You know you're a spinner when...

You've got something like this drying in your back yard. 

Isn't it pretty?  This is some of the Polwarth that Erica dyed in one of her photo dyeing adventures.  I took one look at the first of those fibers (Duck Water), and snapped it up.  It's been sitting near my spinning wheel for what feels like forever now (nearly five months), waiting for me to have time to spin it.  I finally got to it last week, when I'd finished the last of my baby knitting (there's a deadline on that stuff, you know - it's not like you can exactly ask an expectant mother to hang on because you've still got one more seam to finish), plus some Christmas spinning that I can't show you now.

Didn't those colors come out beautifully in the yarn?  I was so afraid I'd ruin it that I almost didn't want to spin it.  I can't tell you how squishy and lovely this fiber was in the braid.  Polwarth has an amazing hand - it feels almost like merino to me.  I wanted to maintain as much of that squishiness as I possibly could, so I spun this up woollen, into a nice round three-ply.  I think I have about 200 yards there (I need to count again once it's dry)(which reminds me, oh you spinners out there - do you reskein after washing your yarn, and does that give you a more accurate sense of how many yards you have?). 

The first two pictures are more accurate representations of the color.  This is four ounces of Polwarth, and I have to tell you, I am flat-out in love with Polwarth as a fiber.  It spun up like butter, I tell you, just like butter.  Erica must do something really special while she dyes this fiber, because it drafted like a dream - no compacting or felting to speak of.  I could have kept on spinning those singles forever and ever.  I absolutely have to get enough of this fiber to spin a sweater out of at some point, no doubt about it (I wish I could knit a sweater from this color, actually - it is so absolutely right up  my alley; I might have to figure out a way to use it in a sweater, come to think of it; must meditate).  I sort of had a hat in mind, or maybe some mitts, but we'll see.  Any suggestions are, as always, welcome.

I was reminded the other day of two Younger Daughter stories that, in retrospect, also suggest that I am a spinner.  Story the first: a year or so ago, my mother asked for a kitchen scale for weighing things (as one does) in the kitchen (note: she is not a knitter or spinner - although she sews beautifully - and both the girls know that).  So off we went to Sur La Table (an adamantly cooking-oriented store), to get her the scale that I have and love for weighing fiber and yarn.  (It lives in the fiber room - which Rick asks me to tell you is really the den, the DEN! - and must be hunted up on those rare occasions when I weigh things in the kitchen.)  Younger Daughter went along to keep me company, no questions asked, until we were just about to check out and she looked at me in a puzzled sort of way and said, "But mama, why does memere need to weigh fiber?"  I love that my daughter's baseline assumption is that scales are for weighing fiber, in spite of all of the evidence that suggests that I am the one using a scale in ways that do not match the norm.

Story the second: also about a year ago, we were in the Bay Area (where it is often chilly, no matter the time of year), and I was realizing that I needed more in the way of a jacket than I had brought.  At the same time, it came to my attention that the outdoors store right next to the hotel was about to have a sale on fleece outerwear.  So as we got up one morning, I told Younger Daughter that we needed to run out quickly before heading out on the day's adventures, so that I could buy a fleece.  Once again, she willingly went along, tra la.  It was only as we were walking over to the store, and she asked, "What are you going to knit with the fleece?" that I realized that she'd assumed (as if it were the most natural thing in the world) that I was going to buy a sheep fleece.  How many kids would even think of that as an option?

Only the child of a spinner.

(Taken in her new-to-her solo dress - a wonderful and unexpected gift from the dance mom who made it for her daughter, now grown out of it - at last weekend's feis.)