Packages

Once again, life has conspired to keep me away from the blog (not to mention my knitting and spinning!). Some things have been good, some more stressful, but that's kind of the way things go, no? Among the good things is the fact that I've had more time than usual lately to go hiking in the morning with Tilly, and, until today, mornings have all included a lovely marine layer, which makes for cool hiking. I've also gotten to spend some time with friends whom I haven't seen all summer, and that's been wonderful. And on Sunday, we took Younger Daughter up to Ventura for a feis, which she greatly enjoyed. I think it helped that she won first place in a reel special, and winning in a special entails a trophy. Her trophy was, shall we say, perhaps excessively large (trust me on this); she doesn't agree. I'm waiting on some photos from a friend who had a camera (all we had, alas, was a cell phone; what can I say? We weren't thinking clearly at 5:15 am when we left the house -- I wonder why...). I'll share when they come in.

So, with all of that, my knitting and spinning progress is slow, and not particularly blog-worthy. However, I have gotten some wonderful mail lately, so I'll share that instead.

First, and best of all, my new spindle bag came in the mail last week, courtesy of my dear friend over at Nana Sadie Rose. This bag is the result of a suggestion made by another of her customers who spins, and it's exactly what I've been waiting for, without even knowing it!
(I think that if you click to embiggen, you'll be able to read that pin; it makes me laugh.)

It matches my beloved needle case; I love the spirals in this fabric, so I decided to go with that again. I ordered the longest of the three potential strap lengths, with the idea that I'm going to be able to wear this across my chest, hanging on my left side in the perfect place to feed fiber from as I spin. My big hope is that if I keep this near the kitchen, I can sit at one of our bar stools and spin while chatting with Rick of an evening; right now, my spindles live in my fiber room, and they don't get as much use as I'd like.
I'm also hoping that this will make it easy to grab and go, when I want to take my spindle along to other places. There's plenty of room in there for fiber at the bottom of the bag (which means extra insulation for the spindle), and probably for another spindle, as well. You can see all the pockets on the sides -- there are more that you can't see, so there's lots of structure on the sides to protect the spindle (and room for necessary stuff).
I'm not sure if you can see it there, but the spindle is held in place with a loop, which makes for easy storage and easy access. I'm absolutely delighted with this, and so glad that I ordered one instantaneously upon hearing about them (and so glad that my dear friend made time to put it together so quickly, on top of everything else she's sewing right now!!). This is going to get a lot of use (and, I'm guessing, a lot of compliments).

My other big package came in the mail yesterday. I'd been starting to wonder if it might not be about the right time to be hearing something about that wonderful fleece I got lo these several months ago. You might remember my excitement?
Well, that giant bag of fleece has turned into several very large bumps of the most beautifully-prepared fiber, to the tune of about two pounds (I need to weigh them to get a more accurate count).
Isn't that lovely? It turned out a gorgeous browny-grey, once the many colors in the locks had been cleaned and blended. I'm so glad that I've been working on my woollen spinning, because I think that's exactly how this should be spun up, into a nice airy two-ply. I want to finish the singles from the bump of Briar Rose BFL I've been spinning as soon as I can, so I can get going with this, and to do that I need more bobbins. So I bit the bullet and ordered three more bobbins for my Lendrum; I figure that should set me up nicely to spin on the Lendrum, and then ply on the Ashford.

So, that's all the news that's fit to print. I have a few more ideas and projects cooking, so with luck I'll have something involving progress to share the next time I post. Meanwhile, summer is finally here (it's in the 90s today!), so I'm off to find somewhere cool to sit.