Spinning quickie

I'm almost afraid to say anything in case I jinx myself. ;-) Spinning has been going well so far this year. Things aren't taking forever, like they seemed to last year, to get spun up. Last week it was the Icelandic Single. This week its the alpaca two ply. I got the alpaca from Chris at Upstream Alpacas.  I had gotten to feel her undyed fiber at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival (she shared lovely dyed stuff from her Etsy store in our World Wide Spin in Public goodie bags) and so knew I wanted to spin some of her stuff for my Fair spinning. (If I could, I'd buy her lovely dyed rovings every month!)

Here's the one ounce of rose-grey I spun:

127.8 yards of lace weight. Still need to do the whole wpi stuff for both. ;-)

I've started organizing the World Wide Knit in Public event for this year. We're going to have needles along with our destash/trade yarn table. So we can hopefully get anyone started who may be interested in learning how to knit. Cindy's roommate was getting a piano which necessitated her to relocate her stash. Thus a bit of reorganizing. Two things came out of it. She cleaned out her needles that she isn't using and her fiber samples that she decided she wasn't going to spin up. We have a whole bunch of needles thanks to Cindy and Terrie donating straight needles. I went through the bag of fiber samples and shared with Debbie, Carol, Tracy and Angela. I still ended up with a nice haul. ;-) There's cotton samples, camel-silk, alpacas, and various wools in different states - dyed, washed, and in the grease. There's three I'm not sure their exact wool, so hope that Shelia can identify for me. (She also went to SOAR 2009 and got the same goodie bag so should have a good idea) (If you went and know, please let me know!)

Here's what the samples look like:

Planning to spin the pygora and then the polworth. The Plants to Dye For group on Ravelry has tempted me into trying out dyeing with Black Beans. Yup, you get the dried ones and soak them in water. Prep your fiber with alum and then after the beans have soaked, you put your fiber in the liquid. Some people do it with the beans still in there and put it under the beans. Not sure how I'll do it yet. The blues that come out are really pretty. 

Currently working on my Aeolian shawl with beads. 6/0 beads instead of the 8/0. I just finished the Agave chart and need to do the 'Final Agave Chart' before moving on to the Edging charts. The beading really slows things down and there are a ton of beads!