There’s been slow but steady progress on the BFL/alpaca roving. I finished up a second ginormous skein this week. I lost count but I think it’s upwards of 700 yards. Winnie was keeping a wary eye on the proceedings.

I said hello to goats and sheep and visit with Flan who sighed and hummed and tried to convince us the couch should be his. I came home with all sorts of goodies, as I always do.

My Bluefaced Leicester/Alpaca blend roving is starting to turn into a lovely lofty 3-ply yarn with a beautiful heathered brown color and a nice luster.  This first skein is 470 yards and I’m hoping to have enough for a sweater when it’s all spun up.  I’m hoping to stick with this until it’s all done but sometimes I get fickle after a visit to SPA and all the lovely fiber there.

Whoops, memory failed me. I haven’t been spinning cormo/romney to ply with my angora. Durante’s fleece is actually BFL/cormo and now it’s all plied up. I have a skein of 2-ply BFL/cormo and a skein of 3-ply that has 2 plies BFL/cormo and 1 ply angora. The yarn turned out very lofty indeed.

I finished spinning my lovely bunny fluff. I am planning to ply it against some Durante (cormo/romey) which matches most of the fluff in a browner grey sort of color. If you look closely at the angora bobbin on the right, you can see a bit of the browner color peeping through the truer grey. Most of the angora is the browner color. I want to make a three ply so I’ve filled up one bobbin with Durante’s roving and am working on a second. Riley has been “helping” by making off withe the Durante roving the second I turn my back. It has a very sheepy smell that she just can’t resist because normally she’s not particularly interested. It’s hard to chastise her when you are laughing so hard.

I finished a bobbin of the medium brown merino I bought at Rhinebeck at the beginning of the week and have started working with the gorgeous grey angora. It’s really relaxing to just spin a bit when we watch TV in the evenings.

I came home from Vermont with some lovely goodies: gorgeous grey French Angora for an itch-free hat, delicious apple cider fresh off the press, and kefir which I have been interested in trying since I first heard about it a few years ago.

While many of my friends are down at Juniper Moon Fiber Farm for shearing this weekend, I am up at Gilead Fiber Farm to help with a sewing machine introduction and lend a hand in general. Three of us came to visit this weekend and we spent this afternoon digging up as much burdock as we could find from the pasture nearest the barn. This will mean the animals can be moved to the barn and dry off for shearing. Burdock seeds are in the form of nasty burrs that were the inspiration for velcro and they make an insidious mess of sheep and goat fiber. It was very satisfying to see the pile of burdock grow and the four of us could barely pull the tarp out of the pasture when we were done. In the evening we had a delicious meal and a toast to the JMFF folks down south.

I don’t like to let things sit on the bobbins too long or I forget what they are so this week I’ve plied up all my singles. The top three images are all llama from roving I bought from Rhodie Hill Farm at Rhinebeck a few years ago. I got 240 yards so when I spin the other half I should have enough for a small shawl. The other photos are more yarn from Tarragon, a cormo/romney who’s fleece I buy ever year. I get a little better each time I spin more of that and this is my floofiest sproingiest Tarragon yarn ever. I have about 260 yards of that. I’d originally intended to ply it with something else but changed my mind so there’s no particular project for this but I could use some gloves or mittens.

For car knitting I took my Cherry vanilla hurricane shawl which I bound off just as we were approaching Hyde Park. I think that’s sort of fitting as the white yarn was spun from a fleece bought a Rhinebeck a few years ago. It was nice to have that extra layer on Saturday when it was very windy and definitely chilly.

You knew I did some shopping, right? I have some of those beautiful turned wood stick shawl pins but they always seem to fall out so I was very pleased to find this lovely enameled pin. I bought a bag full of merino roving- 1 pound of this white as well as six ounces each of a medium and dark brown. The locks pictured are from the softest fleece I have ever touched- 13.3 micron merino. My old slippers have been driving me nuts as the lining in the right slipper constantly rides up behind my heel. I can send these back for resoling when needed which I like much better than buying new ones every few years. Jason thought one of these lovely baskets would make an excellent veggie basket for the garden next year so we bought one of those as well. You can see all my photos from the weekend here.