Happy Halloween!

Oh yes, I did.

Today I made this.



That is home made fresh mozzarella cheese, my very first attempt ever at making cheese.  It was so easy, and tastes fantastic!

Then I took a quarter of the cheese and made this:



Three kinds of home grown tomatoes, home grown basil, home made mozzarella, olive oil, salt, and cracked pepper.  Oh, my.

Then, since Emma was across the street playing with friends, I ate it all up by myself.  Yes indeed I did!

Spinzilla Day 7 and Final Results

Here's what I did on Day 7, and a wrap up of everything.

I found the jumbo flyer for Emma's Ashford wheel and started to ply the alpaca/silk, then I realized that it was going to take approximately a billion years to get through the whole skein because the jumbo flyer only has one very slow spinning ratio.

So I decided to ply on my Matchless and just make two skeins- at least it would all get done before the end of the day. But I'll be darned, the entire 6.5 ounces fit on the bobbin!



After I plied that, I looked at the clock and decided that I maybe had enough time to do one more bundle of fiber, so I pulled out a Fiber Optic gradient. This is a gorgeous set of greens, and I not only had enough time to do the singles, I also plied it.  This one had to be chain-plied (3-ply) rather than a regular 2-ply in order to preserve the color gradient.



I love the way a gradient looks when it's in cake form. This is 4 oz. (1125 yds) of Fiber Optic merino/silk "Saint Patrick" 3-ply and 6.5 oz. (1165 yds) of Friends in Fiber "Weeping Willow" alpaca/silk 2-ply.



So that's the bulk of what I did yesterday, plus plying several cakes of singles from earlier in the week.  And here's my final result for seven days of spinning.



A total of 53.2 ounces (3.3 pounds) of fiber gave me 11,251 yards (6.4 miles!) of yarn, equaling 34,278 yards (19.5 miles!) of Spinzilla spinning credit (length of singles plus length of plying).

I'm quite pleased with myself.

Spinzilla Day 6

Here's what I did yesterday on Day 6:



I finished spinning the bundle of alpaca/silk into singles, and somehow managed to fit it all on one bobbin.

I also wound it off into a ball last night, in preparation for plying, and it barely fit on the ball winder.



I was planning to ply this into one skein, but there's no way it will fit on either one of my Schacht wheel bobbins after it's plied.  I have a jumbo flyer for Emma's Ashford, and may dig that out if I have time.  Then I can say I used all three of my wheels during Spinzilla!

Time is ticking away on my last day, so I'd better get to it!

Spinzilla Day 5

Here's what I did yesterday on Day 5 of Spinzilla:



That's 4 oz of merino singles, 3 oz of BamHuey "Fruit of the Vine" plied to 689 yards of 2-ply, and 1.7 oz of alpaca/silk singles.

I also took the time last night to ply a couple cakes of singles from earlier and measure all the plied yarn.  Right now I'm standing at 4,782 yards of finished yarn, which gives me 14,346 yards of Spinzilla spinning credit (length of singles spun plus length of plying).  I may break 20,000 yards for the week once everything else is finished.

Two days left to finish the alpaca/silk bundle and ply everything that hasn't been plied yet.  I think I can do it.

Spinzilla Day 4

Here's the result from Day 4 yesterday.



Yesterday was possibly my most productive day of spinning in my entire life.  This is 4 oz of a 70/30 merino/silk blend that I dyed last year, and 3 oz of BamHuey merino/bamboo.  While that's not much in terms of weight, these are both spun pretty fine, and the merino/silk is already plied.

I couldn't stand the suspense and had to measure that yarn right after I plied it, and it came out at 1,720 yards. Almost a mile, finished length. In one day.  Plus the other singles.

Feeling pretty chuffed.

Spinzilla Day 3

Here's my Day 3 result from yesterday:



I didn't have much time to spin last night, so I only got 5.5 oz of merino singles and 0.7 oz of the yak/silk blend from Abstract Fibers spun.

The yak/silk is gorgeous fiber, but is spinning very slowly.  It really doesn't like long draw, which is odd since yak normally works very well with that technique.  I think the yak and silk fibers are just too different in length.  I may bail on this fiber for Spinzilla, just measure what I've already spun, and offload it to a storage bobbin.  It will be spectacular yarn, but I'm after speed this week.

Spinzilla Day 2

Here's my result from yesterday, Spinzilla Day 2.



I didn't do any plying yesterday, but that's 6 oz of white merino singles and 3 oz of BamHuey singles.

What I learned yesterday was that I don't have nearly enough fiber in my stash from New Hue Handspuns, purveyor of BamHuey and other lovely things.  This was a delightful bundle of fiber to spin, and I love love love the color.

Spinzilla Day 1

Just a quick update for yesterday's spinning, which was Spinzilla Day 1.



This is 8 oz of 2-ply merino (white), 4 oz of 2-ply alpaca (green), and 2 oz of singles of a Jacob/llama/bunny blend (gray).  I haven't measured yardage yet.

Can't talk more now, I have to go spin.

Spinzilla!

So I'm doing a fun thing this week... Spinzilla!



This is a contest/fundraiser where thousands of spinners around the world are joining together to see how much yarn we can spin in one week.  There is a $10 registration fee, and all funds raised will go to the Needle Arts Mentoring Program, which knits together communities by teaching fiber arts to kids.

I'm ridiculously excited.

I'm on Team Knot Another Hat, which is a yarn shop in Hood River, Oregon.  They're the closest team to me geographically, although team members can be from anywhere and I will be participating remotely since Hood River is three hours away.  I was glad to be able to get one of the 25 spots on their team.

I also donated to help sponsor Team ClothRoads Warmis Phuskadoras, which is a team of Bolivian spinners.  I'm glad to help them out, and will be cheering them on.  I'm sure those ladies, who have been spinning for their entire lives (with a much more tangible need for their yarn than I have for mine), can spin circles around me.

It'll be fun to see how much I can spin in a week.  I just wish I could take a week off work to stay at home and do nothing but spin spin spin!