Spinarellarama!

Once upon a time when the world was young, El Husbando took his nephew ice skating. The nephew, being a brand new skater, was a unsteady on his feet and eventually El Husbando arranged the little guy on a pylon and pushed him around the rink. And around the rink. And around the rink. As they went around, they sometimes did a little spin, and sometimes they did a bigger spin. And what is a fancy spin move without a spiffy name? So El Husbando started to say things like "spin-a-rama!" and "spin-a-rella-rama!" as they turned, because he's really fun that way. Unfortunately, the nephew had just reached that charming age when children decide that they are wise in the ways of the world and don't have to put up with your juvenile crap any more. On the next spin move, he turned to El Husbando with a dignified expression and said, in that scathing way that little kids have when they have caught you in an error, "Uncle Al, spinarellarama is not a real word."

I'm not sure that El Husbando ever recovered from the heartbreak of that moment. A perfectly good word and a fancy skating move all dashed to bits by the Junior Reality Police. Fortunately, he married me and I don't have these issues. I hereby proclaim that spinarellarama is a perfectly good word. In fact, it is so good that I believe its meaning should not be limited to "a fancy skating move," but should be extended to refer to any really fun event that involves a lot of spinning. Such as the Tour de Fleece.

Ha! Didn't see that coming, did you?

I have now been spinning for a full week, with occasional breaks for swimming and laundry and dinner making.  I have made a noticeable (to me, anyway) dent in the stash and have produced 4.2 skeins of yarn (the 0.2 being a 30 yard skein made from the leftovers of some mismatched bobbins) weighing a total of 14.5 ounces.

(two skeins of undyed merino)


(one skein of kool-aid dyed merino plied with a merino/mohair blend)


(30 yards of the kool-aid dyed merino all by itself)


(275 yards of Spinner's Hill goodness)

I also have two bobbins waiting to be plied into skein number 6,


(top one is another merino-mohair blend, bottom one is plain vanilla merino)

and I have begun work on the first bobbin of  skein number 7, which is being spun from more of this merino/mohair fluffy stuff:



I have been happily devouring the same merino fleece that nearly kicked my boo-tocks during the 2009 TdF,  which has been reduced to this:

 

(See? Of the 14 batts I started with, there are only 4 left in the bag.  Two are on today's schedule, and my hope is to have spun and plied the remainder by Tuesday night. No lie.)

And, as of yesterday, I seem to have crossed some sort of speed spinning divide and am making yarn a lot faster than I used to.  I am having a true spinarellarama.

As if that were not enough joy for one week, I have finally turned the heel of my second Nutkin sock, curse its little yarny head. Just a handful of pattern repeats and I will be free-- FREE, I tell you -- to move on to another yarn and a more cooperative pattern.

An last, for the cherry on this sundae, here is a sneak peak of my anniversary present. 






15 years of wedded bliss, all wrapped up in a well-matched pair of Northern Red Oak trees and planted right on my anniversary.  Love the trees, love the symbolism.  Hurray for us!