Two birds with one stone

Tuesday afternoon, I got to make use of Mike for the first time!

I made a brief sojourn to A Touch of Twist (during which it started to snow like crazy, but I was too stubborn to turn back), bought some fairly inexpensive white wool and some slightly more expensive crazy-colored wool, and returned to the house to spin!

I've only seen someone else use a spinning wheel up close once. The other times I caught glimpses were all through crowds at Rhinebeck. So, being the way I am and liking to teach myself how to do things, I got a stack of spinning books out of the library last week. Before I sat down with Mike and my wool for the first time, I spent a bit of time flipping through them and reading the bits that were pertinent for someone just starting out.

Of course, there's a lot I still don't know about spinning. There's a lot I have to learn and there's a very good chance that I'm doing something wrong. (Did I ever mention that I purled the wrong way for about the first year and a half of my knitting life?)

That said, I really enjoyed myself and produced this:



My first crappy handspun!

So then I had this handspun. It was white. It looked funny. What to do with it? Why, get some Kool-Aid, of course, and make it my first dyeing project!

I had to hunt around to three stores for the Kool-Aid I wanted, which is kind of sad given that I grew up drinking the stuff and every store used to have scads of those little packets. But I did finally locate the colors I wanted.



Lemonade and tropical punch, respectively. It only occurred to me after I made a complete mess of the stove that I probably should have suspended the yarn over the pan on a spoon handle or something. Ah well, live and learn!



After the obligatory rinsing and drying, the yarn miraculously looked less odd, at least to me. To me, it suddenly looked less like crappy, over-twisted first handspun and more like some of the deliberately uneven yarns on the market.

I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. I'm thinking a hat, if there's enough. If not?



There's always batch #2 from today!

Mood: accomplished
Music: The Frames - Your Face (live)