Cold Winds Require Warm Hobbies

And the Wyoming Winds have returned with more gusto than ever. Last week they swept into the Casper area with a small yet beautiful break Thursday morning. Then they blew back in and brought a bit of rain and snow with them Saturday night. One must love horizontal precipitation no matter it's make-up when living in Wyoming. This morning as I took a hacking Great Dane to the vet I watched with dread as the wind whipped our snow into blowing clouds that struck with the bite of a hundred little frozen needles on the short dash from the parking lot to the waiting room. An hour later with antibiotics and a confirmed kennel cough diagnosis we went home long enough to vaccinate the other kids and take them out for a walk where we wouldn't run into other dogs before going to the grocery store to buy the ingredients to battle a winters cold with some home baked warmth. Nothing like homemade chicken pot pie to sooth the goose bumps. Especially with a sick boy friend and Great Dane in the house.

I found comfort from yesterday's breezy chill with continued practice in spinning and dying.

After the dyed skeins dried the color was easier to photograph. This picture is still a bit bright in the color. It's not quite a true wine but a bit rosier. It's actually quite a pretty color. I hope my niece who is a pink girly appreciates it. I fear it will be too dark for her, but I unfortunately don't care for true pink myself. That includes to knit with. I have about 60 yards of this stuff and a hoping it's enough for a simple hat for her. It's a bulky weight 2 ply yarn and I think I'll squeeze by with enough. Otherwise I'll have to spin a complimentary color to add to it. Let's face it, I won't be able to get this color again if I tried.

Today I plan on finishing up the fiber I started to work on before our nightly before bed walk with the critters last night. It's the fiber I took to last years MWK Rocky Mountain Retreat. Thank you Bradley for teaching me how to dye fiber even if I didn't use those skills again for six months.

This fiber was actually supposed to be a black, but the dye broke. And for those who aren't dyers, that means the dye broke down into the component colors that it was made up of to get the desired color. As you can see, a boyesenberry'ish pinky purple color and green were two of the color components that were involved. This fiber also felted a bit in the dying process due to us trying to get the color to take better, so it's been a lot of fun pre-drafting to try and get it to play nice. In other words, this is practice fiber. Just something for me to continue getting used to the drafting technique and will probably never get used unless someone falls in love with it's Tye-dye look and wants it.

As far as the actual spinning process I seem to almost have it and do really good for a bit, then I lose it. I end up with big whorls of fairly unspun fiber that then shreds when I go to ply it. But I do feel as though I'm slowly getting a little more consistency. And perhaps there's a bit less cussing involved... perhaps. Thank the knitting and fiber deities that dogs don't talk.