Sundryness

Happy late feast of St. Valentine! We’re within the octave of his feast so it counts 🙂 Octaves are wonderful things. Though if I’m not mistaken, the only two that are actually on the calendar right now are those of Easter and Christmas. Alas. Anyways…

Well, last Friday I spent the last of my Christmas gift certificates on four ounces (a lace shawl or pair of socks worth of yarn) of hand-dyed wool. The sheep it came from was a Blue-Faced Leicester, which is colloquially known as BFL. It is a longwool, which means the little wooly hairs that make up the fleece are long. Profound, eh? It is soft, but not as soft as the finest wool, Merino.
Anyways, the exact wool I got is this. Enchanted Knoll Farms BFL in “Fairy Dance”. It arrived today (well, right now it is tomorrow, if that makes sense, which it really doesn’t, but I digress) and is far, far more beautiful than it is in the picture I just linked to. I have taken some pictures of it which I will post tomorrow. All I can say it is that it is the prettiest material I have ever worked with. It’s soft pinks and purples and blues (perhaps a touch of green) all washed through with dreamy grey with spots of fawn brown. It suits its name beautifully.
Indeed, the reason I am up so late is because I spent about forty-five minutes spinning it. I am going to make a laceweight two-ply (translated: very thin yarn made of two strands). I am being careful to preserve the color sequence so that it changes colors as I knit instead of getting the colors all blurred together. Oh, and it is so very soft and fuzzy.

I forgot to mention that I had a little bit left over after buying that wool so I also got this adorable pattern. It looks great for using up scraps! It would be horribly wasteful to actually buy the yarn recommended for it though, as you would have to buy eight colors and each skein is nearly $20.
*begin rant* In my opinion, the amounts of money that are spent on hobbies like this are sometimes bordering on sinful, especially when you think of the great necessity of almsgiving. I’m not immune myself to spending too much on books and knitting things (a fault which I frequently fall into, whenever I come into money), but it’s rather disturbing how obsessed people get with this stuff. As Woody said in Toy Story, “You are a child’s PLAYTHING!” It’s only STUFF, in the end. These things are pleasant, harmless hobbies that sometimes happen to produce lovely gifts and objects for charity. They’re not our be-alls and end-alls. That goes not only for yarn and spinning fiber, but for music/books/clothing/fabric/handwoven linen napkins from Tasmania. *end rant*