I think the time has finally come to tell the tale of my poor, poor BFL. I mentioned a fibery disaster in an earlier post and never got around to elaborating on that. Well, two weeks ago, I went to my parents' house for the usual Sunday dinner. I brought my wheel and my BFL with me so that I could do some spinning. I had been making good progress on the BFL, even though I was pretty much "over" the project. It's still lovely fiber, etc., I was just getting tired of working on it. I usually enjoy planning and starting projects more than I enjoy following through on them. But anyway... I actually ended up being so busy mixing dye that I never even got around to spinning. When I got home from dinner, I was feeling pretty pooped, so I decided to do a bit of blog reading before I did all my responsible stuff - put away laundry, etc. When I came out of the computer room, I found the carnage. Oh, the humanity. The kitten had gotten into my spinning bag, pulled out the BFL batt and spread the 13 grams left over my ENTIRE LIVING ROOM. There were bits o' fluff everywhere. She still had a big chunk of it with her, and she was rolling on her back in it. She was a very happy kitten. Until she saw me, that is. When she saw me, she hopped off the wool she was rolling in and flattened herself to the ground, as though I might mistake her for a piece of wool and then she wouldn't be in trouble. That's the part that really got me - that she KNEW what she was doing was wrong. I understand that I'm the human, I have to be responsible for my stuff and not expect her little pea brain to comprehend what she's doing, but she KNEW she'd be in trouble for playing with my roving and she did it anyway. The little booger! And in case you're wondering, I did let her live.
At this point, though, the batt had been sufficiently shredded and tangled that I could no longer spin the fiber "as is." If I wanted to use the fiber at all, I'd have to recard it, but if I did that I'd lose the color sequence, and that had been an important part of how I'd envisioned this yarn. I was so irked over the whole thing that I put it on hold. I had two options, but I wasn't completely happy with either of them, so I just couldn't choose. First, I could try to salvage the project by trying to find the same spot in another of the BFL batts in my stash. The problem with that was that, I was already "eh" about the project when el destructo worked her magic, and now I was even more frustrated toward it. Plus, I wasn't sure if I'd hit the exact same spot in the next batt, so my color sequences might be messed up anyway. The other option was to just ply the singles I already had and give up on this iteration of the project, and maybe start over with another batt one day when I got over the trauma :-) Of course, when I finally decided to soldier on and try to salvage the project by using a different batt, I found that all the batts I had were different enough from the one I had been using to mess up my color sequence, anyway. I took this as a sign to just quit while I was ahead. I chain plied the singles I had spun and called it a day. There are 315 yards, enough for a pretty little lace scarf. I don't think I'll knit it up for awhile, so for now it's just something pretty to sit on my desk and pet.
Now that that project is resolved, I think I'm ready to start another big project. Another project on the scale of "the shawl." I have an idea for a design of a faroese shawl that I'm excited about, but I want to use a certain fiber for it that I don't feel like spinning right now. So, I think the faroese will have to wait a bit. I may start doing some charting and test knitting for it, just to capture the idea before it floats away, but it's not feeling like
the project right now. I'm not really sure what direction I want to go with the next project, though. Since I already designed a square shawl, I want to try a different shape. I love the look of stoles, but not how they look on me. Maybe a circular shawl? I don't know at this point.
In preparation for my next big project, I've been trying to wrap up the odds and ends on my bobbins, a bit of spring cleaning in the spinning department. Everything is off of the bobbins but the blue-purple-gold hand dyed wool/silk and the solid blue wool/silk I planned on plying together. Before I went any further with that, I decided to do a small plied sample to make sure the two worked well together. No use plying up a bunch of blue singles for no reason. I'm glad to say that I'm absolutley thrilled with the way these two fibers look plied. Together, they make an almost glowing ultra-violet yarn. Of course, now that I know I lovelovelove it, I'm sure I won't end up with enough yarn to actually make anything! I'll just have to figure something out, though, because I definitely like this too much to do nothing with it. I might have to try replicating the colorway during my next dye experiment. I'm all set to go for another dye day next Saturday. I mixed up all the dyes for two colorways today, so I have a good jump on preparations. I'm really excited to give dyeing another try. I have so much spinning stash that I feel like it's silly to buy any more, but I don't mind making more! Eventually, I'll have to get around to some carding experiments, too. I'm tired of being frustrated when I find some fiber that has the colors I love, but is too rough for my uses. Since I spin so fine, I have to use very fine fibers or my yarn feels like steel wool. I want to get to the point where I can replicate (in fine fibers) rovings, batts, etc., that looks fabulous, but doesn't feel fabulous. I'm going to have to live a LONG time if I intend to get around to doing everything I want to in the fiber arts. I guess I'll just have to cross my fingers that I win that $340 million in the Mega Millions on Tuesday! Me and everybody else, right?
