It looks like Spring!

The lilacs are budding...

The geese have returned to our (almost underwater) island...

(click to biggify - you can just barely see the white on her head to the right of the tree)

And it's nice enough to spin on the deck again!

(with my shadow, of course!)

I had to switch to the other bench after a bit as the front on the glider is just too high to sit for long comfortably.  But it sure was nice being outside for awhile - breezy, not too sunny, lots of birds singing, the Kindle was reading a Sherlock Holmes homage story to me....

While spinning away, our local fox almost caught the gander - hopefully the gander will be a bit more alert now.  Wish I'd had my camera to hand to catch a picture of him!

My sister seems to like the heavy spindle I made for her; I made a couple smaller ones too, but she stuck with the larger.  And she *loved* the baby alpaca. :-D  I think she needs a better teacher though!

"Lazy" with a capital "L"

I've been a bit lazy again this week, so not much was accomplished.  Although... I did rearrange the guest/fiber room *again* - this makes 3 times since I brought the great wheel home!  So far I like this iteration:

I tried spinning my friend's BL rolags on the great wheel, and I'm still doing a really bad job of it.  I'm going to keep trying -  but I definitely get better results with spinning longdraw from the fold.

I took the Bulky Pinkie in to work and have started the Jacob

 so that's one less wheel in the house.  Also the tiny Normandy wheel is off on the next leg of it's journey this week. :-)

I also started the baby camel/silk blend on the Reeves - it sure looks different after spinning, but I still love it.  So far it hasn't been too challenging to spin, other than there is a lot of flyaways.

I also whipped up this spindle for my sister, who may be interested in spinning.  Originally I was going to lend her my spare Spindolyn, but I think the likelihood of her really being interested is low, so we'll start her on this.

It's a bit heavy for drop-spindling, but I'm going to try to get her to use it as a supported spindle.  It will be easy enough to make a lighter one (which I may do before I see her this weekend) as well - these are just toy wheels and dowels from Hobby Lobby. It spins *forever*. :-)

Oh I hate when that happens!

Not sure how I did it, but wow is there a lot left on bobbin #2!

Luckily I learned a nifty winding-on-the-hand-for-plying technique from Patsy Z., so I was able to ply the 'leftover' easily.  My spinning was a little less uneven than usual on this really nice undyed BFL roving.  I don't usually go for white but I really like the look of this yarn. :-)

This week I picked up a bit of baby alpaca as my other sister might be interested in learning to spin.  I played with a bit, spinning from from the fold which surprisingly made it 'hairy'. Wow is it soft!

I also picked up some carbonized bamboo, out of curiousity:

It feels 'squeaky', and should be an interesting spin.

Also, a couple of my spinning buddies gave me some fiber.  One gave me some hand-carded BL rolags to try on the great wheel.

 She does nice hand-carding!

And another gave me some lovely sproingy Jacob roving to play with.  I'm thinking of taking the Bulky Pinkie to work and spinning the Jacob there.  Isn't it purty?

I've spent most of my energy this weekend re-arranging the guest/fiber room to 'fit' the great wheel - yeah that's not working out so well.  I even moved the exercycle to the dining room (which necessitated moving a sewing machine cabinet into the living room and more shuffling around).  I managed to get 5 wheels (actually 6, counting the tiny Normandy wheel that is on its way to a new home) in there now, and I can still use the GW without moving things around.  Since the BPinkie is going to work (or my mom's - not sure yet) with me and I still sort of have room for the Reeves in the living room it kind of works, but wow is it still messy.

I need to do something about that shelving unit - it looks awful!  (It would help if I could stop buying Corgi Hill Farm fiber!)  Some of the stash on that shelf needs to go back downstairs to the basement stash.  And I need to get on the ball on spinning up some of this stuff.  I still have a ton of the red colonial to spin that I started years ago, plus several bobbins that need to be plyed.  Maybe while I'm recovering from moving all this heavy stuff I will design my electric plyer and get it built during the week.  Having that, as long as it works, should speed some things up a bit.

Speaking of CHF - next up on the Reeves is this lovely green multi camel/silk blend, called "Treebeard":

 It looks a lot lighter now that I've stripped some of it, but I haven't spun any yet.  I was going to do a bump of merino/silk in a celadon color, but this grabbed my eye first and there isn't as much as the celadon so I'll get it done sooner (she said hopefully). :-)