mild addictions

Aside from my addiction to carbohydrates (as I type with one hand--the point and peck method of typing is actually easier on my wrist if not on my spelling--my other hand is doing some solo kneading of soon-to-be pizza dough), yes other than a slight reliance on pasta as pacifier, my addictions can universally be regarded as fairly benign. (And an addiction to carbs is an anathema only to Atkins addicts.) No gambling or alcohol addictions for me, fiber is my drug.

I fear that my greatest excitement today was the arrival of a couple pounds of raw fleece from Humble Hills farm in Missouri. They raise natually colored Romney and Merino sheep, and it sounds like they do so sustainably. I got a little over a pound of 22-23 micron variegated grey romney-merino and a little under a pound of 19 micron white merino. Super soft and super waxy. The white also has some pretty dirty tips so it should be a challenge to wash, but mmm I'm excited. I do need to make myself process Jamie's fleece first though...I have plans for a handknit jacket out of her fiber, although if my wrists don't improve I might have to spin it thinner and machine knit it instead. Since that is a pure Romney fleece (albeit a fairly soft one), it'll be easy to wash then either spin from the locks or card it. Not sure of the best way to spin these new fine fleeces (or what I'll do with the yarn). I washed a couple locks of each fleece and spun the grey from the fold into a fingering weight 2 ply. That seemed to go well.

My weaving project is still dragging. Finally finished threading the heddles (after adding more heddles three times). Started tying to the back rod, but my ends are different lengths since I placed my breast beam tie in a slightly different place than the student whose warp I took over and altered. So the loom is still not dressed. Maybe tomorrow.

But tomorrow I first need to make some steel double pointed lace knitting needles (i.e. put a dull point on the end of some appropriate rods). Last night I spun up some gossamer alpaca with the book charkha, then skeined it and wound it into a ball by hand because I was too impatient to wait to use the craft center's ballwinder today (I think I need my own ballwinder at home) then this morning I started a sample for the circular shawl...I think it'll work fine even without much pre-planning, my favorite way of knitting. I should probably just buy circular needles in whatever size I end up using, but because it's cheap and I can do it myself, I'm going to try double pointeds first. So tomorrow after swimming, we'll head over to Little Prague to watch Germany vs Costa Rica and do some knitting.