Update and a Winner

The Shop has been updated with 24 skeins of superwash sock yarn.

Since I got so many great responses to name the bulky electric spinner I couldn't pick my favorite so I decided to enter everyone into a random drawing this morning - and the winner is....

SKYLAR I just went over to her site and her birthday just passed - Happy Birthday Skylar...what a coincidence! Email me to claim your prize!

Scant little knitting has been done around here lately but a lot of spinning and dyeing has. They dyeing you can check out on the sales page - I've got a lot of new colorways - I've got to change up every now and again so I don't get bored with doing the same colors over and over again. Although some colorways are just too popular to not do - like Chocolate Covered Cherries!

This is the new way I've been dyeing a lot of my roving - I used to do a lot of saran wrap sausages and then steam them but it's way too time consuming when you are trying to dye 8 oz to a pound at a time. This way is much faster and you get great results. Both of these roasting pans were done similarly but a little different. The pre-soaked fiber was first randomly placed in the pan trying not to overlap much the with the orange one I squirted the dye in sections the covered the whole thing with foil to keep the steam in and put it in the oven for 45 min at 340 degrees. I added a little more water to the Blue and purple then covered it and stuck it in the oven - after about 20 min I took it out and squirted dye on it - this I think is called the hot pour method and I love it. The dye strikes the fiber immediately right where you squirt it...I think I can get great results from this method with more practice!

I've also got some spinning done:

From left to right is a green merino and sparkle supercoil, Multicolored Optim plied with a thread and lurex sparkle, Spring colored Merino plied with a rayon thread and sparkle, Two ply merino with sparkle in pink, and Natural Fawn Alpaca plied with rayon and gold sparkle lurex. These are Giant skeins each over 150 yards except for the pink one. They are all spoken for but these are the styles I've been spinning up lately.

Ohh take a look at this here is a comparison of bobbins

again from left to right a regular louet bobbin which holds about 6 oz, a bulky louet bobbin, and the babes bulky electric bobbin...Whoa baby that thing is huge!!! I LOVE IT!

Car update - the insurance paid off the remainder of the bank note since we were still financing and we only got 1,000 back. With that and what we had available to us we went out and bought a 2001 Dodge Stratus. So far so good, it's a nice car and very roomy. The best part about it? It's not on the stolen lists!