Sometimes I feel quite certain that the only anchors for my sanity are Pyro and my spinning. I think most of my friends, being exceptionally intelligent individuals themselves, will appreciate the value of an activity that allows you to completely suspend your thinking. Spinning allows me to live in the moment, totally focusing on just the spinning, but also gives me the freedom to add in additional stimuli if I want to keep my brain engaged.

My Spindle Club goal this month was to complete some works-in-progress to clear my spindles prior to the upcoming Tour de Fleece starting at the end of June. I had three Spindle Club targets, and one week into May I find myself sadly distracted from working on them. I find myself using as an excuse that I will be taking one or more of the projects with me to the Scottish Pagan Federation Conference on Saturday and thus can afford to slack off a bit now. I dislike that sort of lacksidasical attitude in myself. So I decided to take weekly photos to document my progress, more as a guilt-trigger than anything else.

My three targets are a silk hankie project pack from Colorimetry, being spun on Iroko 色子. Beaujolais from Wooliebullie on etsy, being spun on Darcy and the walnut russian. And some natural grey massam being spun on the latest, a blackwood and spalted beech midi turk. All featured spindles are from Enid Ashcroft.

At the PF Conference on Saturday I'm planning on taking along my current stock of jewellery, along with the handspun skeins I've completed over the last six months. At least, that's the plan. I still have no idea how I'm going to price the handspun. The problem with such offerings is that charging according to time spent would cause the price to be astronomical. Charging according to the cost of the fibre would be far too little. If you price per metre, then what factor do you use to differentiate between lace and aran? I've been thinking about it for quite some time and still don't have much of an answer. I may well end up putting an "offers" label on the basket!

Today I made the mistake of getting into a discussion about the crafts myself and a fellow Raveller pursue. I started listing my pursuits and... lets just say it took a while. :-)

In other news, the April 2012 Prize for the Spindle Candy Self Imposed Spinning Club was 10oz of Corgi Hill Farm 50/50 bfl/silk in the limited edition colourway Spring Fling. The glowing jewel-like colours tempted the participating spinners every time we opened a new thread-page, shining at the top of our screens. But the Spinning Gods (and the RNG) smiled on myself and now this luscious prize will be winging its way to my doorstep.

Thankfully my spinning schedule is full for the next couple of months, so I have the leisure to carefully consider how best to show this beauty off. I'm so chuffed!

Wash-N-Whack Days

For the non-spinners, wash-n-whack is what you do with a skein of yarn after you've spun and plyed it. You plunge the skein first into a basin of very hot soapy water and then into a basin of very cold water. This shocks the fibres and finishes the yarn

I love wash-n-whack days. It feels like the culmination of my efforts. Today there was a 19g mini-skein of natural brown corriedale 2ply, a 4oz skein of rainbow leicester longwool single, and a 100g skein of respun Hipknits silk in chocolate cherries. That last one was a freebee from its original owner who was frustrated over the breakages it had which I feel is because it wasn’t spun tightly enough for a single-ply yarn. So respun it all together and then set it with the other two skeins. Good thing I decided to set it too because it leaked dye terribly! 2 hot rinses and 4 cold before it got to a point I was happy with! Now they’re all drying and I feel very accomplished.

Since there is plenty of day left and since I've already got the wheel out, I think I'll continue on and see about spinning up the 2nd Gotland batt Malinky sent me from Sweden. The first one is already finished. I love spinning batts but they do take up a fair bit space, which is somewhat at a premium in my room right now!

Luceteer

The lucet has been out again today. Actually, it's been in overdrive. Started out by finishing the full length of embroidery silk I was doing last month. Then I worked up a bracelet length in the handspun corriedale I did yesterday on the new Mama Turk from Enid Ashcroft. I played with clasp designs for a while, not settled on one I like yet. Then I went through two shorter lengths of embroidery silk. And now I'm working on more handspun, this one a random minihank made up of leftover singles in navy english wool and lime green acrylic. I'm thinking once I've luceted this one I'll try luceting it over and see what it looks like.