Fiber arts update: Guardy buys too many spindles, has no regrets.
I took a lil' road trip with some friends a couple days ago because there was a wool fest happening in a... yknow, reasonably reachable distance. I was mostly hoping for some dyed spinning fibers (which I got some of, but the amount of stuff to choose from was minimal) and I also knew my favorite spindle guy would be there (Peter Locke, who specializes in very functional but also very pretty spindles for a very fair price) so obviously I knew I'd have to stop by there.
The plan, thusly, was to get a bunch of pretty fibers, and maaaaybe one (1) spindle.
Three-ish fiber things, three spindles. Oops :)
One bottom-whorl spindle (fully intended, I didn't have a bottom-whorl spindle from the guy yet), one mini top-whorl spindle (silly, but definitely not something I have yet, either), one Tibetan supported spindle (which I definitely have enough of).
The bottom-whorl spindle is juniper wood with a maple shaft (24g); I haven't spun with it yet because I don't want to start yet another project just yet, but I'll probably use it to ply that support-spindle-spun alpaca stuff I've had lying around here for ages. I've tried it out enough to know that it spins fast and quite long and very, very evenly, though, and I'm massively looking forward to putting a project on it.
The support spindle is elder with a smoked oak shaft (22g). That one was the One Big Oops of the day, because I already have one of this guy's Tibetan-style support spindles. But man, this one just feels right. The wood's slightly grippy in a way that's just really comfortable, and the whorl shape and the height it's at just work really well. So, fuck it, not what I expected to spend my budget on but I have no regrets. Excellent spindle, 10/10. I'm currently spinning yak hair on it.
And the mini one is plum wood with a sipo shaft (8g). It's admittedly not the most practical thing in the world because it can pretty much only do laceweight, and it's also a little tricky because it spins deviously fast, but it's perfectly balanced, the spin time is shockingly not awful, and I like spinning laceweight anyway. Plus, this thing is stupidly portable. I'm currently using it to spin some mulberry silk thread.
100g of hand-dyed fiber (some kind of Bergschaf (mountain sheep) mix iirc), and 100g of carded black Bergschaf wool from raresheep. Because apparently specifically the black Bergschaf is pretty rare, actually?
Anyway, the dyed stuff feels about like you'd expect for a pretty rough fiber mix (but it's very VERY pretty and it didn't cost an arm and a leg), and the black mountain sheep stuff is honestly truly lovely compared to the usual mountain sheep stuff you get as spinning fiber. It does have the same chaotic crimp and short staple length you usually see with these sheep, but unlike a lot of it, it doesn't have that almost brittle feel to it; it's soft enough that I couldn't resist sticking my face into it at least once lmao. These two fibers will probably go into one project once they're spun, the colors look amazing together. No idea what that project is gonna be yet, though.
Then, sorry for the truly grody photos, but: 50g of white alpaca and 10ish grams of mulberry silk.
Fiber Arts Friend and I are planning to make my mom a hand-spun hand-knit sweater, and since she doesn't always get along with sheep's wool too well, I grabbed the alpaca to use on the cuffs and collar. It's alpaca, it's white, it's soft, it's pencil roving so maybe it'll make less of a mess while spinning. Good shit.
The silk was the result of me not having brought a fiber arts project for some reason, getting bored while taking a break, finding the one stall selling fiber by weight instead of pre-weighed (but only silk), and going "hey what can I get for a buck". Which turned out to be 10g of mulberry silk. So, yeah! Not what I would've picked had I had a choice, but it went well enough with the mini spindle at least. Plus, it's good practice.
