Christmas came a little early this year

While I was desperately trying to knit my hand spun merino and silk into something resembling a scarf for my dad for Christmas





The box from Homestead wool and gift farm arrived.
My sister and her family gifted me wool this year.


6oz Scottish Blackface, 6oz Corriedale, small bag of Suri Alpaca, 4oz ivory Coopworth, 6oz dyed blue Romney, 4oz silvery Coopworth, all washed.


8oz white Coopworth, 8oz East Fresian, 8oz silvery Coopworth, all raw.

I am beside myself with glee. I haven't worked with any of these breeds before so some I ordered raw as well as washed so I could practice washing more delicate fibers without too much worry or wandering if I was felting them or not. I love to work with raw wool, but that may just be because I've only washed hard to felt wools so far.

My husband is giving me a set of wool combs as well, so once those have arrived I will take the plunge into a bag of this stuff. I can't wait. I like the Cheviot that I've been working with, but frankly I needed a break. That's why I went for the merino/silk scarves. Unfortunately I can't knit well enough to show off the beauty of the yarn.

No matter. I have lots more fiber to play with. Even Kenshin thinks it yummy stuff.

I have fallen

Oh the shame. I was doing so well too, but that wool was whispering so loudly that I had no choice but to give in. Yes, I have set aside the fugglienes for wool.

I still have several fleeces that need washed. It takes forever to wash an entire fleece. Picking out the icky bits, washing handfuls at a time in the kitchen sink, letting it dry on the electric sweater dryer for a day or two, picking out the smaller bits.... you get the picture. It takes forever, it's smelly, dirty work, and I love every bit of it. Raw (unwashed) wool is stinky but it's a good stinky. It means I'm being creative and doing something I love. There's just so much potential in raw wool. The family has other ideas about the mess and smell though, so I have to get up very early to do it before it bothers the others.

The wool I'm washing now will be died and spun to make area rugs for the house. We have all wooden floors and no area rugs so it's going to take a lot of spinning before this project is finished. The wool isn't next-to-the-skin-soft so every once in a while I'll hit up Etsy and see what nice things are out there to spin. THAT was my real downfall yesterday. I found some yummy merino and silk that would make beautiful scarves for my dad and his wife. (Yes I promised myself that I wouldn't make handmade gifts this year. Yes I realize it's only 4 weeks until Christmas and the wool hasn't even shipped yet, let alone been spun, knitted, and mailed out. Yes I realize I'm crazy for even thinking I can get these done in time), then I found some really pretty merino and tencel and..... I think you see where this is going.

It's all the wools fault I tell you. If it would only stop asking to be washed.

This thing is getting to large to manage. It's 73 rows (so far), nearly 7 feet long, and still fuggly. But I knew that wasn't going to change. So far I've been a good girl and have only worked on this afghan since I started it. I'm still itching to get the loom warped, and there's the counted cross stitch wolves I've got going, the card woven straps I want to weave, and the table top covers I want to embroider, not to mention all the wool that still needs washed and carded before I can spin it.... heavy sigh.

I've taught my daughter how to crochet now. I tried last year but she wasn't interested. Now I've given her a skein of very fuzzy soft-as-a-bunnies-butt yarn and she's working on her own scarf. Maybe I can talk her into crocheting her own afghan too. That would be one less for me to do.

Making progress. Fugly progress.

Slowly but surely. There were at least two nights when I was too tired to even crochet. It takes me about 40 minutes to crochet one row I think. I haven't really timed it except that it takes longer than an half hour tv show, and even longer if one of the cats is "helping" me.

I do a lot of flittering between projects and one of my looms has been whispering to me. I'm trying to be good and get at least this afghan finished before I start something else. I still have my son's afghan that I'm knitting. I'm still not happy with it, but I've started that thing over so many times I think he's afraid he'll never be warm this winter if I don't just go ahead with it.

The plan is to finish the fugly afghan by the end of November ('m not making Christmas presents this year), then get a warp on the loom while working on the knitted afghan, as well as starting another afghan with different yarn and a real pattern this time. I have a lot of baby sport and fingering weight yarn that I want to use up. It's very soft and pastel so I'll have to come up with something that suites it.

Wish me luck.

I'm still here

Phew what a busy summer I had. I wish I could say that I have a lot of free time to blog now, but alas, school started again so I'm still without blogging time. I'll still blog when I can and as things start clearing up around here (life wise I mean) I'll be able to blog more often.

In the mean time.

What do you do when you have been given 5 totes full of yarn? Well, it wasn't really "given" since my husband paid her for them but I feel like they were given. Hubby picked up a load of unknown craft items (I think there were 7 black garbage bags full) of stuff and brought it home for me. There was a lot of stuff in there that I will never use so we added it to a bunch of our other stuff and had a humongous yard sale.

Back to the yarn though. I love some of it. It's soft and silky and high quality and cost more than I would be willing to shell out for yarn. Yes I'm cheap. I pulled out what I wanted to keep for knitting, crocheting, and weaving and put the rest up for sale. After the sale I still had tons of yarn I don't want. They are colors that I wouldn't normally work with, or pretty colors I love but there's not enough to make what I want, or colors that don't go with each other well.

So, what do you do when you have scads of ugly yarn and left overs? You make a fugly afghan of course.



24 colors, most of them are full skeins, so I will be making more than one of these things. Just a simple crochet stitch so I don't have to think while I'm working on it, and with six people living in a cold drafty old house we don't care if it's pretty as long as it keeps us warm. This one is nearly 7 feet long because we have giants living among us.

I'll be back when I can. This was a rushed post as it's our anniversary and I need to get ready to go out for an early dinner and movie.

I think I may have overdone it a little with buying fleece, but the smell of sheep in my house again makes me happy.

Pictures to come as soon as I figure out what the kids did with my camera.