Men Who Knit Promoting and inspiring the art of knitting amongst men.

(Well, it got your interest)
At our annual garage sale at the knitting guild in May, where one exchanges some of your stash for other people's stash to keep for awhile, I promised myself I wasn't going to get anything, simply because... well, I really don't need anything. However, I wouldn't turn down an irresistible bargain, you understand?

There really wasn't anything that caught my eye, so that was good. A few magazines and pattern books that were for free were interesting, but overall, I already had everything I wanted.

There was a bag of fibre though. It was black. The girl that had it is a spinner, but she said she just didn't have the time for it, and needed to move it out (to make room for other things, you think?) and it was at a reasonable price. It was labelled "alpaca". Well, it did feel nice, and I haven't spun much of it lately, and... Well, I resisted!

After sitting and chatting with some ladies, I kept thinking about it. I could hear it calling to me! No one else seemed to be interested in it, and I went up for a last look. And I felt very frivolous at the last moment, and what the heck, I purchased it!

Okay, I started spinning some as soon as I got home, because I had to find out what it was like. And it was great! I loved it! It wanted to spin fine -- it told me that -- and I obliged.

Eventually I had enough to ply and did so. It made a lovely skein, 2-ply this time, and as it hung in front of where I work at home, I kept looking at it while spinning more. It was really gorgeous and I loved looking at it. All kinds of ideas were going through my head as to what I would do with it, but there was still time. All the while I was dreaming, I was spinning away on my spindle, watching movies or listening to music.

It took an entire long evening to spin one cop, and over 5 hours to ply one skein! What could one charge for this, if one wanted to sell such a skein?

So as always happens in situations like this, I came to the bottom of the bag, and there was no more! I had spun up the whole bag of it! That was so sad. I really enjoyed spinning this. I made several skeins, and washed them at the same time, and hung it all to dry. In total I have 6 skeins, weighing in at 518.6 gm. That is over a pound. I think I have about 200 m per skein, although that varied. Still, quite a lot!

I still have no idea of a project, but I think it will be lace. And maybe some beads this time. I have several designs that will be good candidates. Just to get started.

At the moment, I'm going through some withdrawal. I miss that alpaca! I have some merino/silk that I could work on, which I would love, but it just isn't calling to me very loudly quite yet. I tried doing a swatch for a neck-scarf I had seen in my head, but it is not holding my interest. *sigh* This is always such a painful period.

Anyway, you can see a pic of the skeins in my album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tallguy403/Spinning#