Christmas Surprise

I have always believed that it is more important to give than to receive, and at Christmas time this is more important than ever. I spend months carefully planning what gifts I will give to my family and close friends, with no thought to what I would like.

This year I was in for a real surprise.

I love everything I received, all the gifts above were surprises, and as for the skein of yarn....

This beautiful Alpaca has been sitting at my local yarn shop (Create and Knit) for some weeks. Every visit I make to the shop I couldn't resist admiring this skein, picking it up and stroking it, but it was out of my price range.

A couple of weeks ago they skein disappeared. Catherine told me she had sold it to a lady in the week, so I resigned myself to having to admire the artesano and manos yarns in the shop instead.

That was until this morning.

Whilst the children were bouncing about over all their presents, Mick handed me an "extra little present". I could not believe my eyes when I opened it and found the skein I had been admiring for so long.

I can't put it down now, I keep hugging it, just to make sure I'm not dreaming.

I think the rest of my family now think I am completely mad, but anyone who is into knitting, crochet or spinning, will know how I feel.

Homespun Alpaca

I have been learning to spin for about 6 months and have already discovered that some wool is not as easy to spin as others.

When a friend on Ravelry happened to mention she knew someone with Alpacas I instantly asked her if I could have a go at spinning some of their fleece. So on Thursday she turned up at our knitting meeting with a big potato bag full of fleece which two of us shared between us.

I was so excited I wanted to get all the fleece out there and then to start sorting it, but I don't thing the owners or customers of the cafe we were in would have been very impressed. I managed to restrain myself until I got home.

The fleece is a lovely creamy white and is so soft. The fibres are really fine and tend to float about and attach themselves to my clothes.

I used my flick carder to tease the locks open and remove most of the vm, then passed the fibre through my drum carder (which Mick made for me).

The resulting batts were really soft and fluffy. I used my Kromski Mazurka which I had from Wingham Wool Work for Mothers Day.

I then plied 2 singles together before winding into skeins ready to set the twist.

Producing these skeins had hardly made a dent in the bag of fleece, so I have plenty of work to keep me going. I am finding it really relaxing and the fibre feels so wonderful as it slides through my fingers.
When it is all done, I will wind the skeins into balls to return to my friend, she is planning on knitting something for the owner of the alpacas from the yarn.