!!!

This stuff is so gorgeous!

For real. I think I could braid this and dye it just like commercially prepped top. It is sooo soft and squooshy, and it isn't as airy and delicate as you might expect most hand combed top to be.

I think I have to spin this right now.

 Sometimes, you just gotta take a break from life and lounge around! 

But no lazy day would be complete without some knitting and spinning! (and plenty of Blue's Clues on Netflix)

Izzie will be 1 year old on June 2nd! We can't believe our little bug has been here for almost a year! I'm working on a little redheaded Poppy doll for her birthday. I've been calling her Ruby. I'm considering knitting up a big stockinette swatch with the orange yarn for her hair and then frogging it out so she would have kinky, curly hair as a few others on Ravelry have done.

It means so much to me that I can give her gifts that were made by mom especially for her. I hope these things will be very special to her as she grows older.

I've finally been able to get back into dyeing wool. Some of it is up in my etsy shop, but of course a few braids always get sidetracked to my spinning wheel.

This one was dyed around Easter time. I was feeling the pastels, yo. I always love the novelty yarns plied with thread - it reminds me of Ramen noodles. Unfortunately thread is way more expensive than Ramen!

 And a bright two ply on some Polwarth wool. This one was dyed with the inspiration of Dorothy's slippers on the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz, but the red didn't turn out right, more of a coral color. Fire engine red was out of stock the last time I ordered dye, and boy is it hard to get a normal looking red from Fluorescent Fuchsia and Deep Magenta! (Duh! I didn't even realize that I didn't have the fire engine red until I started dyeing this. Oops.)

The next braid ready for my wheel. I just dyed this BFL up on Tuesday night, it was kind of a random application of a bunch of colors I had leftover from some other braids.

Time to get spinning while the wee one naps!

Yes Sir, Yes Sir, 3 Bags Full!

<---------- Look what I got!!

Our friend Erica's parents had kept 2 sheep and a llama as pets until recently, when they had to sell them. They gave me the fleece for free, considering I would knit them scarves from it. No sweat there, I would kill for this llama fleece in any other situation! It's so soft and clean that I don't think I'm even going to wash it before spinning.

















This is the Cheviot fleece, which is a breed I'm not very familiar with, but it seems pretty solid with a good staple length and a mild crimp. It'll probably be blended with another fiber to spice it up a bit.









And, the Shetland. I'm not sure if this is the norm, but this particular fleece seems as if it doesn't really have much of a lock formation. It's just kind of a big blob. That may also be attributed to the fact that they probably did not have a spinner in mind while shearing, but I've been able to work around it, and have already gotten some really good, clean, soft wool from this one.




The best part of these is that I got them right when we moved into our new place, where we have a TOP LOADING WASHER! I finished my last fleece washing in it, and it worked like a dream. So much less work than doing it in the sink or the bathtub.