Tuesday, March 13, 2012

A day and a night and a day again.


I shouldn't really complain. Compared with the rest of the world, 2 days, 6 meals and 1 sleep without electrical power is no real hardship. Just think of what Japan went through this time last year.

But it was a bit difficult. I don't mind the lack of light, and I can even get by without the internet (if I try really hard!) or other sources of information (our phone is still out by the way). I can even deal without my daily coffee, but it's not very nice for everyone else if I have to go without.

The real trouble is meals. No running water and no way to cook. We don't have much 'food' in the house, as we tend to buy 'ingredients' and then cook each meal when it's time to eat. Allergies make eating out impossible and living with a diabetic grandfather who can't take care of his bloodsugars when he's even slightly stressed means we almost ended up in the ER, twice!

And then there was the BBQ in the snow squall to try and get at least one hot meal on the table.

That's over with now - except for the lack of phone and the water pump isn't working yet for some reason.


ENOUGH COMPLAINING!
Worse things happen at sea.

You would much rather hear about how I got my yarn mojo back!

Or, should I say, you would much rather see...




Look at that! Yes, it is as soft as it looks.

6 small skeins in total. The thick-thin ply is merino-soft wool and the very thin single I spun from a silk-bamboo roving that Ryan dyed. It's really quite stunning in person. The wool is an almost white, slightly cream and the bamboo has a long random colour change of cream, blues, greys, purples, and whatnots.

Speaking about soft:



I got tired of spinning only the same kind of yarn, so I got some suri and started sampling.

This is about 85% suri, about 5% Tussha silk and about 10% black (carbonized) bamboo.

I spun some up as a tight single. This came out very strong and I'd be happy to use it as warp, but a bit tightly spun for next to the skin. Then I spun up a two ply fingering weight and this is my favourite. I would be happy having this as a scarf or gloves - but maybe not a hat as it really retains the heat.

I'm surprised how fine the suri fibres are. They don't look it at first, but once you start working with them, it's just like silk. Fine, catches the static and sticks to everything. However it spins up just like silk - like a dream!



No power = me board = me spinning = more yarn.


Since the powers back on and I have two days worth of catching up to do, I think I'll just put the fibre I carded up for sale at my etsy shop. If they don't sell, I'll just spin them up into yarn.

Here is Major Brown. He's the beautiful suri alpaca who donated the fibre to make that pretty brown yarn. He is such a nice fellow.


1 comment:

Josiane said...

Hooray for the power being back on! May everything else come back to normal quickly, too.
Your yarn is, as always, absolutely lovely. :)