I may have discovered the reason the spindle was put into the closet:
I'm not sure when or how, but I guess it got broken, and I guess I put it in the closet for that reason? "Out of sight, out of mind" does not sound like a great strategy for remembering to complete a repair, but who fucking knows what I was thinking at the time, I guess.
I had to hold it this awkward way for the photo to stop focusing on the floor and start focusing on the spindle, but I fixed it. This is one of the things I love about making my own spindles; when things break, it is not a huge loss, I'm not worried about it's resale value or anything, and I already know what to do to fix it. I get tons of wear out of these cheap pine spindles and at something like 25 cents a pop, I can't really justify to myself buying one made by someone else for 1000x more at a bare minimum.
I mean, don't get me wrong, the spindles for sale on Etsy and elsewhere are beautiful works of art, and I would buy a ton of them if I had the money just to be able to have something that pretty to use in my home. I would need to have fuck you money though, because unlike many of the people I've met on spinning groups on Ravelry, I would not be thinking about the resale value and would cut spiral notches in them immediately. I really really love the ease with which the notch lets me spin. I don't have to use any hitch to get the yarn to stay in place in the spindle. If you get the dimensions of the notch right, so that the yarn is centered over the spindle as it spins, it holds itself on the spindle while it's rotating and winding on and then resuming spinning is as simple as stopping the spindle, one twist against the direction you're spinning, wind on leaving enough to spiral back up the shaft and when you turn the spindle again, you're back in business!
That does mean I have a little less freedom in swapping my spindles out for spinning and plying, because the spiral has to travel in the same direction as the twist being inserted or else it won't nestle into the spiral and will instead unspool all your copp, assuming you've managed to get any on there in the first place. I know this because every so often my brain will glitch and I'll twist the spindle in the wrong direction, and what a spectacular crash out that is! Anyway, now that it's fixed, I'll be able to ply the calico and move on to the next spinning project. My next couple bags of clean alpaca fiber don't have any specific plans for them, and they're almost the only other clean fiber I have. I also have some commercial BFL roving I got as a TdF prize last year, that I have only vague ideas of sock making with, and some Lincoln locks I bought to play around with; I have half an idea of making embroidery thread with it, but I haven't gotten around to planning the project I'd want to make with it, so I don't know how I'd want to handle the color, so I'm leaving it alone for now. Probably tomorrow afternoon I'll sit down at my fiber drawer and figure out what I intend to do next.
I'm a little behind on cleaning the fleece, because I lost this mesh bag. Somehow, it ended up way under the bed? Best I can figure is that it was on or near the bed when I was moving furniture for the exterminator and that's when it fell and then I pushed the bed back on top of it, but honestly who knows, maybe it was a gremlin. The black fiber from this fleece was the softest of the whole, so I separated them out specially. There's only about 50 g of it, pre-washing, so I doubt it will be enough for anything especially large, but maybe I'll make a nice cowl or something with it, to really make the best use of it.
Well on it's way to making Forbidden Coffee. Step one is an overnight soak where the majority of whatever will precipitate out does so. Tomorrow I'll give it a few extra rinses and then a conditioner soak. I don't normally do that before spinning, but this is the most staticky fiber I've ever dealt with. It clings to me, the walls, the plastic bags I try to store it in, it's a huge pain in the ass. It's still pretty staticky with the conditioner on it too, but it helps, and with a fiber this hard to manage, that goes a long way.
The black is the last of fleece number one that I'm going to process. There's still at least 400-500 g of fiber in the bag, but it's all batting grade, so I'll wash that when I'm ready to use it. That means moving on to the fawn fleeces. I've been picking through them and very lightly skirting them. I can deal with poop, usually, but since I'm carding this *before* washing, anything that's too caked in poop is heading straight in the trash. That and any of the coarsest hairs that wouldn't even be suited to batting are straight in the garbage as well. From there I've been separating the locks, or really handfuls of locks, since the fleece is fairly closed; while it's possible to pull locks one by one, there isn't a ton of point to it. Loading them onto the carders as a mass of fiber has a very similar result to painstakingly separating locks, but with the added bonus of taking like half the time. So I've been separating out the good fiber and putting them into sandwich bags to await carding, where they go into bigger bags, and then they get washed. The grey fleece I've been rolling into punis for spinning, since the average lock was about 2 inches, and pulling roving was incredibly difficult to do and impossible to spin from, but the fawn fleeces have locks in the 3-4 inch range, so I think I'll try and pull roving once they're washed.
It's not much, perhaps about 50 g of fiber, but it took me an hour to do. I put on a podcast and card until it's over and that's it, that's how much fiber I do in a day. It really makes you appreciate what a huge lifestyle change the industrial revolution provided, because this was something the majority of people had to do every single day for their whole lives, and now almost no one even knows how this is done, much less has any experience of it personally. Crazy to think about.
Also crazy to think about: this is one of the cleaner sessions of carding this alpaca fleece. The layer of fine dirt is the part that bugs me the most. I usually have to wet a paper towel to get it up because the broom just isn't equipped. The things I do for nice yarn.
Of course since I was "playing with play dough," things quickly became a family affair, and my kids "helped" by making some gingerbread men and other ornaments. I also cut out some shapes myself, namely the hearts, the cat, the cloud, the moons, and the ice cream cone. I use little trinkets like that to start winding my outer pull balls of yarn, as well as neat rocks I find lying around, because it helps keep the tension on winding on in the beginning easier, and the extra weight keeps the ball from flying out of whatever container I have it in as I knit. Then, at the very end of the ball, it prevents the yarn from sticking to itself and tangling the way it does when it's wound on only itself. Also, it's fun to finish a ball of yarn and find the leaf or rabbit or whatever I wound in the middle, which is a reward on it's own. I often forget which trinket I used by the time I get to the end of the ball, so it's a nice surprise.
I've never tried to "bake in" a texture like this before, so I was curious how it would turn out. They do puff up a bit in the baking, so I wasn't sure if that would obscure cuts this fine, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the definition remained after baking and was actually a bit more pronounced than when it went in. I now have lots of ideas for fish with scales or cakes with little berries or something carved in. Not that I really need more of these knick knacks, I have plenty of them already, but they're fun to make, so why not?
This is after 4 hours in a 200 F oven. You can see from the ice cream cone, which I left as it was, that the tops are very white, but the side that was in contact with the baking tray yellowed a bit. The backs look a bit like sugar cookies. I don't know if this is related to the fact that the baking tray is dark metal, or if it would have happened anyway just because it's in contact with a hot surface, but since I'm painting them anyway, it doesn't really matter. I just thought it was interesting. I flipped them over like this because the bottom was still a little moist, so I put them back in the oven, but upside down this time, for another hour, and then called it a night. It's still a bit chilly out, but 5 hours with the oven on, even low, was too hot for me, and they were mostly dry anyway.
By the time the kids were off the bus, the clay was dry enough to paint on, so the whorls got their first coats of paint. They'll get at least one more, plus a layer or two of modge podge for sealing. I'll update when they're finished.
No photos because the light was not good by the time I got the ends woven in, but the headscarf is finished! I don't love the look of the straps crossing over, so I might experiment next time with the straps being ribbon or something, because a cursory test running of wearing the scarf around the house has shown that the straps 100% work the way I hoped they would. From here it's just a matter of getting the execution right. I'll be soaking and blocking the scarf tomorrow, so blocking update soon!
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