Friday, January 15, 2010

The Fluffy Addiction

I am washing the last alpaca fleece this morning while I get ready for my spinning group, and I am thinking about my fluffy addiction. I believe in my heart that I can in fact spin the wool I have within my lifetime. I am in control of my environment. I have a grip on it. Yet, there is a sneaking suspicion that I may be deluding myself. I just tagged a 4oz skein for the market and realized that I have not spun anything else for sale in 4 weeks. I have only been spinning about 4 oz a week lately and at that rate, 1 pound a month, it will take me a year just to spin the alpaca- nothing else. And what about the other stuff, baby camel, or Yak/merino, or more of that lovely white Cormo-ish stuff. Plus all the other fun fibers that have come into my life- Wensleydale, Shetland, Merino, AnnieFannie Columbia, Beauty Berries, etc. I have colors, I have textures, I have silks and soy.
I have tools and bags of stuff, and they have escaped from the wooly room and invaded the entire house. Everytime I try to herd them back into the room, they start playing with me and I lose my conviction. I want to just sit and play with them all day. They know they have me whipped, too. Just peaking out of their bags they call me to play and the day slips away from me. If I made a slip cover and stuffed all the bags into it. I could make a wall-to-wall bed of bags of wool.
So how do I stop buying? How do I get myself to keep my conviction that I have enough fleece? This is the plan- I must spin 2 pounds of wool products a month, at least 1/2 of it for the market. And it must be from the bags of fleece, not the pretty prepared stuff. Then, I must make at least one item for the market and one item for me (or family) per month from the yarn. This way, I will in fact spin the wool I have, within my lifetime, and not drown in a pile of yarn.
This is the new year's resolution. It started with washing the new stuff, which is almost done. And I will send out some of the old stuff that still needs washing to be processed at Z. Then I will identify all the projects that I am going to make from the yarn. Then I will plan an attack on the spinning work so that it matches the stuff I need to make.
That means I will be spinning Shetland and alpaca this coming month, making a couple of apples and a rug. But what I really want to do is spin the baby camel. So maybe just a little bit of that, too. And the baby alpaca silk blend. Just 2 oz. And maybe I will get a couple more bobbins. Then I could start some weaving, too. That project is already spun and ready to warp.
I can see that this is getting way out of control already. The yarn and wool is calling me and confusing my helpless brain. Must fight the urge. Must, maintain, contro.....

1 comment:

Pam said...

Oh my! I never even considered how many pounds per month I need to spin to get myself to a reasonable level of fleece! YIKES!! I love spinning, but it's so much easier to buy a fleece than it is to get it spun up!!