Suddenly, I understand...

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A couple of weeks back, I washed a bunch of Coopworth fleece. I can't get enough of this stuff - it's soooo pretty! I laid it all out on the front walk to have a good look at it, and make some decisions as to what I want to do with this fiber.

I wanted to get a closeup, so that I could show you how wonderful this fiber really is...

...which means that I had to walk on the fiber itself...

Oh My.

How wonderfully soft and wonderful and luscious and wonderful...

Now I know why I keep finding this...

Dixie, now I understand. I understand, completely.

You just have yourself a nice little nap, and please, don't disrupt the locks, OK? I spent a long time, sorting them out.

Sweet dog. She's my little pal. She's so prissy and dainty that she doesn't bother a thing.

Look how the fiber looks with a little bit of flash - it glistens.

I'm going to have so much fun with this stuff!!


I just want to roll in it!

Spinning is going nicely, too. I've started with the lightest shade, which is a very pale grey. I'm cutting off the badly yellowed tips, but there's still a lot of yellow in there, and I'd love to know a way to lighten or reduce the yellow shade. I'm going to look at the drugstore to see if there are any shampoos designed for this purpose. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'd love to know what has worked for you.

By the way, maybe you've noticed a little difference in the way Blogger is posting photos? Maybe it slipped by you... but if you click on the picture, you can make it big, and if you click on it again you can make it full sized. I like this new development. Try it.

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I love Colorado!

So, here it is, November 11, and it was a beautiful, warm day. I raced through my day's requirements,

because I have been anxious to wash more of Sierra's fleece.

I pulled everything outside and got straight to work.

Last Thursday, October 29, was rainy and snowy and so cold that my furnace ran, non stop, which means that the house never made it up to 65F, where I have my thermostat set. Today? Look! I'm out in the yard, barefoot. It was a beautiful day.

Gosh, how I love Colorado.

Hubby heard on the news that it's supposed to be up to 80F tomorrow. Yay! Maybe I'll wash a bunch more. I hate messing with unwashed fleece in the house, so I really count on being able to do this outside. I want to have a nice, large lot of it washed because, while it's beautiful today who knows what next week will bring. I doubt that we'll have many more warm days like today for a long while. Well, except for tomorrow.

Improved Spindle Jim

While I always liked using my Spindle Jim, many of its little problems really bothered me. The spindles would sort of jog up and down, and they would swing back and forth - even with the tensioning string. When I use it, I like to stand as far away as I can, so as to allow the twist to even out over a distance, and the little problems meant that I'd have to walk back to the spindle jim to solve the issue, then away from again. All of this back and forth would frustrate me, and I'd end up mad - every time.

Recently, there was a discussion of this very topic on Ravelry, and a genius with the user name of TobeyL suggested this idea, and it WORKED! It works spectacularly! And, such an easy fix, too.

Gosh, such genius! Thanks so much, TobeyL!!!

Here are the pix - -

First off, please forgive the book - my camera insisted on focusing on the piano instead of the spindle jim, and I was getting frustrated. The book was right there, and provided an easy remedy.

It doesn't look too much different from the original photo, does it?

What's different is that this little arrangement was added between the bottom of the spindle and the floor of the spindle jim.

I put an eye hook in the floor, under the spindle, and I attached to it this little conglomeration of parts - reading from the bottom up - a swivel, an eyehook and dowel, and a bit of plastic tubing. The alterations took less than 30 minutes to execute, but gosh, what a difference!

I had to rearrange the top of the spindle jim because the additions at the bottom means that the snaps make the whole thing too long. I just opened up the eye hook and threaded the swivel onto it, then closed the eye hook again. I left the snap part hanging because finding wire cutters is sometimes more trouble than it's worth, heh heh heh.

What a difference! The spindle twirls very calmly, with no jumping up and down, and with no swinging back and forth. The yarn just peels off with no problems whatsoever!!!

Since the spindle now spins freely, there is no need for the little drinking-straw-seatbelts, which was an absolute necessity of Version 1 of the Spindle Jim.

All of the hardware simply stays in place for storage.

This picture might give you a better idea of the parts which are at the bottom.