Picture Pages, picture pages...

Lot's of fun with picture pages... Come on now, I know you all remember that show with Bill Cosby. My mom even let us send away for the special pen and coloring book so we could color along with Bill, LOL! I thought it was an appropriate title for today's post because I have a butt load of pictures for you today (why do people say butt load, it sounds so gross... And exactly how much is a butt load any way? Oh well, LOL!)

I'll start with the progress I have made on my soon to be new favorite sweater *smile* So far I have finished the sleeves, don't mind the pictures they do actually match each other. I'm using the new Bryspun needles, which I LOVE by the way. I saw a review on someone's site a few weeks back but I don't remember who it was. I am shamelessly posting pictures that are like hers to show you how flexible the cord is. If you see this post and you know I'm talking about you, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due! *smile*

*ETA - Thanks to Christie you can now see the original (and much better) review of the Bryspun needles on Gruperina's blog. This is what originally led me to give these needles a try!

Here you can see the cord all curly-cued around my finger, and just seconds later they are back to their packaged state. You don't need to soak the cords to get them to untwist or anything, you can use them easily right out of the pack. One thing I noticed with the smaller sizes (because, yes, I did go out and buy various sizes even though I already have too many needles) is that if you knit tight, like is sometimes do, it can be a little tough to slip the stitches over the join but it's not really noticeable.



I also have pictures from the spinning classes I have been taking over at Weavers Cottage with John (I forgot his whole last name) Pit. He's an excellent instructor. Last month I took a class with him on worsted and woolen spinning. Here is the skein that we made. Please don't look at the colors and different textures because we used one bobbin for the whole class and then plied everything against it self by plying from two ends of a center pull ball so the finished skein looks a little schizophrenic, but trust me there's some good stuff in there.

The part that looks multi-green-red was the part that we prepared with combs, I now know that I NEED a set of Viking combs. Unfortunately my wallet does not agree :)



This past Saturday I took John's class on Novelty yarns. Here are the results of my efforts. We learned core spinning, where you wrap a fiber around a core yarn. We made mohair yarn that is light and airy similar to the yarn you buy in the store where there is fiber spun between threads, it ends up looking like Rowan Kidsilk haze, with maybe a little more haze *smile*. We also used the mohair technique to spin recycled silk yarn, and then we plied the whole thing against itself again. Fun!



I also spun up some crappy roving that I bought on eBay back in the days when I first started spinning. And trust me, this stuff is pure CRAP! But I got the idea over the weekend to card it up with some of that 5 lbs. of alpaca that I have at home and it came out pretty nice. It really softened it up and I love the colors. I think I will have to spin my singles with a little more twist when I actually start spinning this stuff up for real though, because this does not really have a lot of twist once it's plied. I made just a mini skein to see if I liked how the yarn came out and I think I could tolerate this in a sweater. It's about 10 yards and a light DK or sport weight. The first picture is the crap alone, ugh!



Ok, I still have tons more pictures, but I think I have punished everyone's computer enough for one day *smile* I will share some more pics with you tomorrow. I've also been tagged by Christie so I need to post that tomorrow as well. Hope you enjoyed the Picture Pages!