Tidying Up

I seem to be surrounded by people who are getting their lives organised in big and small ways. My friend D has a whole blog full of her Dee-cluttering efforts. Rebecca over at Sticks and Stones is finishing off WIP's and getting sorted. And SewSofie is making Christmas plans already. Meanwhile, I'm planning to take the current quilting project to the Neighbourhood House this afternoon. I have the excuse that it's a community project and I'll be sharing the task with a friend, but honestly, I don't think I could find a large enough flat surface at my house to do the stitching if my life depended on it!

At least I'm trying not to create too many more unfinished bits and pieces. When I decided to tackle a new spinning task yesterday I was determined to finish off what was on my bobbin before I started anything new. It's the variegated grey silky wool which I used to make wrist warmers. I have plans for the rest of that yarn, but there was also another length of tops left unspun. Here's where I'm up to: At the bottom is the leftover ball of yarn: two ply. On the left, the silky wool single, plied with blue silk filament. The one in the centre of the pic is plied with two strands of the silk filament and one of a purple viscose. At the top is whatever was left on the bobbin, navaho plied. The silky wool was quite fine and tightly spun, so plying it off was a bit of a challenge. I persisted until the bobbin was really empty. The new yarns have been soaked and are in the process of drying. I took them off the rack to take the picture. Now to really finish the job I will need to let them dry and then make them into little centre-pull balls, so that they are absolutely ready to go. All I'll need to do then is finalise a design and pick up my needles. Or, as is more likely: pick up my needles to start something off and design it as I go along.

I went on to spin about 100g of bulky wool from fibre I bought at Bendigo. That's plied and ready to wind off this morning. And I got a bit of dyeing done. Over all it was a productive day. You might have noticed, though, no mention of paperwork--that's back on today's list along with more spinning and dyeing and the quilting I mentioned earlier.

Ummm . . . Pink Again

I'm planning a "bubble and squeak" wrap for the end of my Spinning Folio. "Bubble and Squeak" are the fritters traditionally made with leftovers from a roast dinner--usually the day after. So my "Bubble and Squeak" wrap will be all the bits of handspun that didn't make it into the folio for whatever reason:

• excess to requirements
• trial runs
• skeins where I forgot to keep a sample to display
• insufficient fibre to make up the required quantity
• unidentified spinning . . .

To unify the whole thing--and because I don't like to wear neutral colours--I've been dyeing the skeins in shades of purple and pink. Here's today's brew:

This one is the excess of my medium woollen sample. The dye is Landscape, Galah. As you can see, my dye pot is nothing very flash and it shares the stove with the coffee pot. Most of the brown on the stove top is over-enthusiastic coffee. Once the stove cools down, I'll give it a clean up, but for now, I'm going to turn that dye pot down to simmer and get back to my spinning.