Spins A Good Yarn

As you can tell from my website and former blog-posts, I do love those little, white doggies. Check out these favorite pictures of my wee little ones!

Here’s Mandie!

And Tiffany!

And last but not least, Dustin!

Now, I have a special treat. Here is a cutie, little doggie that I knitted from the Simply Knitting magazine, Issue 19, September.

You see, she has her own doggie bed, blankie, three balls for playing fetch and a special rope bone.

She was really fun to knit. I knitted her with Classic Elite Lush which is 50% wool and 50% angora so she is very, very soft. She has a little white scottie button on the back of her little hand-dyed alpaca sweater, too! Her blankie is made from some leftover Twisted Sister cotton yarn. The little “fetch” balls were felted to make them nice and sturdy.

The really funny thing is that I knitted this whole bunch of stuff at a QUILTING retreat!!!!!

Last Sunday, Dan and I went to the annual Apple Festival that is held in Busti, New York. We got there just as it opened and the fields that they use for parking were already full. It was a beautiful day and there were lots of food and craft vendors, and lots and lots of people. We bought some maple syrup candy, cinnamon almonds and, of course, some apples! There were demonstrations of old time crafts like butter-making, log hewing, corn grinding and leather tooling. Everything was very interesting to watch.

Kat and Jen from the Waterways Knitting Guild were selling some items at their table and I scarfed up these little beauties, lickety split!!!

Four (count them!) pairs of Fetching Fingerless mittens knitted by Kat! I couldn’t decide which ones to get, so I bought them all!!! What wonderful gifts these will make, although I will keep a pair (or two) for myself! Oh, how I do love fingerless mittens!

I also plied up the two bobbins of black alpaca roving that I spun last Saturday at the Y B Normal Farm.

It really filled up my Niddy Noddy.

It was the first time I had spun any alpaca and I didn’t think it was any more difficult than wool or a wool blend to spin. I used a short draw technique and didn’t let any twist get past my thumb and finger into the fiber. It’s hard for me to spin very thick yarn, so I was pleased to get 227 yards out of 10.5 oz. to make a lovely worsted to aran weight yarn. I’ve been trying to spin what I want as far as thickness instead of having everything end up as sock-weight yarn!

Here’s how it looks in the skein:

I think I’d like to make up a teddy bear of some sort with it. I don’t wear hats and there isn’t enough for a scarf, so a teddy bear would be perfect.

Last Saturday I went to the Y B Normal Alpaca Farm in Frewsburg, New York, to demonstrate spinning during their weekend open house. My friend, Carol, invited some of the girls from our spinning and knitting guilds to just sit and spin or knit for the day using their lovely alpaca fibers and yarns. We sat inside the gift shop and had a great time. People came and went all day long, looking at the beautiful yarns and knitted items and then going on tours of the farm. The owner gave us alpaca fiber to spin.

I chose a very soft, black roving that was so easy to spin. I spun two full 4 oz. bobbins. I still need to ply them together.

This is my new, little Louet Victoria Spinning wheel that I purchased at the Lake Farm Park Fiber Festival in June this past summer. It spins like a dream! I love it! It only weighs 6 1/2 pounds and is so easy to carry around by it’s little strap on top of it. I slide it right under my table when I’m not using it. It comes with it’s own carrying case that has hand straps, a shoulder strap and even backpack straps built right into it.

Here I am using the backpack straps at the fiber festival:

So, how about some pictures of those cute alpacas:

The alpacas let us walk right up to them. They were SO tame. The babies were only about 3′tall. They were really good at turning away from me just as I was taking a picture of them. Camera shy, maybe!

It was a really fun day and I hope to be able to see them again!

After waiting all day, not so patiently, I checked my email and found that at 9:11 p.m. on September 30, 2007, I finally received my invitation from Frecklegirl for Ravelry!!! I can’t tell you how excited I am. Meagan was signed up right after me, so she should have received her invite, too! I was thinking it would be December before we would get in, but the list moved so much quicker than I thought it would. I can’t wait to check out all the groups and patterns and forums and yarn and…

Well, I will have to wait until tomorrow because it is way past my bedtime and I promised I wouldn’t stay up all night looking around.

Here’s the photo I used on my profile, and my user name is Spinsagoodyarn.

Hope to see you there!