Gingerbread

Last night my three girls and I put together our gingerbread train. My son only wanted to sneak candy. It actually went together pretty smoothly. The plan came from the November 2006 issue of Family Fun magazine. We changed it a little bit from their version, but not much. Every year we do a gingerbread house, and I just buy a kit, preferably pre-glued. This year I decided to be brave and bake the thing myself. The magazine had downloadable templates, so I printed those out to cut around. That made all the difference. I am known for not being able to cut straight...

I had planned on doing some spinning today. However, my youngest has been throwing up, so who knows how the day will go? (Except not as planned!)

By the way, the yellow fruit in the picture behind the train is really a lemon on my Meyer lemon tree. Living in such a cold climate has driven me to try to grow things that won't grow here. We have harvested 3 wonderful lemons so far. The one in the picture is the 4th, and there are 5 little green ones. It does very well outside in the summer, once it survives the winter house conditions!

Spin to Knit

Here is the spin to knit tag. I'm not sure if this is the right place to put it or not!
My favorite thing to spin, or rather the most comfortable thing, is wool. I have a shetland fleece in a natural fawn color that I have been combing. It is a dream to spin. This stuff just wants to be yarn. I used to have sheep (Romney and Finn-Dorset), that is how I got into this fiber mess, but the sheep have been gone for a few years now. I have also spun cotton, soysilk, silk, flax, dog hair, alpaca, tencel, angelina fiber, and nylon. I would like to work with flax a little more. It would be great to be good enough with it to weave a nice towel or something.
I enjoy dyeing very much. I have dyed clean, unprocessed wool, roving, yarn, silk, cotton, and cloth. I enjoy the Twisted Sisters Sock Book. I have used several of their dyeing techniques. I'm not very exact. I add dye until it looks right, though I mix stock solutions using measurements, but I don't weigh anything. Handpainted roving is alot of fun to make and spin (and knit, come to think of it).
Most of the yarn I make is plain vanilla yarn, two ply, good for knitting. I have also enjoyed adding beads. I made a wonderful mohair boucle sometime in the last year that is waiting to become something. That is one of the most exciting finished yarns that I have done, though I really hated the last pass through the wheel. I like to treadle very quickly, on a high-ratio for most of my spinning, and I had to do this slowly so my hands could keep up.
Enough for now!

Getting started

I am starting a blog so that I can participate in a yarn exchange for spinners. I have lots of hobbies, spinning (as in making yarn) is one of those. I don't anticipate that this blog will be of much interest to anyone, as I can't see myself posting on a regular basis. So, here I go.