making: a shawl, yarn, and jam

Today's post is going to be more cheerful than the last one. Yes, I'm doing better, and have taken constructive steps so I don't implode. Also, I've gotten a short story rejected from two different magazines, and am setting up to take another run at sending it in to another magazine. The rejections didn't crush me (unlike my first book rejection a few years ago did - man, I did not react well to that!); they were pretty much expected. At some point, hopefully, I'll get an acceptance and it'll be a lovely surprise. In the meantime, story rejections aren't exactly personal. I've been going through my other short stories and, unfortunately, classifying most of them as "rubbish," "really bizarre and pointless," "from my way-too-religious high school phase," or "my brief foray into trying to make romance writing work." I don't think I'll give up on that last category, but the take-away has been that I need to write more and better short stories, along with working on Ley Lines.

In the part of my life where I make things, I finished a shawl for a friend and sent it off to her. It turned out beautifully, as you can see below.

Dragon Wings shawl

The shawl pattern is Dragon Wing, by the designer Patti Waters. It's available on Knitty.com. I knit it out of Handmaiden Seasilk, which is awesome, awesome yarn. The colourway is "Glacier," if you're interested. I got it secondhand from someone who was selling off part of her stash, so I got it for half-price. This is expensive stuff, and I've been hoarding my two skeins for a while until I could figure out what to make with them. This left me with about 70% of a skein, enough for a pair of mitts. I love the yarn, though my colour preferences usually lean a bit more vivid. Next time I buy some Handmaiden, I'm definitely picking one of their other colourways. The last skein I had of one of their other yarns was in "Nova Scotia," which is blue and green. It was gorgeous and I still love the mitts I made with it, but I'm really attracted to warmer colours, like purples and reds and browns lately. And Handmaiden has some amazing warm-toned colourways. (No, I don't get paid by them or anything like that; I just happen to live in the same country so their yarns turn up at a lot of local shops and they're pretty).

Silk hankies/mawata dyed with food colouring

I started (and finished!) a spinning project. It's been a while since I've done any spinning, so it's been nice to pull out the wheel and see how out-of-practice I am. I had some silk hankies (mawata) in my fiber stash, which I had dyed with food colouring (see above picture). I spent a couple afternoons working through the hankies, spinning singles. Silk hankies are hard on the hands, since you have to stretch them to prep the fiber. Silk's tough enough that I've actually developed blisters on a couple fingers.

The singles were a little inconsistent; some of that has to do with my lack of practice, but some of it was related to the material. Silk hankies aren't like working with combed top or roving, and silk doesn't adjust as easily while spinning as other animal fibers do. So there are some super-thin bits, and some puffy bits. When I plied the singles together, I ended up with a yarn that runs a little thick-and-thin, from light-fingering to DK/worsted, averaging out to a DK weight through most of the skein.

2-ply silk yarn

The final skein weighed about 45 grams (the last 5 grams are still on the bobbin; I ran out of yardage on the second bobbin and stopped there; it'll be chain-plied later so I can practice that technique), and, measuring with my 1.5 meter niddy-noddy, I ended up with about 155 meters. It's enough to actually do something with. I think it'll probably be a hat.

I've also managed to make time to do a little bit of canning. We do have a ridiculous number of jars of jam to work through over the summer, but it's also that time of year. I'm working my way through the recipes in Preserving by the Pint that pique my interest. Marisa McClellan's most recently released book is a lovely little gem of a cookbook that focuses on extra-small batch preserves. Rather than making half a dozen pints of jam, the recipes usually make a couple pints at most. The recipes I made yesterday gave me two 250-ml jars each.

 

 

Two jars of jam; two jars of strawberries

I made a batch of Whole Strawberries in Vanilla Syrup, because I had strawberries in the fridge that were starting to go. I had to cut some in half because these were bigger ones, unlike the small ones recommended in the recipe. The stuff tastes amazing, and I had a ridiculous amount of syrup left over. There's a 500-ml jar in the fridge that is mostly full of strawberry-vanilla syrup and will be going on pancakes.

The other jam I made was the Apricot Rosemary jam. Apricots are in at the produce store right now, so I grabbed a few (several more than I needed, so more apricots, enough for a different recipe, are on the grocery list) and some rosemary, and whipped these up pretty quickly. It smells fantastic and the taste is pretty unique. I think it'll go well on some kind of meat or with cheese. I got two 250-ml jars out of it. I'm out of empty 125-ml jars, so the last of it went into a container in the fridge.

I'm off to the farmer's market this afternoon, and I plan to pick up some local strawberries there. I want to do a batch of strawberry jam and another round of the strawberries in syrup. I think we may need a trip to the store to stock up on sugar, since we're almost out.

Knit City!

So, I'm a dork who forgot her camera, so I don't have any actual pictures from Knit City, Vancouver's fiber festival (now in its second year, and even more awesome this time around). It was lovely, though we didn't stay too long, because Munchkin was sleeping peacefully and we wanted to make it home before she woke up and got grouchy. I did a wander-through, hung out at the guild booth, talked myself out of saying hi to the Yarn Harlot (I have met her, but only briefly at a book signing last year), and found something cool, which I do have a picture of.

Qiviut. Real qiviut.

I have this policy with spinning fibers right now. If I haven't worked with it before, then I can consider buying it. Ancient Arts Fiber Crafts was doing 30% off their exotic fibers. This included 25 gram bags of raw qiviut, originally at a dollar per gram. That's right. I have qiviut.

Qiviut, from the Artic musk ox, is one of those horrendously expensive fibers. It is soft, fluffy, the animals shed it in small amounts, and there are relatively few Artic musk oxen running around. This contributes to qiviut yarn frequently costing $60-$100 a ball. The stores in the area that carry it keep the stuff locked up in glass cases by the cash register.

My qiviut is a brown-grey, and is liberally sprinkled with black guard hairs. It's raw fiber, not processed, which is partly why I could justify buying it.

This will be less than 25 grams once I finish winnowing out the guard hairs. I plan to spin it as fine as I can manage, since this is best as a lace-weight yarn (it goes farther that way). Once I know what my yardage is, I'll make a decision on what it will be. In the meantime, I will bask in the glory of having qiviut, and curse those pecky guard hairs.

thinking about a year-long project...

In a discussion with my friend Emily recently, I mentioned my growing desire to spin, weave, and hand-sew an entire outfit. She said that it would be a good year-long blog project. Now it's in my head.

Of course, I don't have a loom. The project would have to wait until I did. But I can muse over it until then.

First, I considered the prospect of using flax. Then I thought about how to get that much flax, how I'd have to order it online, since the closest thing I seem able to get around here is hemp fibre, and how much that would then cost. Should I go with combed top or line fiber or strick? I have no idea. It's not completely off the list, but it's much easier to get a fleece. I know a sheep-shearer with a garage full of fleeces, and I have acquaintances who own sheep. Wool is easy to prepare, and easy to spin. I know what I'm doing when it comes to wool.

Second, there's the question of what to use for spinning. Do I go old-school and use a drop spindle, or do I pick the easier option of the spinning wheel? If I pick the drop spindle option, which of my spindles do I use? Since I want to weave this, I'll have to pick something that I can spin finer weight yarn on, which means my favourite spindle, the Turkish one, is out. Or I could just go with the spinning wheel. That'd be easier, but less "authentic," since what I'm going for is the experience of what it was like back in the days when people had to prepare the fibre, and then spin and weave and sew it by hand. I'd have to spin it fine enough to get away with hand-spun thread for sewing it, as well as for weaving, too.

Third: The colour question. Do I dye the fibre before I spin it, after it's spun up, or after I weave it? Would I go with the natural dyes option, or just pick iDye or Jacquard? Would I do more than one colour (thereby affecting what I would weave), or just do a single shade? In this case, I'd probably do the natural dyes, since that would be more in keeping with what I want here, but I have no idea about single versus multiple colours at this point.

Fourth: The loom. I don't have one. I have friends who weave and have looms, but borrowing one for a year isn't a terribly great idea, because we don't have a lot of space. A friend has a line on a (potentially) inexpensive beginners' loom that I might be able to get cheap, but it's not a guarantee. The limitations of that are that it would be a narrow loom--maybe 20 inches, which would then affect the sewing. I'd have to do a lot of panels. But this would be a table loom, so I would have room for it. At this point, I'd have to do basic weaving, since I haven't actually woven anything before. Although...if I did multiple colours, I could weave plaid. And that would just be awesome.

Fifth: The sewing. Easy enough. I've hand-sewn an entire quilt before. I can do that. I'd have to pick a pattern or draft my own, and decide on the style. Given what I'm thinking about, it'd end up being medieval in style, and then I could wear it to the Renaissance Faire.

That's just the short list. This would involve a lot of sampling and swatching, too, before I could get going properly. But it's certainly something to think about doing once I do have a loom.

One fleece, one wheel (or one spindle), one loom, one year. One outfit. Thoughts?

handspun

This is what happened to the BFL roving I bought during Yarn Harvest. I spun it up on my wheel and then plied it. It ranges from worsted to bulky weight, and I have three small skeins which total about 170 yards. I love the way it turned out. It's a soft red with bits of white and a shade verging on black in it. You'd think it'd look like candy-cane yarn, because of the red and the white, but it doesn't. Instead, it reminds me more of warmth. Not fire, because the red isn't orange enough for that, but when I look at it, I think of fire and heat.

It's very gratifying to be producing yarn that I feel confident about knitting with. I'm even decently happy with my plying job, although I think that's going to take more practice, too. Right now I don't have anything on the wheel. I have the last ball of some purple merino that needs plying on my Turkish spindle, and I have some of the Wensleydale roving on my top-whorl spindle. There's also some blue merino that I'll be starting on the wheel when I've finished those.

In the meantime, I have other things which need to be done. My cold's getting better. I woke up in the middle of the night last night and suddenly I could breathe. My voice is still a little rough, I'm still a bit congested, but I feel way better than I did yesterday.

Sadly, I don't have pictures of these, because the camera's out of batteries right now, but I got some fun fiber yesterday during Yarn Harvest.

My team (Team Grand Tour) made it to seven stores. My budget being limited, I was only able to purchase a few things. At Black Sheep I got some hemp yarn. I'm excited about this. I haven't knit with hemp in a while and I like its texture. It is cinnamon-coloured. Then, when we went to Sweet Georgia (it was like walking into a rainbow!), I got 50 grams of Wensleydale roving in blue and green. I had to have it as soon as I saw the word "Wensleydale" on the tag. It reminded me of Wallace and Gromit. And then, at our next-to-last stop, Knitopia, I picked up about 125 grams of BFL (Blue-Faced Leicester) roving in cherry red with hints of white and black.

And with that final purchase, that was my budget for the day. I didn't really want to spend a lot--I was more interested in seeing what the shops had, since I don't usually travel very far afield to buy fiber. I would have liked to buy something at Penelope Fiber, because she has a fantastic selection of roving, but that'll just have to wait for the next time I get out to White Rock. And last time I went to her shop, I bought some merino that I haven't finished pre-drafting yet (I'm turning into a pre-drafting maniac---it makes spinning a lot easier). Turns out a couple hundred grams is actually a pretty good-sized amount of wool.

So in the meantime, I've started the BFL roving on my spinning wheel, and the Wensleydale roving on my top-whorl spindle. The Wensleydale is, of course, a longwool and has a decent amount of crimp in it. It spins up very easily, and my goal for this is to ply it so it will self-stripe fairly well.

And with that, I'm off to bed. I'm tired.

The rain came back! I looked out the window this morning and the lower mainland I love has returned (although, according to the weather forecast, just for a couple days, then it's going to get hot again).

I finished my Ballet Camisole a couple days ago. It turned out well. It actually fits, for one thing, unlike the Askew top I knit last summer, which didn't. I had the good sense to shorten the armholes by an inch on each side, so the neckline is low but not plunging. The only problem I can see is that I wore it outside yesterday, when it was still sunny, and forgot to put on sunscreen. It reveals just a tad more skin around my neck than anything else I have, so now I have a lovely bright red sunburn.

The sunburn's just in time for that wedding I'm in next Friday. Hopefully it'll fade by then.

The spinning is going well--I spun up a couple bobbins-worth of single-ply, and now I'm plying it into a 2-ply, which fills the bobbin up very quickly. Plying isn't difficult, but fine-tuning it is. Now that I have a spinning wheel, I'll have to learn how to Navajo-ply. I'm guessing that's more complicated but probably worth it. I think I'll want to refine my technique with the single-ply first, though. It's still messier than I'd like, but I think some of that is due to the wool. I'm using some of the Clun Forest wool I bought last year (something like 200 g for $6, so I bought it for practicing with). It's much rougher than some of the other ones I've tried (so far, just BFL, Corriedale, and merino) and there's still lanolin in it. But practicing with it before I move on to the merino seems like a good idea. I think I might use the yarn for a teacosy when I'm done with it, because the teapot doesn't mind having rough wool against it.

Speaking of tea, a cup of tea sounds lovely. I'm going to go make one.

introducing the spinning wheel

This is Caitlin. I briefly posted yesterday, mostly to get pictures I could put up on Ravelry while I was asking a tech question. But here she is, in the living room, by the balcony.

And here she is in the spare bedroom/study/storage room/place where all the craft junk ends up. She has an eighteen-inch flywheel, and stands, at the tallest, about 35 inches. If you don't count the bit that looks like a distaff (I don't know if it is or if it's just meant to be decorative), she's somewhere between 28-30 inches tall.

According to my research, Caitlin is a bobbin-lead spinning wheel. There is no marking visible on the wheel, so I don't know where she was made. I do know that she was a fairly decent bargain, as most spinning wheels I've seen on eBay have been over twice what this was and we only had to replace the hooks on the flyer assembly. Also I need to buy a washer or two tomorrow because the bobbin slides forward a tad and then the fibre wraps around the spindle shaft. Other than that, she needed cleaning, and the spindle shaft had to be twisted back to its proper position so the hole for the orifice was actually visible. That's it.

I wasn't actually in the market for a spinning wheel, given how expensive they usually are. The last time I'd seen a used one for sale locally, it was at an antique shop, and then it was a couple hundred bucks. It was very pretty, but it would have been impractical at the time, and I don't even know if it was in working order. I was pretty happy with my drop spindles, although I wasn't really looking forward to spinning up some beautiful blue merino I bought at Christmas on my spindle, given that there was a decent amount of it. I haven't been doing much spinning over the last few months, but I'm slowly making my way through some purple merino using my top-whorl spindle. I love spinning but between school and moving and everything else, it's been easier to shelve it for a while and just knit.

J. dropped by Salvation Army on his way home from the produce store on Saturday, noticed the spinning wheel, and told me about it when he got home. We did the practical "can we afford it?" bit before I went to look at it, then we bought it and brought it home. I've been practicing treadling, and I started trying to spin when I ran into the problem of the bobbin moving a bit. That'll be fixed tomorrow and then I can practice properly. I have some practice wool I bought last year and there was a decent amount left over from my practicing with it on the drop spindle.

My efforts so far have not been encouraging, as coordinating treadling and handling the fiber is not as easy as it looks. I'm so used to the vertical aspect of spindling that feeding the fiber in horizontally feels very strange. A decent amount of practice should fix that, though.

In the meantime, it is getting late. Good night!

new member of the family

Look what we found at Salvation Army! It's not in working order yet because it's missing the orifice, but I'm working on fixing that. Hopefully, in a few days, it'll be useable.

V-Con! (and a new spindle!)

Yesterday, we went to V-Con. After an hour or so on the bus and the SkyTrain, we arrived, paid our entrance fee, and wandered around. I wore my Jayne hat. I didn't feel like doing a costume, but wearing a Jayne hat, while wandering around with a partially knitted blue and white sock in hand does indicate that one is a geek of some sort.

I'm a webcomics geek, a sort of gaming geek (mostly by association, since my husband's a gaming geek), and a sci-fi geek of sorts (limited to Star Trek, Stargate, Joss Whedon series, and Zenna Henderson novels). I don't really read manga or watch anime, I'm not into Star Wars (although the 501st were there and that was pretty cool), and I don't dress up like a pirate wench (there were a few of those lugging a cardboard cutout of Jack Sparrow everywhere, including into the women's bathroom). So, oddly enough, I felt just a little out of place there. Maybe it was because I neglected to bring my cloak (although, since my cloak is green and blue plaid wool, and actually practical to wear, it might not have fit in all that well, since everyone else's was black and light-weight). Or it could have been due to my typical reaction to large crowds of strangers. I get quieter than usual, and shy.

I did have a lot of fun, though. We went this year mostly because Ryan Sohmer and Lar deSouza of LFG and Least I Could Do were there. I read Least I Could Do more than LFG these days (I like LFG, but since I'm only a gamer by association, it's perhaps not quite as funny to me as it is to J.). The author/artist of Goblins was also there, which I don't read, but J. does. So now we have an LFG book and a Goblins book. And I have a picture of Sohmer holding my sock. Thanks again for letting us take a picture!

We went to the game room and I got to play a round of Race for the Galaxy with the new expansion pack (J. just got the expansion pack last week and I hadn't gotten a chance to play it with him yet). I came in third in a five-player game. Then J. played Pandemic and I went to hang out and knit before the webcomics panel. That was fun (the panel, I mean). It was fascinating to hear what they had to say. My former roommate and I had briefly debated doing a webcomic a couple years ago. She'd do mostly drawing and I'd write (she can write but I can't draw well, so the storyline would have been a joint effort). Never got farther than the conceptual stage, though. It would be fun, but I doubt either of us has the time to commit to it.

So, my husband's souvenirs from V-Con were the books. Mine were the above picture of Sohmer with the sock, and this:


I bought this from Gaukler Medieval Wares, which had a booth at the Con. The whorl is a cast reproduction of a medieval spindle whorl. They also had actual medieval, Byzantine, and Roman spindle whorls (which, of course, exceeded my price range, but it was lovely to drool over them). I'd been looking for a shawl pin, and was at their booth when I spotted this. Then I forgot about the shawl pin (I have the ability to find fiber arts stuff just about anywhere--if it's there, I will find it--whether it's fiber, yarn, spindles, or fabric). I gave it a try when I got home, and while I'm not quite used to working with a bead-whorl spindle yet (as it handles a bit differently), I am happy about the yarn I'm getting from it. I love my Turkish spindle, but the finest I can spin on it, without the thread breaking, is probably at least twice as thick as what I can get on this. The plan is to practice with some of the Clun Forest for now, and then spin the merino I bought a while ago into either lace or fingering weight.

Here's a close-up of the whorl.
J. asked me if I'd bought a wand when he saw it.

Progress is being made on the Wonderland socks. I've had to edit a few rows of the tail out to make the socks the length that I want. I'm almost to the end of the tail. Then comes the ribbing, the bind-off, and the cast-on for the next sock. I also have the yarn for the cardigan the Tuesday knit night is doing as a knit-along. I've swatched, but I should cast on for that soon. The only planned change is to add pockets.

I also am checking out a webcomic I hadn't read before. Wasted Talent. So far, I like it.

not enough pictures

We took a trip down to the PNE on Saturday, just a couple days before it closes for the winter. This was my first time there, even though I've lived in this area for about four years. My husband's parents were in the area because his younger sister is starting university this year. We helped her move in and then headed out to Vancouver and the PNE. I stuffed the last Bombadil Sock into my purse and pulled it out in the truck.

Originally, the plan was to bike around the park there, but the weather had other plans, so we wandered around instead. We started out looking at the gadget demonstrations, but my husband and I weren't interested in most of those, so we headed off to find the animals instead. We finally found them and walked through, looking at horses (there were some enormous Clydesdales), cows, chickens, llamas, and sheep. There were a couple of Clun Forest sheep, so I got to see the kind of sheep that the batt of undyed wool I've been spinning lately came from. There were fluffy Angora bunnies, too. Adorable puffballs.

I found the spinning demonstration and chatted with one of the women there, and then took a look at the fiber being sold. I looked at the inexpensive top whorl spindles there and decided not to buy one. When I get another spindle, I want to spend the money for one that I'll like and want to use. Deciding whether or not to buy fiber was a challenge, though. There were some pretty colours. I finally settled for this:

It's Corriedale roving from Shades of Narnia. I liked the colours and since I'm learning to ply yarn now, I figured I can get a decent two-ply from it if I wait to spin it until I'm a little bit better at this. It might turn into something I can knit a pair of socks out of.

We watched a show of performing dogs, which was too loud for me, but it was a chance to sit and rest my feet. We got there early so I had some time to knit for a while. Then we went to an ATV racing event. We came in about five minutes before they switched over to what was essentially sumo wrestling with trucks. Again, a chance to sit and knit, since this was something J. wanted to watch. In the evening, we went to the RCMP Musical Ride, for which we were also early. More time to knit, and we ran into a friend from Langley that we hadn't seen in a while. It was a lot of fun. I think I'd probably like to go next year, too. It reminds me of the county fairs in Oregon. They even had elephant ears, although here they go by the name "Whale Tails."

I wish I had more pictures, but I forgot my camera. Next time.

pictures of the pretty spindle

Picture time! Below is my drop spindle with a leader on it.

Here it is being spun around.

And here it is with yarn on it!


And this is a small skein of single-ply yarn that I've spun.

My first attempts were pretty messy, and while I still get bits that are too thick or too thin, or not twisted enough in places, overall, the yarn is starting to look more consistent. The fiber is a superwash Blue-Faced Leicester that I bought at the LYS. I liked the pretty colours. It's also nice and soft and I was told it was a good fiber to start with. I've actually spun about enough now to try knitting this hat. As it was written for handspun, I figure it might work decently well.

And, as I must do with many items, I have given my spindle a name (our old car was named Eleanor, my mandolin is named Jason, I've got a teacup called Hester--yes, it's silly, but I like naming things). So this spindle is called "Tara." After the character on Buffy. Yes, I'm a Buffy geek, and Tara is one of my favourite characters in the show. I was always so annoyed that they killed her off. And I've been watching episodes of the show while spinning. It seemed fitting. Plus, she seemed like the only character on the show who might spin her own yarn.

I take the plunge

The news of my LYS moving to another city, over hour's bus ride away from where I live, when it used to be a ten-minute walk from my home, was saddening. I was also suddenly filled with a little bit of panic. Where else was I going to be able to go and drool over spindles and roving while thinking about buying one of those things and learning to spin? The other yarn store in the area, to my knowledge, doesn't carry these things (I've only been there a few times since I have no car and I'm only in that area of town on Sundays for church, and they're closed then).

I caught the spinning bug earlier this year, in the spring. Like knitting, it was something that I toyed with for a while in my head before succumbing. I watched people at knit night (spinning is a hypnotic activity). I read books. I admired the roving at the LYS. And the spindles--oh, they have some lovely handmade spindles there. One of my friends, the one who taught me to knit and started this whole fiber addiction, said, "Hey, we should learn to spin together this fall!" I agreed, thinking it sounded like fun. Sherie, me, a couple of drop spindles, some fiber, and a lot of laughter. Sounded good. So I thought happily about it all summer, looked forward to it, and a couple weeks ago, I bought my spindle. I'm starting early.

I talked with a friend at knitting group about what she thought was good for a beginner and what she recommended, so that's why I ended up with a Turkish spindle. Most of the spindles I'd seen before had been top-whorl spindles, with a disc-shaped whorl near the top of the shaft. I'd seen pictures of bottom-whorl spindles, with the whorl at the bottom, and Turkish spindles, where the whorl is made of two interlocking pieces of wood that form a cross, which the yarn is wrapped around as it is spun. You have to stop every once in a while to wind the yarn around, but when you're done, you slide the whorl off, slip out the pieces of wood, and you have a centre-pull ball. Ingenious.

So, that's why I have a Turkish spindle. It's pretty (although not as pretty as some top-whorl spindles I've seen--those seem to be more prone to decoration). I found some roving (at least, I think it's roving--there are all these names out there and I haven't gotten them all sorted out yet--maybe it's top) in pretty shades of indigo. A bundle of that is way more fun to hug than a ball of yarn. I could hardly stop looking at it and wanting to pet it.

When I got home, I looked up some videos and discovered after a few goofs, that when I spin with this spindle, I have to make a half-hitch near the top of the shaft (Why is it tipping sideways? Oh. That's why! All better now!). Then you give the whorl a spin and off you go.

Every time I seem to be getting better at spinning, I make another goof. The yarn is slowly becoming more even each time I practice, but then I do something that makes it lumpy. Or that makes it extra twisty (sounds like some kind of chicken). I seem to have problems with either over-twisting or under-twisting the yarn. It's going to be pretty interesting-looking single ply yarn (until I can produce a consistent result, I don't plan to try plying my yarn).

I started out standing, figuring that gave me more time. Now I'm trying sitting. Shorter lengths mean I concentrate more on what I'm doing. I looked up some of the various ways of drafting. Right now I take about a yard or so of the top, separate it into finer lengths, and work from those. Probably overkill, but until my spinning improves, this works.

I knit a coaster from the first very lumpy bits of yarn I made. It's blue and fuzzy and now lives underneath a vase on my coffee table. It was very lumpy. The next bit, a little less so. The stuff I just took off my spindle tonight? Even better. It still varies in thickness, but overall it's becoming finer. I'll have to wash it and set the twist and see what I can do with it. If there's enough, there's this hat pattern I want to try that was designed for handspun. If not, well, I can spin more. There's still quite a bit of top left in that bag.