Long haul

Not nearly as long as this mouse had, but sometimes it felt that way. I caught this little cat-and-mouse moment in our neighbors' driveway the other day. This kitty has recently adopted the Emperor and I part-time, and was accepting pats from me when her attention swiveled to the front yard. She began prowling around a bush, then batted a mouse right out from under it. She chased the darned thing all over our yard before forcing it to cross the street and hide in another yard. Alice (that's what we call her) stayed right behind the poor little thing the whole way. I think she eventually let it go.

I've been really busy getting ready for school. I am teaching a typical community college load of five classes per semester, and while I'm loving it I'm also tired of looking at a computer screen by the end of the day. I haven't been so busy that some kinds of fiber-related goodness haven't been happening as well.

With that fabulous new spindle in hand, I decided to try spinning a lace hankie. Here's one of the layers spread out:



This is what it looked like on the spindle. The colors were very subtle and quite beautiful, and the yarn is textured. No, actually it's nubby and in some places downright rustic.



This photo doesn't capture the colors right at all, but you can get a sense of the texture of the finished yarn. You would think that spinning a hankie with a handspindle would allow for more control of the finished product, that idea does not account for the human propensity to try to shave time off of the process.

I think this yarn would be lovely used as a stripe in something, or maybe held together with another yarn. My sister (hi Sis) has been making scarves that have wide stripes of cobweb weight yarn alternating with narrow stripes of a more textured yarn held together with the cobweb weight. Well, there's no rush; there's plenty on my plate in the UFO department to keep me busy for quite a while, not to mention the already growing queue of things I want to make.