Incase you're wondering. I'm alive! I lived through the snow storm, though my knitting isn't doing to well from all of it - I've lost almost a week of knitting time to the storm. If you're wondering what in the world I'm talking about and thinking how should I expect YOU to know about some arbitrary snow-storm that put us without phones for 2 days, without power for 3 days and without water for 4 days (bytime the power came back the pipes were frozen), you can go check out my mom's blog for more information...

I'm afraid this will probably be the last post before Christmas... I've got an insane amount of wrapping and knitting to do on top of a party and the other usual festivities.

But onto the actual subject of this post - the handspun!

This pink romni wool was spun up within a few days of getting my wheel. I divided it into 3 parts and did one single a day an then plied the 3 the same day I finished the last single.

Here are all the singles sitting on the lazy-kate. This new lazy-kate is quite the luxury for me. Up until I got my wheel I'd been Navajo plying my single from a center pull ball I'd wound off the only bobbin...

After I plied it I set the twist at the same time I set the twist in all my other yarns I've spun & plied thus far... they were all mostly balanced so I didn't really need any weight on the skeins. This is all my plied yarns so far... (don't look to close at that front skein, it's my nightmarish first...)

Waiting on the swift to be balled...

It made quite the hefty ball!! It was about 7oz or so, the other ounce was made into a 2 ply, one single was a little shorter than the other two. I only had a couple yards of waste off the last bobbin!

I made real yarn! How cool is that?!

Hopefully I'll be able to post pictures of it knitted up soon...

I spun about half a bobbin of some nice Icelandic, but I was finding TONS of stuff in it that I was picking out... most of the junk I suspect is little flakes of sheepskin... pretty icky. It makes me think of when you comb a dog that's been over or under bathed... Is this normal for Icelandic?? Otherwise it's really lovely wool, a gorgeous silvery pepper gray and really soft. But I don't have any pictures of that like I thought I did...

What's on my bobbin right now is some purple wool... not really sure what kind of wool except that it's purple. lol. I've only spun a little more than what's already pictured, it's 3/4 of a bobbin now instead of 1/3... It's not as even as I'd like, it's soft with rather fine short hairs, very spongy and clingy stuff - which made it hard for a novice like me to control the draft.

Ok, It's well over a week since my spinning wheel came, and I've been so busy filling every gap between my Christmas knitting with using my knew spinning wheel that I've totally neglected to keep ya'll updated and show you the new wheel and new fiber coming off it!! I still haven’t gotten to spin as much as I would like, but I’ve got a little done!

My pictures are out of date, and my pink romni 3 ply and silvery black & white Icelandic partial singles will need to be shown later, but for now I have some older pictures! See?!

Proof there's a new wheel in the house... fragilé!

And proof it's a Lendrum! See the leaf?

And... set up!!!

It really took very little assembly, it pretty much just ships in it's folded state and you unfold it like you would if you'd brought it somewhere. The brake string was the hardest part to figure out, but some spinners on the knitty board helped me figure that one out... it's actually set up a little wrong in this picture, but it was fixed soon after.

I'm having so much fun with my new Lendrum!! I've gotten to take it to the spinning guild meeting twice now! The denim carrying case is incredible. Now that I know what I'm doing it only takes seconds to brake it down and put it away and the bag is very well padded throughout and the straps are very well placed for easy carrying (it can go on as a shoulder-strap and lay against your side and back or a full back pack, or re-clip the strap to be a 'plain' shoulder-strap that hangs the bag at your side). Getting The Woolery bag was totally worth the wait for the wheel. I'm finding the flyer drive spinning with the separate bobbin-brake tension so much easier to get good tension on than the bobbin drive and flyer brake strap that the Louet had. I can spin my yarn so much finer and more even when I'm not busy fighting the intake to give me proper tension! It's also easier to change bobbins or take off the drive band and keep the same tension.

I'm feeling really good about this whole spinning thing. The woman who taught me asked if I'd found what I was born to do, I feel totally at home behind a spinning wheel and can spin and spin for hours at a time without even noticing how long it's been.

As the McDonalds' marketing department would say - "I'm Lovin' It..."

Someone put out a request for a pictorial description of how to do a left handed continental purl... Being a left handed continental knitter, I felt slightly qualified... the only area of qualification that's lacking is the fact that I've never tried to do anything like this... teach it, yes - not always well, but it's something that I can get the idea across well enough for the friend to accomplish the stitch... but take pictures of my own hands and hope they show what I'm trying to show... well, no.

I think over time I've developed my own motion for a continental purl... the index finger of the right hand, which carries the yarn, does a lever motion to wrap the stitch before pulling it through... this will be explained more fully later. But no promises - this is the part I have the hardest time teaching, and the part that doesn't really come across well in 2D. But no one else had responded all day - and I can't stand to see someone trying to knit left handed and not be able due to lack of teaching... (I also know what a nasty headache one can get trying to mentally 'flip' all tutorials and directions for this sort of thing.)

Not only do I hope that this little mini tutorial is not painfully confusing... I also hope it's even just a little helpfull...

So here goes - enough rambling! I used bold text on the most basic and important bits. The corresponding picture is below each description:

Holding the working needle in your left hand, and your needle with un-worked stitches in your right, and the tail of yarn (attached to the ball/skein) running from the newly worked stitches at left over your right index finger; hold yarn in front and insert left needle behind yarn and into the front of the first stitch on the right hand needle. gently bring the tip of the left hand needle up just a little...

Now bring your right index finger (with the yarn over it) in a smooth lever motion down and toward yourself, wrapping the yarn front to back around the tip of the left hand needle. It really is easier than it looks..

Continue gently bringing your index finger down until the yarn rests snug against the base of the left tip and the stitch-in-progress...

Now keeping the tip pointed slightly upwards back the left hand needle out of the stitch the way it came until the tip clears the right hand needle and then away from you and up pulling the yarn through with it...

Slip off the newly worked stitch from the right hand needle, and you're done!!

...a couple of those said too cute kiddos would be my sister's kiddos.

The other night my 1 y/o niece insisted the my skeins of Fun-Fur (for gnome beards) are actually little doggies... apparently I just hadn't realized this yet... I had one skein very excitedly brought over to me, she was waving it and saying "Doggy! Doggy!" when I tried to tell her it was just yarn the only reply was a very insistent "Doggy!".

Later the same night I had out a bag of 'poly-pellets' (bean bag stuff) to fill some of those gnomes with. My 3 y/o nephew decided that they were eggs, and not just any eggs, they're bug eggs. This lent a particularly cool destinction to them in little-boy-world, and he asked very sweetly if he could touch them. Since I keep these 'bug eggs' in a big gallon zip-lock I can re-seal, and - by this point - some had already been spilt (much to his and his little sister's enjoyment), I didn't see any harm in letting him check them out. I even enjoy sticking my hand in the bag and letting the pellets fall through my fingers. I opened the bag and held them out for him to touch... he very cautiously lowers his hand into the bag, all the time I'm thinking how nice it is that he's being so careful not to spill this messy and somewhat expensive stuff. And as his fingers are about 1/2 way into the pellets he lets out the most hilarious SHRIEK something between genuine terror and giddy excitement as he yanked his hand out of the bag. My sister and I had never heard such a noise, and once the surprise passed we were double over laughing. That's when we realized that he truly thought they were bug eggs and in little boy world he had just done a very brave and exciting thing.