I may as well admit it up front. I’m a sucker for nice baskets. They’re pretty, lightweight, non-plastic (usually), and can hold practically anything. Not to mention they come in an enormous range of sizes. 
All that to say, look at the lovely new baskets I have to store my dyeing equipment in! Thanks to Mom and Aunt Debbie, I don’t have to dig my stuff out from the top shelf of my closet anymore. Hurrah! Life is suddenly so much easier, and less clutter-filled. I’ve toyed with the idea of changing out the fabric liners seasonally, but that might be a bit over-the-top.
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Time for a “new stuff” reveal! I’ve managed to accumulate a lot of bits and pieces without sharing, so I’ll do that now.
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!”
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So my sister got some absolutely fabulous pictures of the many kinds of samples I sent, and I thought I’d share them.
You might remember that, in July, I participated in the Phat Fiber sample boxes. Well, I missed August due to the Colorado trip, so I decided to give it another shot for September. With a few slight changes. 
This time I’m sending in way more then twenty samples, I’m including fiber, and I’m sending in some from Filigree Willow as well.
I would have liked to have some way to track how much business I get from these (other than asking during the checkout process how they found my store) but I ran out of time and motivation to figure out the ramifications of coupons and such.
The last several days I have been measuring, cutting, twisting, and tagging to beat the band. I think it came out to a total of sixty something samples, all needing little hand-written tags.
I finished them up yesterday afternoon and got them shipped off. Yay! And I’m very excited because, if I send in more than fifty units, I’ll receive a Phat Fiber box for the month! Wha-hoo!
I got to play with the teal and periwinkle dyes. They became some rather nice samples, and I learned to not try to microwave-set a yard of yarn in a small glass jar with a whole teaspoon of dye solution by sticking it in the microwave for a minute.
Periwinkle Samples
Good thing it was superwash. Although it seems to have gotten fatter for some odd reason. Boiling must take off the superwash coating. The darker strand is the boiled one.
The one on the bottom is actually some of the Rebecca yarn, which I popped into the very hot, leftover dye water from the boiled superwash.
Can you see how the yarn almost looks like it’s glowing? It took me a bit to figure out why it was doing that. I think it’s because I just dunked the yarn in, gave it a couple seconds in the hot water, and pulled it out. The outer fuzzies dyed blue, but the core of the yarn is still cream. I may have to experiment with double-dyed yarns in the near future.
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I have worked with the alpaca and come out on top. I have conquered, and I’m loving it.
A Bobbin of Joy
It’s really weird how different it is from regular wool. I can’t think of how to describe it expect that it’s “buttery-er” than wool. It kind of slides along. I’ve been spinning it on the Walking Wheel.
The original idea was to try for a sport weight yarn, but I don’t know if that’s what this will turn out as. I spun a gazillion little samples to see what the best amount of twist would be. (And promptly forgot which sample went with which amount of twist.) But, the alpaca seems to be behaving, and I’m getting pretty good at separating out the coarser, slippery hairs. Wait, that sounds funny—how can something be slippery and coarse? . . . but that’s really the only way I can describe it.
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