds, it’s looking like I might barely be able to squeak into the box with the Jules Verne, but as roving, not batts. We shall see.

First up we have not one, but two braids of blue faced leceister/silk roving. Both from OrangeJello. “Bonfire” and “Violet, You’re Turning Violet!”

Then I got three sets of stitch markers from AnneKRiley. These are technically for a promotional thingy I’ll be doing for my Etsy store, but I get to admire them in the meantime.

Then we have the September Phat Fiber sample box. This is the box I got for contributing over fifty samples. (Actually, I got it because the “Phat Fiber” owners were very nice. I’d misinterpreted the instructions, but they let me have the box anyway.) All sorts of little samples (and some not so little ones!) to play with.

It was a challenge to figure out what to do with all of them. At first I thought I’d spin up the fibers, combine them with the yarn samples, and knit a hat out of them. Then I realized I’d have enough for socks. Then I thought about trying a needlepoint-type bag. However, I am now up to my ears in a new idea. Stay tuned for exciting developments. Or a frazzled blogger, which might be even more exciting.

I finished the silk laceweight for my sister.

And, while I was at it, I almost finished up the Willow fingering weight. (That’s due to be finished as soon as possible so I can dive into some lovely merino.)

And I’ve been simultaneously (well, not quite simultaneously) spinning this gorgeous thick and thin yarn. Again, it was on that super secret device, which was perfect for this kind of yarn. The thick bits wouldn’t fit through any of my wheel orifices, and the Walking Wheel keeps me at arms length from controlling the thick and thin variations.

And big news! The Phat Fiber “sneak peek” videos are now up, and you can see my samples in the first video. Hooray! I’m about the fourth one in on the first video. If you’d care to see it, you can find the Phat Fiber videos here.