Fiber porn

Just got a full pound of merino top from the Woolery:

This stuff is heavenly soft, and I thought the Shetland top I've had the last year was fantastic. It's brillo pads compared to this merino.

I could do this all day.

Unfortunately I need to finish up the current project, that full pound of Shetland top I ordered three years ago, and the alpaca/merino blend I got two years ago, before I can start playing with the merino (OMG HEAVEN LET ME DO THIS AGAIN)

 

More fiber porn? You shouldn't have asked! (Actually you didn't, but I can imagine, can't I?)

This is my absolutely stellar spindle, made from a crochet hook and a toy car wheel (you can't see the wheel, unfortunately) and my even more stellar andean plying tool, made from cardboard and a dowel. You're actually supposed to use your hands for andean plying, but setting up the single will hurt after a while, and if you've got a lot of single, you can break your finger getting the central loop off (for those of you currently WTF-ing, andean plying is a method of folding a single strand of yarn, so that when you unwind it you effectively double it in half. It reduces waste). Fortunately a plying tool is really easy to improv.

This is the Shetland shawl. I'm almost halfway through the last pattern band. Up until this project I was used to knitting lace on a garter stitch (all rows knitted, rather than alternating knit and pearl rows) but the pi-shawl pattern means you knit in the round. Most of the elements here have pattern stitches in every row. I have no idea how this will work out when I block it, so I'm getting kind of nervy on this.