Addition and Subtraction

Your favorite knitter/foster parent/blogger/insane do-it-yourself-er is finally back. The whole floor, trim, and most of the touch up painting is done, done, done. I feel so much better now.

I had a serious case of start-itis near the end of the flooring project. I think the stress and chaos of living in a construction zone made me want to escape, so I just kept starting new yarn projects. I even obsessed about plans to make a crocheted sock – my mind was racing with thoughts about how to construct the thing and how exactly I wanted to do the ribbing – to the point that I had to get out of bed one night and start crocheting. I guess when a muse takes notice of one of my ideas, she won’t let it go until we get into action. I think it would be most helpful if we took inventory of what is on the hooks and needles again.

Knittin’

1. Crocheted Sock – I am going to turn this one into a class. Unlike knit socks, I consider crochet socks to be an advanced beginner project. Yes, the hook is small (but you could make a worsted weight sock with a slightly bigger hook), but you only really need to know how to single crochet to start a sock. In my class I am going to teach skills like increasing, decreasing, and even how to crochet to fit. Socks are really great for teaching technique.

2. Mr. Greenjeans Cardigan – I really need to start layering now that I live somewhere it snows. It seems like a cardigan is the easiest way to get started.

(All of the following will be Ravelry links)

3. Two-in-one socks – I tried this technique, but it was so slow going that I had to admit I hated it. I separated the socks and began knitting them separately. I am much happier now, but I did learn that my gauge is much tighter when I knit double-stranded.

4. Robert’s Boot Socks – These are going to be much like kilt hose, but at the same time more plain. Robert is my brother in the Marines. He wanted a good pair of thick socks for hiking, and he really liked the pictures of some kilt hose I made in the past, so he asked for some. The thing is, I started it using Cascade 220. Somewhere after I made the first 20% or so of the first sock, I realized that I should have used a superwash yarn because the hiking will most likely felt the things. Does anyone know if Cascade Superwash comes in khaki?

5. Cat Couch – I started working on this project for the cats again when I started teaching classes. I really owe them something nice, and I now I’m starting to owe them lots of nice things for neglecting them. I am such a bad mom.

6. Beaded Deep Space – This is a Christmas project for a friend. I do hope to finish it for this Christmas, but it may have to wait for next. The long floor project robbed me of quite a bit of time.

7. Colorado Gloves – I am actually thinking of turning these into mittens or fingerless gloves. I realized that the fingers make it way too slippery to wear the gloves while knitting or driving, and they wouldn’t be nearly as warm as mittens.

I also took something out of my project list recently – the Earl Grey socks. I know now, without a shred of doubt, that I am allergic to alpaca. Sometimes when I help a client at the store, my throat starts to itch and then swell up. Every single time I ask the client what fiber she is using, it turns out to be alpaca. I was seriously crushed to learn this because alpaca fiber is incredibly soft and warm – as a matter of fact, it would make a great winter blanket. In the end, I rehomed this project and some unspun alpaca fiber to my friend, Julie. I know she’ll take good care of it.

Kittens

In the time when I was absent, the kittens continued to grow and change. Goose made weight, and I had to return her earlier than I expected. She is incredibly friendly. Too friendly. Every night since I got the Twilight kittens, she got to sleep with us. In the middle of the night Goosie would wake up so happy, purring and rubbing her face against mine and Michael’s. While it was perhaps the sweetest way to wake up, it was still waking up. Multiple times a night. I was a wreck.

I was completely flattered that Goose loved us so much.

Lambie is still with me. She had a lesion on her muzzle that looked suspiciously like ringworm. Since the shelter I currently volunteer for puts kittens with ringworm down (they are working to change that policy, just slowly), I had Lamb’s spot checked. What a mistake. She is still with me because the test came back positive even though the lesion cleared up within 3 days. As anyone who reads my blog regularly should know by now, no ringworm has ever cleared up that fast. Ever. While the vet agrees with me that it is probably a false positive due to cross-contamination, they have to wait until Lamb has a negative test to release her for adoption. The test takes 2 weeks for a negative result. I am leaving for a trip before that test comes back, so I was distressed. Fortunately, the shelter vet has a plan – they’ll treat her with lyme-sulfur and put her up for adoption with a note that she was possibly exposed to ringworm. It means she will be in a cage by herself, which makes me really sad. However, she is a black kitten. Nice as she is, people are superstitious about black cats, and the older she gets, the less adoptable Lamb will be. I cannot stand the thought that my baby will be overlooked because her coat is the “wrong” color. You could do a lot worse than Lamb. Lambie loves to give kisses, and she really loves yarn-based cat toys. And face it – she’s beautiful.

That Duck character – well, where do I begin. I’ve loved other foster kittens. I loved Carrot, who found a perfect home right before I left San Francisco. I knew when her new mother started to speak to me that Carrot was meant for her, the only person good enough for my baby. I loved Margo, a black momcat whom I fostered long before I started this blog. She has bright orange eyes, and she used to pull your face to hers with her paw so she would kiss you. She also had this pure joy that you couldn’t help catching. I loved Roman, the first foster kitten that I really had to fight to keep alive. He died in the end, but I thought if he lived that I might not be able to let go. I also loved Gareth, who survived Panleuk with some brain damage. He didn’t seem to have a good flight instinct when a situation was dangerous. He also couldn’t figure out simple obstacles like glass doors. He got into my entertainment center once, through an open glass door. The other door was closed. As Gareth tried to get out of the closed glass door, he started to panic. He threw himself against the glass, not noticing that there was  a way to freedom just inches away. He also panicked if he was alone. It was heartbreaking to realize what he was going through. I would have kept him, too, if a woman hadn’t come along who inquired about him, left the adoption center to really think through what she was getting into, and came back completely prepared to love him the way he needed.

Duck is like the others I’ve loved. He’s handsome. He has a very gentle personality, and nothing really bothers him. He has the innate joy that Margo had. I went through a lot to save him. On October 1, Michael took Duck to the shelter. At 4:00 that afternoon, after his neuter surgery, I adopted him. That’s right, I adopted my first foster kitten. I managed to resist the charms of 183 kittens, only to be suckered in by Duck. Save for a fight he started in his carrier the moment I signed the papers and handed over the adoption fee (Duck was recovering from the anesthesia, and we think he’s a mean drunk), Duck has continued to be the same, wonderful baby cat he always was. And now he’s mine.

The Twilight kittens are all still alive. I truly thought that Renee, at 197g and at least 3-4 weeks of age was going to die, but she is still alive. She’s still tiny, but she is bright and friendly and gaining weight, just a little at a time. Edward and Bella are alive and thriving, as are Jacob, Emmett, and Rosalie. Alice is struggling, but I think even she might survive. She looks awful, but she gains just a little weight most mornings. There will be more photos of them in the future, but they won’t be with me much longer. When we leave town, the kittens are going to other foster homes. They are off the bottle, so the healthier ones can go to any foster home. The little ones will need special care, though. These poor kittens came to me with giardia (I know, what a surprise). When the meds didn’t clear up the infection, the doctors found clostridium in their stool. This is another disease that people can catch, but not as easily as they can catch giardia. You might know other forms of clostridium: botulism, food poisoning, and tetanus. It is also responsible for lethal hospital infections, under the name of clostridium dificile. I think this may be what killed so many of my bottle-feeders in San Francisco. Luckily, there is a treatment – an antibiotic called Amphoral. I think I like that drug, given that it seems to save lives.

So, I believe that you are now caught up. If there is something I missed, please mention it in the comments so that I can be sure to update everyone. Feel free to raise your expectations to the previous level

Mystery

I love waking up to this every morning.

I love having 8 kittens to care for. I love bottle-feeding them, I love snuggling them, I love introducing them to new food, and I love watching them learn. There is a lot to love here.

But there is one thing I do not love. There is this mystery… thing… that has been plaguing my kittens. They seem fine, and then I come back a few hours later to a half-dead kitten. These kittens have been tested for bacteria, viruses, and whatever else the vets can think of. Nothing comes back positive. While I think it’s great that the kittens don’t have any recognizable diseases, it’s really terrible that there is nothing to treat either.

Friday night, just after midnight, Lamb went down. I came in to do the final feeding of the day, which involves Michael making rounds at the litter boxes. When he pulled back one of the boxes, Michael found poor Lambie, cold, barely breathing, and unresponsive to her world (I’ve learned that a veterinary term for that is “obtunded”). The thing is that the kittens make a full recovery by the next day. I don’t get it.

Duck has been looking kind of yucky lately, but at least he has had the decency to warn me that he might crash. He has been losing weight consistently and he’s had very low energy levels. I want to get him into the vet for another vitamin B shot. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to give him exclusive nursing visits with his mother. Theresa does still nurse the kittens, but I try to make sure that anyone who lost weight gets time alone with her. The catch is that she likes to lie on the narrow part of the counter, so I have to hold the kittens up to her to nurse – it’s exhausting!

In addition to the kittens, I’ve had a bunch of knitting and crocheting to do. I’m going to be teaching a few “Mommy and Me” classes at the yarn shop, so I had to make samples of the projects we are going to do.

This is the crochet scarf

and this is the knitted scarf.

I’m also going to be teaching some amigurumi classes next month, but I haven’t gotten to those projects yet.

I embarked on an ambitious spinning project as well. I wanted to spin enough yarn for a sweater, and then make a sweater pattern that will fit me, come hell or high water.

The yarn I came up with is a 3-ply, with 1 ply of a merino wool (the reddish brown color) and 2 of a merino wool/bamboo blend. It came out somewhere around a worsted weight. Since it’s handspun, it’s a little inconsistent, but the inconsistency isn’t terribly obvious. I’m going to knit it on size 9 needles. I tried size 6, but the fabric was just too dense. The challenge at this point is to find stitch patterns that help achieve the shaping I want, but that aren’t so complicated that they will be lost in the pattern of the yarn – it’s a little busy when it’s knit up.  You know, I should photograph the swatches. A project for later, I guess.

So, I have a few mysteries right now. Will all of my kittens survive their stay here? What is causing them to crash like they have been? Will I finally be able to knit a sweater that fits? Will it look good enough that I will wear it? Stay tuned for the answers.

Loose Ends

The last few weeks and the next few coming up are all about tying up loose ends. Sometimes literally

as in Carisa’ afghan,

but more often it’s been on the figurative side. I could have moved to Colorado months ago, or at least a few weeks ago when we closed on the house; instead, we chose to stay for Carisa’s 30th birthday party. Carisa’s whole family came to town from Green Bay, Wisconsin to help her celebrate. Carisa’s mom has been bunking with me. It was quite convenient at first with both of us making things for the party. After that was over, her mother and I just chatted like schoolgirls on a sleepover. We went to Stitches on Sunday (can you believe they wouldn’t let you take cameras in?). Today was my first day off from all the festivities -  Carisa took her family to see the Winchester Mystery House. I stayed at home to work on my gloves.

Not that I need them. Kyle, who is looking after our place until we get there, said it’s been in the low to mid 70s (°F, that is) this past week. It’s been in the mid 50s here. Hmm.

Carisa’s mom is a crafter like the rest of us. She loves to knit and crochet (she has been working on mittens while she’s been here), and she adored Stitches. We saw so many different fibers and fiber arts there. I learned about locker hook rugs (not that I need a new hobby, but I think one found me) and Naomi found the most amazing knitter’s purses. I think I need one, but given the price of them I think I need to put more consideration into the possible purchase. I bought a ton of yarn and fiber – I even found an 8oz. bag of cashmere fiber in a bin! When I brought it to Jamie at her Urban Fauna booth, she commented on what a good price it was. I felt awesome. At the end of our trip, Carisa and her mom presented me with a bag of wool locks as a thank you present for letting Carisa’s mom stay with me. Don’t tell anyone, but Carisa’s mom’s presence has been quite a treat for me – I can’t stop chatting with her.

Ah, that will be the last fiber show I see while I live here. I think in the future, fiber trade shows will be a reason for me to come visit my friends in San Francisco. Maybe I won’t have to stop going to them when I move.

It’s weird to realize “this is the last time I will do this” or “this is the last time I will go here.” It’s almost surreal. Moving East has always felt to me like the return to reality from a fairytale land. When I moved to Florida from Hawai’i it was a pretty cruel jolt, as a matter of fact. I had to wake up 5 hours earlier than I was used to so I could get to school. In Hawai’i, Fridays were shorter than the rest of the school week. In Florida, it was back to the old “every day’s the same” feeling. I don’t know, maybe I’m just strange, but leaving California gives me the same feeling of coming back to reality.

I thought for awhile I might have seen my last foster kitten in San Francisco, but just a few days ago I asked Toni to send some bottle-feeders my way. We still get the occasional orphaned kitten this time of year. The only catch is that the kittens have to be able to live in the crib I have for them – I have no kitten room any more. I still have not seen a kitten, but I have 3 weeks left. I must be crazy to be that lonely for kittens.

With no kittens, I feel I have very little to say. I mean, sure, I still do my fiber arts, but let’s face it – the knitting/crocheting isn’t half as cute as a fuzzy kitten face. The knitting doesn’t get sick or learn to walk for the first time. Thank goodness the knitting doesn’t poop, because with the way I let the projects run freely around my house, I’d have a mess. I don’t think it would be easy to litter train an afghan. The thing is, it doesn’t get out of bed and come happily running to see me when I open the door, either.

I am a glutton for punishment.

Moving too fast

The world is moving to fast for me. I kept thinking that I had plenty of time to do things, but when I started scheduling all the last get-togethers with my friends and trying to make plans to see and do all the things I need to before I leave San Francisco, I realized that I am not going to be home for much of the remaining time we have here. We have practically 2 solid weeks of travel coming up, mostly business trips for Michael. One of them happens to be in Florida, so we will go see Lane and Jen when we get there. Another trip is to Denver, the same week we are closing on the house (just like we planned). It just feels overwhelming right now. I just thought there was more time. I think I lost  a lot of it due to sickness. Gotta love air travel.

I mentioned in my last post 2 things I needed to do that were the most pressing. I have done neither. To be fair, the Wesley thing resolved itself. I believe that he might have been lonely since the kittens and his parents went away. Every time he got the chance, Wesley hung out in Michael’s or my lap for the first few days after we got home from the house hunting trip. It wasn’t long before the little guy was himself again. The car thing will have to wait until I get home and am <gasp!> foster kitten-less.

We brought Carrot home the day we got back. I called her new mother the next day and arranged her adoption and Carrot was spayed on Tuesday (yesterday). Tomorrow, my sweet Carrot will leave my home for the couple who was meant to have her all along. I kept her tonight because the poor thing hadn’t yet recovered from the anesthesia. Her eyes were dilated and she freaked out around my cats. Carrot couldn’t walk a straight line, and she would lie down next to her toys so she didn’t topple when she reached for them. About 10:00pm she started to become the Carrot I know and love. She jumped onto my lap and rested her head on my heart. I think it must be her way of saying “thank you for taking care of me.” She’s going to be just fine in her new family. Despite the pull I’ve felt to adopt just one more before I leave, I know it just isn’t meant to be. <sob>

I do have the other 4 kittens to distract me from my grief. The boys have all made weight, so I am taking them back to the shelter every day to try to get them adopted. Esme is about 170g away from being ready herself. The only problem: she has ringworm. At least I think it is. It glows under the black light, but other foster parents who looked at it thought it could be chin acne. It really is presenting unusually – there is no fur loss, but there are a lot of dark, crusty scabs like pimples on her chin. Either way, I washed her and they boys with Malaseb and lyme/sulfur dip to hopefully stop the spread of the fungus. I have a suspicion about how they caught it.

It seems a certain Carrot doesn’t understand that she is not a baby and can’t play with the little ones.

The little ones do look great, though. Ernest is fluffy and handsome. Emo has the same fluff and sweet personality as Ernest. Esme still steals her daddy’s heart. And Widget is action man! He really knows his way around a kitten toy.

Over the weeked I had a spinning party. Only 3 of us from the spinning class I took last summer could make it, but we had a great time. As a result of the party, I got custody of this:

(a drum carder) which turns this:

(loose fiber)

Into these (kindly modeled by Carrot, who went all kid-in-a-candy-store on me):

(fiber batts)

which turn into this when I spin them:

I haven’t yet had time to make any more fiber batts, but I have to transfer custody of the drum carder to Naomi while I am out of town, so I had better get to it soon. It’s just that I’ve been busy.

Later that night I went to a party for a friend from my knit group, Celia. She was celebrating her birthday with her father, Jack. I learned that Jack was the Poet Laureate for San Francisco not long ago. That’s kind of cool in my book.

And finally, I finished the dishcloths for my contest winners. The pictures aren’t in the best focus, but you can look anyway. Which ones will you get, Sara and Anne-Catherine? You’ll never know until you open your mail…

Here are the Ravelry links in case anyone wants the patterns:

Kitty Love

Moon Gazing

All Tangled

Delinquent

This may be the longest I have gone between posts since I began this blog. I feel guilty. It’s a good thing I took over 100 pictures this week, because it reminded me of everything I did (it was a lot!).

Over the weekend, Michael, Linnea and I went to the Dickens Faire. I haven’t photographed it yet, but I got a cloak. It is a gorgeous shade of green, and made of a very warm wool. I’ve worn it while running my errands, and so many people have stopped to compliment me on the cloak. I’ve wanted one for years, so I am quite happy! The Faire was lovely, too, but a subject for a later post.

In the beginning of the week, I was knitting and crocheting furiously. I got almost all of the dishcloths completed. I gave 2 of Michael’s sisters pre-Christmas gifts, so I felt less guilty about giving them a 2 dishcloth set instead of a set of 3. It was actually a spilled glass of soda on my white yarn that halted the last 2 cloths, not lack of time.

I finished spinning a skein of soysilk yarn for Carisa. I failed to get a photo of the finished product, however. The kittens supervised my work, and interjected their help when they thought I might need it.

As a side note, there is a very good reason to wash yarn that was hand dyed before knitting with it or before mixing it with other laundry. Get a load of how much loose dye came off when I was setting the twisted yarn.

Michael wrapped a ton of Christmas presents. And no, they did not get sent on time. It was going to cost me $80 to send a box of handmade dishcloths in time for Christmas. The recipients can wait. There will be plenty of dishes to do when the cloths arrive.

I hosted Christmas with Carisa and Ryan at my house on Christmas Eve. I made a turkey, made-from-scratch stuffing, 2 pumpkin pies, 1 cherry pie with homemade crust and filling, deviled eggs, and gravy. The only thing I didn’t make was the canned cranberry sauce.

I got a very nice present from Carisa this year. She gave me a kitty wall hanging that she stitched when she was a small child. I feel special to have gotten something from her childhood. All I got them was a Wii – no sentiment whatsoever. I am hoping that the Wii will be something Carisa and I can use to communicate when I am in Colorado. You see, there is this game called Animal Crossing that we both love to play. When it came to the Nintendo DS, we visited each other’s towns via a Wi-Fi connection. The new Animal Crossing has Wii speak, or in other words, a free phone line!

This week I also took on a pet-sitting job. When the holidays roll around, Carisa gets more business than she can handle. When her schedule fills up, she refers her clients (both established and new clients) to me. I am not a professional sitter, but I don’t mind taking odd jobs like that. Besides, the cat that I took care of was a sweetheart!

In addition to all the aforementioned events, I started weaning the bottle-feeders this week. Ernest and Emo went right for the wet food. Every day they eat more food and less milk. Widget prefers the bottle, but he will eat wet food if I mix it with enough milk. Otherwise, he spits the food back out after I spoon it in. Esme got sick and threw up yesterday and the day before, so I am giving her a break on the weaning. She hasn’t lost much weight and her hydration is good, so I am not as worried as I might otherwise be.

At some point during the week I realized we may have to start roaming around naked if I didn’t do some laundry. Carrot was happy to help.

As usual, I got a little sick this week. On the bright side, for the first time in many years, whatever I’ve been sick with has not been respiratory and nothing has settled in my lungs! This is a HUGE deal. I’ve been to the ER with a severe respiratory illness every winter since I moved to San Francisco. I am so grateful that it has only been fever and lethargy. I am also thankful for my bed-mates – they know how to make a mommy feel better!

The bottle-babies have been great, by the way. I switched to a new formula, Pro-Biolac, and they have not gotten diarrhea. Well, Esme had a little, but it was when I had to switch them back to KMR for a few days while waiting for the new formula to arrive in the mail. I am totally sticking with this new stuff – it keeps the diarrhea away.

All the activity has really made me insane. I was heating up the bottles for the babies one night, but I was also in a hurry to accomplish the million other tasks on my plate. I forgot that I washed the pan in which I heat the bottles earlier that day. More importantly, I forgot that I did not refill it with water before placing it back on the stove. When I put the bottles in the dry pan, they melted to the bottom just a little bit. Ugh. I ruined the bottle and the pan. You would think this could be solved by putting the bottles in the microwave, but doing so breaks down the milk proteins and leads to the dreaded diarrhea. The extra effort is worth the benefit.

Finally, I took Sprout, Lady and Carrot in to get vaccinated and to look for adopters on Sunday (I plan to go in all week and keep trying). It was a long day – really, a long week – best summed up in a picture:

Dyed in the wool

Meet New Baby and Grapevine:

These braids are the product of an afternoon spent with my spinning friend, Naomi. I had no idea what I was doing when we started – I picked some of my favorite colors and just painted away. I wish I could have stayed longer – I really like what came out of our experimenting!

I painted Grapevine in neat little stripes, all in the same order: dark purple, burgundy, emerald green. Again and again I did this, leaving a small white space between the colors to allow the colors to bleed a bit. Naomi showed me how to wrap it up, and then she placed it in a pot she purchased specifically for steam-setting hand painted yarn. After about 30 minutes had passed, my beautiful yarn came out!

After the controlled excursion with the first 4 ounces of fiber, I wanted to be a little more… unusual. Naomi and I took 3 colors – sky blue, pink, and gunmetal grey – and dabbed them randomly over the white merino wool. There was no rhyme or reason. It kind of looked like a hideous mess. After we heated it up, however, I got a sight to behold! I’m rather proud of New Baby.

The process was way easier than I thought it would be. I forgot to bring my camera, but Naomi was nice enough to lend me hers and post the photos before the end of the night. What a gal! So, how easy is dying?

1. Soak the fiber in cool water for at least 5 minutes, but the longer the better. Some even recommend soaking the fiber overnight. As I understand it, this process opens up the cuticles of the fiber, making it more receptive to the dye.
2. Mix the dyes. We put 2 cups of water, a tiny bit of a Jacquard dye, and “some” (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 cup?) of vinegar into a mason jar. I should point out that these are acid dyes, so the vinegar is crucial in getting the dye to set.
3. Start a pot of water to boil. Make sure that the pot has some sort of steaming rack.
4. Line your counter top with newspaper and plastic wrap. This serves 2 purposes. First, it protects the counters from getting all dyed-up. Second, it gives you something to wrap the painted fiber in when you get to the appropriate step.
5. Squeeze as much water out of the undyed fiber as you can. Wrap it in a towel and stand on it for best results.
6. Lay the fiber on the plastic wrap.
7. Paint the fiber in whatever manner you choose. Naomi and I did some of the work with foam brushes, and some with these applicators that look like condiment bottles.
8. Wrap the fiber with the plastic wrap.
9. Put the package on the steam rack of the pot. Be sure the water is boiling before putting the fiber in.
10. Wait about 30 minutes (give or take).
11. Remove the fiber from the pot and let it cool.
12. When the fiber is cool, rinse it with water until the water runs clear. If you skip this step, your hands may be covered with dye when you try to spin the fiber, or anything you launder with the finished product will get stained from the loose dye.
13. Squeeze as much of the water out of the fiber as you can. Put the fiber in a pillow case or a garment bag.
14. Place the bags of fiber in your washing machine (top loading only!). Turn it to the spin cycle to get the remaining water out.
15. Let it dry.
16. Admire your work. Photograph it. Give it a name.

This, my friends, is fun with fiber!

Plans change

So, after all the talk about what sort of spinning tools I wanted and what I have space for, I have decided to get a wheel sooner rather than later. I have done some spinning on my drop spindle, and it’s okay (plying is a nightmare for me on the spindle), but I just prefer the wheel so much more. I’m also dumping the drum carder plan for now. Jamie, one of the owners of Urban Fauna Studio, was instrumental in this decision. She informed me that I could rent time on their carder. She also encouraged me to do research before making such a big investment. The store owners could have totally let me just spend gobs of money recklessly, but they actually seemed concerned about getting me what I really want, even if I didn’t know what it was yet.

Kathryn (the woman who organized the San Francisco Knit in Public Day event in Union Square, and another excited customer) turned me on to fiber combs. I think these are really what I want – they remove the little noils you find in some carded fiber. After spinning some fiber that had these little design features, I learned that I prefer to make smooth yarns. That’s not to say that I won’t ever want to spin art yarns like that, but for now, I have my preferences. I did some research on the combs online, and I think I have an idea of what I want, but I will ask Jamie for her professional advice when I get back to her shop.

I’ve made some great purchases already from Urban Fauna. I finally got a niddy noddy. I finished it with Danish oil, and I intend to finish my new wheel the same way so they match. I also acquired some more fiber. I got too excited and spun a bag of their mixed fiber without photographing it first, but I managed to get a picture of the Angelina (ooh, sparkly), the merino wool/tencel blend, and a tube of mixed fibers for blending (hopefully on soon-to-be purchased combs).

I have been attempting to make do with my spindle for the moment. The green fiber with the noils is on the spindle in the first picture. I plied the 3 yarns in the next picture to make the tiny bit of yarn on the spindle in the third picture.

I had plenty more fiber to make more of the plied yarn, but I was unable to complete the process due to an uncooperative ball of silk fiber. The tan ball is tussah silk. As I was plying the yarn, the other end of the ball of silk came free and tangled with the working end. I tried to untangle it, but it got caught in the yarn again as I was plying it and it became a total knot. This would have been a lot easier on a wheel (most particularly, on a bobbin). Lesson learned.