Tuesday, June 10, 2008

yarn cakes & happy tires

(the title is for you, Jeromie; appetizing, isn't it?)

So, for the past year, Tuesdays have been my favorite day. Two reasons: house church in the evening, and it's one of my two consistent days off (Sunday being the other). It seems that other days off are always cram-packed full of people to hang out with and/or things that need doing. Not that I don't want to hang out with people - I actually thoroughly enjoy it now - but being a Liz, and still introverted at my core, I need a day to myself sometimes.

Tuesdays tend to be that day.

So, yesterday I:

* slept late to make sure my migraine was really gone
* read a little in A Separate Peace
* changed a flat on my road bike (happy tires!)
* set up the swift & winder I got for my birthday from WEBS, thanks to Darla
* set to work on making yarn cakes out of my huge bag o' yard-sale yarn, and
* made sausage-lentil soup from the More-with-Less cookbook!

Let me tell you, that bag o' yarn is going to take a bit of work to make knittable.

The story behind it is as follows... My friend Melissa and I were responsible for coordinating the DCF Yard Sale at the beginning of May, and it went off quite well. (I just want to say that God had everything to do with that.) It just so happened that the nearby Lutheran church was having a yardsale the same day. Jeromie paid a visit and spotted the yarn - sprawled on the table and strangely tied. Well, he sent me up to look at it and it appeared to be wool and at least hand-dyed, so I spent the $5 I had to get a few bundles. Well, while we were tearing down in the afternoon, a volunteer from the other yardsale walked down and asked one of my friends if I wanted to just have the rest of the (garbage-sized) bag for free. Knowing me, my friend said yes. :-D

A month & a half later, with swift & ball winder in my possession:

I sat down this morning, cracked open the bag & loaded the first bundle onto the swift. The winding went swimmingly at first, then I started getting to tangles & loose ends. It took 45 minutes to an hour to get that first bundle all caked up, complete with much patient untangling. It's definitely wool, and it's almost certainly handspun. There are lots of planty-looking fibers throughout the yarn, almost as if it was born in a barn. (Wait a minute, it probably was born in a barn literally. You know what I mean.) I've now affectionately dubbed it "the quintessential itchy-scratchy," because it is!

But I'm still excited about coming up with some good projects for it. Perhaps some mad felting?

Meet:

Quintessential Itchy-Scratchy.


Rather furzy, but practically free!

1 comment:

Aisyrn said...

Introverts unite!

...to sit in corners reading by themselves. :)

I shall have to interrogate you guys about cookbooks one of these days. I need to improve my diet (much as I grimace at cooking), and I'd like some input on resources.