Mom and I went to the Lake Farm Parks Wool Fest all day yesterday. (We went all day Saturday, and Friday night, too, and were very bad.) We had such a fun time! The sheep! The wool! The yarn! The bamboo! The silk! You get the idea.

The only thing worse than Mom and I going to a wool festival together is Mom and I going to a wool festival together without Marcus . Marcus, you see, lends a bit of restraint to our wild abandon of spending. Only a bit, but still.

Jamie and Matt from the Wooly Knob were there. Two cooler guys you’ll never meet! I bought some very nice Rambouillet Merino/Black Alpaca/ Rayon fiber from them. Mom is having them process some Alpaca and Jacob and Finn fleeces.

Now, besides being spindle sluts, fiber snob (in my case), and wool “collectors,” Mom and I and are also what is known as enablers. In the fiber world, an enabler is someone who feels somewhat guilty about how much she (he) is purchasing/ size of stash/ number of projects/ how much time she (he) spends on said projects, so, they convince other people to buy fiber/ increase their stash/ start new projects/ spend every waking hour on those projects in an effort to somehow legitimize their own problem obsession hobby. We found a new victim fiber enthusiast today in Rebecca Thomas of Waters Edge Jewelry. (She has beautiful stitch markers for knitting and really pretty jewelry. Go buy some. I’ll wait. Go!)

We managed to convince her that she that she had to learn to drop spindle. Had to. That if she didn’t, all the wool in the world would disappear over night or some such disaster. So, she bought a silk cap and a very nice drop spindle and I taught her to spin. Here she is, spinning:

And here is some of her jewelry (I bought lots. I mean, of course I didn’t buy much, Marcus! ):

And here we are at the end of the show today with her. Rebecca is so sweet!

This is a very cute bunny from Millennial Way. Mom and I bought some very fun second-grade white angora bunny fiber for $5 per 6 oz. Actually, we bought all the rest they had. The girl holding this cute little guy was making a rather good case that he should come home to live with me. She is already quite the salesperson! I did not purchase the bunny, just the fiber! Lyssa (and Marcus) are not quite that tolerant. In the background is some fun Cotswold locks that I also bought. The excellent salesperson pictured said that she likes to spin it straight from the locks so that is what I am going to try.

Anne’s Fiber Expressions (their shop is in Montello, WI, phone #: 1-608-297-7254) had a booth filled with very cool stuff. I bought over a pound of Black Diamonds fiber, which is charrcoled bamboo, in a lovely gray. It is seems similar to soy silk. I also bought some ingeo fiber which is made from corn. How fun is that!

Maple Creek Farm had beautiful hanks of yarn that were just calling to me, but sadly, my money ran out before my enthusiasm did so I didn’t get to buy any.

And here is Mom, “hoofing it” back to the car after a long, hard weekend of buying fiber. All that shopping is really quite exhausting.

Did you know that if one’s plants are to be watered, one must actually go outside and water them? That simply repeating, “Must water plants. Must water plants. Must water plants soon” while plying fun new yarn does not actually get the said plants watered?

On the plus side, I have been having lots of fun continuing to create new yarn. This is hand-spun single-ply green Merino (Or, at least I think it’s merino, it is some mystery roving I stole from my mother. Hi, Mom! ) plied with some leftover mystery green fringe-ish yarn (Ironstone, maybe?) that I also “acquired” from my mother. (Love you, Mom!)

Pretty, huh?

Now, some of you may be under the impression that since the components of this lovely yarn came from my mother’s stash, that she might therefore be entitled to their synergistic joining.

Not. A. Chance.

Now, the other person responsible for my latest watering procrastination obsession of creating new yarn is Bob Spencer. Bob Spencer is the husband of one of my mom’s friends, Carol. Bob makes drop-spindles. Bob makes very nice drop-spindles. Bob makes a particularly nice drop-spindle that I like to call a parasol spindle because it is big enough to double as a parasol when not being used for spinning. It is perfect for plying. It’s whorl is 4 3/4″ across (All the better for holding lots and lots of plied yarn, my dear) and 5/8″ thick and the shaft is 12 1/2″ long. I can’t remember what it weighs (and I’ve got yarn on it right now, can you imagine! so I can’t weigh it) but the whorl is made of cedar so it is very, very, very light. Absolutely perfect for plying. Oh, and there are four grooves placed like a compass on the whorl so you never have to worry about your yarn slipping out. If you would like to own your very own Spencer Spindle, Parasol ($25 plus S&H) or regular drop spindle ($15-$20 plus S&H), email Carol and Bob at

bobs @ madbbs.com (take the spaces out, of course).

I think everyone should own a Spencer Spindle. Or two. Or three. Or - well, never mind. I am certainly not going to confess to the whole of cyberspace exactly how many drop-spindles I own.

Anyway, the spindle pictured with the green yarn, as well as yesterday’s pink yarn, is the “Parasol” spindle I’ve been gushing about. Buy one. You won’t regret it and you’ll never want to ply on anything else again.

P.S. I just weighed the “Parasole” spindle, sans yarn, and it weighs 2.1 oz, which is really light for a spindle of that size. Now, you do realize what this means: I am still playing with yarn. I still haven’t showered or got dressed and I STILL HAVEN’T WATERED MY PLANTS!!!!!!

Here is a math question for all you spinners out there: What do you get when you add all together:

• Berroco Lazer FX with Sequins
• Hand-spun single-ply Pink Merino/Silk
• Orange Sulky Blendables quilting thread
  • And a spinner who is procrastinating going out to water her garden?

That’s right! You get a new, beautiful, four-ply novelty yarn!

I used two strands of the pink because it was too thin otherwise and the sequins seemed to take over.

I didn’t include the orange thread at first, but a little bit of it got tangled up whileI was plying the pink with the sequins and I decided I liked the way it added a little extra color and seemed to tone down the pink a little. You can’t really see it in the photo but it is there, I promise.

I won’t end up using all the pink because I have a lot more of it than the sequined stuff. I will still get enough of the resulting yarn to use it in a stole (rectangular shawl). Basically, I just wanted play around with combining some different yarns/threads and seeing what happens.

I have also been playing around making some other novelty yarn. I spun a little tiny bit of brown Bountiful wool roving and then plied it with some Ironstone Eyelash.

Here is a close-up:

Too, too fun! But, I only ended up with approximately 9 yards of it. Oh, well.

I did finally go out and water my plants. Here is a picture of one of the ones I actually planted myself. Very big deal for me since I’ve never really liked gardening. Now if I can just not kill the poor thing …