Busy weekend!

Okay, first up, all day Saturday was spent rewashing the 4.5 pounds of fleece, in hopes of removing those icky dirty tips. I'm not joking - ALL DAY. Remind me again why I needed 4.5 pounds of fleece? Anyway, mission accomplished - no more dirty tips!

There still seems to be a lot of veggie matter in the fleece, but it's MILES better than it was.

As of Sunday morning, we have a total of two brand new monsters. The one on the left is Sailor the boat protector. The one on the right is Nacho the homespun (just the blue part is homespun). He's wee because I didn't have much of the homespun. I halved the pattern, and wound up with a monster that my daughter covets. Too cute!

After the wee monster was finished, I thought, "Hm, there was some darker bits of fleece that shouldn't be mixed in with the white(r) stuff. I should go pick all of it out of the drying pile." So I did. And there was enough that I thought I should card it. So I did.

You can't really see much in the picture that makes it look like I carded the white stuff, but know this: My antique carder isn't quite going to cut it. Either that or I'm a complete dolt. The roving is nicely going in one direction, but it's not really, really straight, and it's slubby as hell. 

Anyway, I still spun it.

Sweet photo, right? I love the lighting. So anyway, you can see how there's some darkness in the single. Yes, that's a jumbo bobbin. I don't really know what the hell I'm doing. My regular bobbin is hooped, though, so I make stuff up as I go along. I didn't make up this Navajo plying - that's right, that is 60 yards of 3-ply goodness. And I don't know if you can tell, but it's not overtwisted this time. I took it easy with the foot and didn't go crazy.

No bits coiling up on each other, almost balanced and definitely an improvement over Wheel Attempt #1. Much more even in thickness too. It might be a single weight of yarn instead of several weights. Imagine!

Trouble is, when I was carding, a bunch of veggie matter fell out, which was great. When I was spinning, more veggie matter fell out, which made a mess on my pants, and when I was plying, even more veggie matter fell out, also on my pants. Even with all the veggie matter falling out, I know there's still a lot in the yarn. Why is it that when I buy roving it's perfectly veggie free? I must go google.