The Fiber:
Superwash Merino in the colorway ‘Kaleidoscope’, dyed by Spincerely Yours.

The Yarn:

The top was split lengthwise in half; each bobbin spun from opposite ends to create a 2-ply barber pole effect. 3.9 oz / approx 401 yards.

I am very happy with how this yarn came out. It’s consistent and very soft and shows that all the work I’ve done to learn and improve my spinning is paying off, but I don’t love it.

Part of that is having too much green and another part is not being a huge fan of barber pole yarn. But with that said, I am holding out to see how this yarn will look knit up. Up until this point, I’ve been spinning for the sake of getting the yarn I want, with no regard for how it will knit up. Time to take it a step further. After I wind it into a ball (after the requisite period of just petting and squishing the skein), and determine wraps per inch, we’ll see what this yarn wants to be. (I know what I want it to be, but I’ve learned that Yarn can be a bit stubborn in that regard.)

I will end with a tip for you:

When wet finishing your yarn, it’s important to remember that the yarn is superwash, or else you’ll spend five minutes beating up your yarn, wondering why it’s not fulling & fluffing up. (Granted, this was my first superwash wool yarn, and I’m used to non-superwash yarn. Yeah. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it! )

I wish you peace, joy and lots of squishable fiber.

It is cost effective to practice a project on copper wire before before working with silver but you can end up with something you really like.

These earrings are very basic and were really easy to make. I wasn’t sure about it after I made the spirals but the hammering and texturing really made a difference. Sometimes the simplest things can be come something very nice.

They’d make a nice Christmas present, don’t you think?

I have a great love of classical music – especially symphonic music from the Romantic period – specifically, Tchaikovsky. He was a genius orchestrator, in my opinion and it’s very evident in the short, but lovely Russian Dance (Trepak) from Nutcracker.

If you’ve never seen Nutcracker in person, I highly recommend it.

I’ve never really successfully baked a cake from scratch. Something always goes wrong. So, finally, I realized that the thing to do was ask my mom for help. She makes this awesome pound cake and a couple of months ago, we got together and she guided me through the process of making her ‘famous’ pound. (Actually, it’s only famous in my mind ).

It was a success!

A yummy success!

So much so, that I asked for a mixer for Christmas.

I’m still in the middle of spinning ‘Kaleidoscope’ but I finally got some decent pictures that I want to share. I think they speak for themselves.

Sung by Megan Mullally (from Will & Grace), this was my introduction to her amazing voice. I had no idea she could sing before I bought the CD (NBC Celebrity Christmas). I think this tops the list as my favorite version of this song. The vocals, the orchestration – I love it!