I went to the fiber festival that was at Cannonsburgh today. It was no Rhinebeck, but sheep were sheared and fiber was had. I got a little over a pound of some brown llama for about $10, and I can't wait to get started on it. I also got quite a bit (maybe two pounds?) of alpaca for $20 from a fellow with show animals who "just wanted to get rid of it." He chucked more from the particular alpaca in question in my bag. He mentioned something about wanting to see the final product when he shows his animals, but I can't make any promises. I mean dang. Grad school eat my head.
In fact, I set aside time and pennies to go to this 'cause grad school eat my head and I've been majorly stressed out.

Anyways, there's the llama and the two show alpaca. The pictures don't do them justice at all. I've got to get a drum carder in a serious way 'cause as easy as the alpaca cards up, I'd really like to have a quicker way of doing it. I'm impatient and also I hate hand carding fiber. It's quite an expense, though, and I'm having a hard time justifying it. I mean, I don't so much sell the yarn I make or the stuff I make with the yarn, though I theoretically could. But, you see, I spent $30 on over three pounds of protoyarn - such a bargain!

I don't mind the labor terribly much, 'cause I get this lovely yarn when I'm done that I totally made from fluff. I almost bought some flax, but didn't. Every story I've ever read about flax spinning says that it's a crap kind of occupation filled with much injury. Mind you, these are fairy tales, but still...I may get adventurous one day and try it out.

The fresh off the wheel spun stuff up on the right is from Alexa Monet, one of the alpaca. I separated the white from the black and spun that up as soon as I got home. It's currently drying over my kitchen sink. It should turn out to be soft and lovely, but again, I have no earthly idea what I'll be doing with it. Add to the stash, I guess.

And speaking of stash, I have heard it said that one should never photograph one's entire stash as it is likely to cause anguish and/or pain. Well, I did photograph my entire stash, excepting only the yarn that's associated with a current project. Mind you, it's two skeins deep, but this is it. This is the entirety of my stash.








Yep, that's all of it.
The left drawer is sock yarn and the right drawer is everything else. Under the palette is all my cotton and under the blue yarn (which is recovered from a sweater for purposes of knitting a better sweater) is all the um...acrylic. I must confess that the blue is also acrylic as is the purpley poodley whirlpool of doom. I was thinking Iris sized sweater, but it never made it past being swatched. I have no idea what the heck this is, just that it's acrylic and poodley. Just to the right of the purple poodle yarn is my Peaceful Pastures handspun and my rainbowdey handspun with which I intend to make mittens for my little hands.

In knitting knews, I've finished the first sock of both the reggae socks and the worsted stocking knaves. I'm a couple rows into the ribbing for the first and just past the ribbing on the second. I don't have a picture of the reggae socks yet, but here's the wsk with one done. I had Kade's old man try them on for fit and he liked it so much, he almost didn't give it back. I needed to have made the top a little smaller around and the foot every so slightly longer, but he likes it, so I'm going to work on making sock #2 exactly the same (excepting color - you will note that sock #2 ribbing is green and not tan) and leave it at that. More pictures to come (I hope) now that I've found my camera.

I'm in Ravelry as - you guessed it: jessofthebugs. So come visit me there as well. I'll need to update there as well as in Knitwars. Man, am I the biggest dork ever or what?

Where the heck is my camera?!?!
I was going to be all virtuous and post pictures of updated knitting, but I can't seem to find my dang camera. It's here somewhere in this pile of a house I've got.
Anyhow, I'll give you the down-low:
I have startitis pretty bad. I'm thinking about starting the DNA scarf in palette, but I really need to plug away on the other stuff I've got going. Speaking of the other stuff, the man-sweater is going along quite well. I'm at the armholes on the back. It's slow, but I'm beginning to see progress happening.
The reggae socks are coming along as well. I'm at the foot of sock #1. One of my fellow GTAs, Stanton, is from Trinidad. I showed him my sock (like ya do) and he said, "Those are rasta colors!" in his Trinidad accent. I can't tell you how much that tickles me.
The Worsted Stocking Knaves are moving along as well. I'm on the ribbing of sock #2. Mystery Stole #3 is erm... hibernating. I haven't had the brain cells for fiddly lace. The only other thing I have on the needles is a moss stitch scarf for Iree and it's also hibernating.
I've done some spinning today with the bamboo and I probably should do some sewing, but I probably won't.

So, yeah, school is still eating my head, but I've at least got a couple of pics today - thanks to Kade (who let me borrow her camera this w/e).

Here you go:

I've finished another skein of yarn and I hope that one of these days the other half of this fleece comes back to me. The mill I sent it to apparently has a bit of a backlog of stuff to do and when I last called them, they were up to stuff they had received in May. 'Sarrite, though, I've got plenty going on.

You may remember a while back, I named the well from which I would not drink. See how I am drinking now.

I'm most of the way through with sock #1 and with any luck, I'll finish before the year's out. I was hoping that I'd be able to finish by Samhain, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Fortunately for the feet in question, it's not really getting very cold yet.

I'm also plugging along on my man-sweater-along with Kade. She's farther along than I am, but considering that I've got grad school on the brain, I'm not worried. I've decided to shorten the jacket by about two inches because, well, I'm short. It's no surprise that when we picked a pattern for the Pict and the Amazon, someone was bound to have to make a couple alterations.

It's looking nice, I like the gauge, and I'm probably about an inch away from the armhole decreases. I'll probably have to shorten the sleeves as well, but that ain't no thang.

It's off to class for me. I'm making prodigious use of the technology fee I've paid to MTSU and blogging during my office hours. What else would I do...grade papers? Pheh.