Spinning for Henry

The last few days have been (for me) an endurance test of spinning as much of the merino for my Dad's henry as I can with a few 'breaks' of picking up the last sleeve of the Zigzag and working one 12-row repeat at a time. I have one bobbin filled with very fine singles and two bobbins that are partially filled. As for the Zigzag, there is only half of a sleeve left to knit. I'm almost done with all the increasing.

Supposedly, the 'weather report' for this weekend is calling for snow, possibly to last through Monday or Tuesday. I've been skunked every time they've said this so I'm not going to believe it until I see it myself, but if I keep to the Zigzag and knit like the wind, I can probably get it done before any snow does fall.

After all of the repetitious knitting and spinning I've been busy with over the last few days, I was very excited to find this one evening when I got home.



It's two pounds of lovely merino, patiently waiting to be dyed and spun. It's so soft. I am so excited!



Yesterday I bought five colors of Cushing's dye from Amelia at The Bellwether and today, after my husband gets home, I'm heading off to the thrift stores to finish shopping for more dying supplies. Mainly, I need to find an old stockpot with a lid and a steamer basket of some sort to fit inside and maybe a few glass jars. There are still several little things that I need to pick up, but they're all inexpensive and easy to find.

Once I have everything I need for the dying, I've arranged to borrow a kitchen scale to weigh out and separate the merino into proportionate amounts. I could eyeball it, but I'd really rather not. First off, I'm going to divide it in half, because one lb. of it is going to be for a zippered jacket for Paige. I want to divide the second lb. of it into somewhat even amounts for dying and spinning (I have lots and lots of pretty 3-ply sock yarn in mind). I'm hoping that once I get going on it, it will move along nicely. Though the thought of an entire pound of fiber for 3-ply sock yarn does make make the mind reel when considering the marathon of spinning it will involve. I think it's going to be a very busy Spring.

P.S. I don't know how, but by some funky glitch, the photos have (as you can see) disappeared from my last blog entry. Which is silly, when the title of the blog is "See this?" because, you know, you can't. Hopefully it wont be happening again. If anyone knows why this happened or has any advice about it, please feel free to drop me a note about it in the comments.