with a little effort

It's been a while since Leah did any spinning, so when she sat down recently to spin yarns for an intended xmas gift, she was a bit rusty. Thick and thin chunky yarn, not what she was aiming for but still perfectly usable. This skein includes some C*eye*ber Fiber BFL Leah received as a gift from our favorite LYS, Creative Fibers, and also some angora. And some plying by a friend.

By the second skein, she was getting back into the swing of things, putting more twist in, drafting better. This skein includes angora rec'd as a gift from Chris at Woolybuns when Leah wrote an article about angora rabbits for Spindlicity a couple of years ago, and also some llama down received as a gift from Lars and Gayle at West Mountain Farm.

And by the third skein, big improvement! This is alpaca that Leah received as thanks for being a spinning demonstrator at Burgis Brook Alpacas' open house last year.

All three skeins were given to a friend yesterday. On the way home from a knit night with friends, which followed a knitting afternoon at a local NICU with a friend and her wee preemie, Leah told me she already started spinning something else. She raided the fiber stash and chose a beautiful pound of roving that we got at the Fiber Twist this fall. She says spinning is the perfect thing to do while listening to Louisa May Alcott books on her iPod, courtesy of Librivox.

I, meanwhile, am enjoying a lull in the workload, happily knitting along on Sylvi. I'm almost to the halfway point on the back and expect to finish the second sleeve today. Not bad for only being a week into this project! The flowers will be added as surface decoration later. I'm up to the 2nd flower, the one toward the right at hip level. I'm using the mindless sleeves as social knitting and working on the back when I can concentrate on the chart.

Xmas-induced vagueness alert: Yesterday, I again experienced the wild and wonderful generosity of fiber fanatics. This time, I met up with someone for one thing and left with significantly more than expected, because yarny people are just nice like that. :-)

Y'know what I did on Sunday? All of the past year's knitting projects that didn't have a specific destination were placed into a box and offered for anyone who wanted them at the xmas festivities with Scott's side of the family. There were stranded mittens, a lace wrap, two pairs of socks, a few scarves, and a bunch of neckwarmers. What fun to see the ensuing feeding frenzy! Such a great feeling to see many of those things adopted by people who love them and will put them to good use!