Six hands make a project

I’m a member of the Fiber Arts Street Team on Etsy.com—we call ourselves Etsy FAST for short, and it’s also the tag we use for the Etsy search engine so we can find each others’ work. We encourage, advise, and support each other in our creative paths and the team includes artists in most fiber mediums. Spinning, knitting, crochet, weaving, felting and embroidery are techniques that pop to mind although I’m sure I’ve left out a bunch of others (blame it on low caffeine levels today). We have monthly ‘challenges’ where we choose a topic meant to inspire us to create something that defines or describes that topic. We’ve done the Olympics, heroes, harvest, candy and others. Decembers challenge is teamwork, meaning we’ll do a piece using materials from another team member. Since I’m primarily a spinner I wanted to take it a step beyond simply spinning fiber from another member and suggested that some members could form a trio (or more) and work on a project. And I thought it would be fun to watch my trio progress toward the final goal, so I’m putting up pix of the fiber I’m working with. I stumbled onto this combed top at Whirlygig Yarns while wandering around the team sites and I managed to resist it for about….oh, 2 days maybe? It arrived home on Thursday and I couldn’t wait to get my hands into it. It’s 3.7 oz. of huacaya alpaca dyed in a soft rainbow of colors.

















I’ve just started spinning it, and it’s just lovely to work with. The colors when spun up are clear and change frequently and the color changes are subtle which is just perfect for the end use. I’ll be combining this with some of my own fiber and will hopefully get about 600-700 yards of sportweight yarn. I’ll be posting photos of the yarn being spun and the final plied and washed yarn. And at some point we should be seeing the finished product. I already know where the yarn is going and she’s a wonderful artist, but you’ll have to wait to see what she does with my yarn!

And on another topic completely, Pitt tromped all over Louisville yesterday, Penn State was beaten by Iowa (snort, chuckle), and the Steelers are set to beat the Colts today at 4:15 EST. Life is good…..