Spinning update

We had a nice long weekend and some fun over it, but I will post about it when I manage download pictures from my camera. Until then here is some update on spinning.

I've been spinning some alpacca I bought a while ago. It was an "impulse" purchase with no particular project in mind, but when I came across of the Helm's deep pattern things just clicked.

I love the Lord of the Ring books/movies, and I also love white, I just had to make it... And, as it happens more often lately, instead of ordering some yarn, i go to my fiber stash to see what can I spin up for it... The natural cream/white alpacca seemed perfect. The only trouble was that I thought I have 200 grams of fiber, when I only had 100...hmmm. Go and order more, right? I did just that, only to find out the seller decided not to ship to eastern Europe anymore, because she had so many lost packages lately it is just not worth it...I had many rection to this, first of them is sadness as I loved this seller, she has nice selection and good prices and she ships from England, which makes the shipping cost less, and a lot faster. I ordered quite a few items from them and never had any problem, everything arriving within a week. Admittedly I had a few items lost way back when I started ordering things online years ago, but not in ages..I discussed this with her, and she said she suspects the packages got here fine, but the buyer complained to get a second parcel as a replacement. If it is really so...the country has bad enough reputation as it is why add to it? It is costly/difficult to get good supplies for knitting/spinning why make our task even harder? If someone stole it in the post office what the heck would she/he do with spinning fiber? (I mean I can-kind of- understand stealing of books, or kid's clothes, they would know what to do with it, but with fiber???)

As you can see I only have questions, not answers.

My problem did got solved, I could buy an other bunch of the alpacca, and we have an agreement, but the whole story still bothers me.

Here is the spinning in progress.

Also here is some merino in shades of red. I bought this one with the desdemona shawl in mind. My friend Angela sent me the pattern. At the moment I can spin about 6-700 meters of two ply out of 3.8-4 oz fibers. I also like my shawls generously sized, so if a braid is more than that (this was five oz) my eyes get sparkly...

In the meantime I also got some new spindles, like this tiny turkish spindle.

It is really tiny, look in my hand. I still have to figure out how to use it.

And a lightweight pine from Steven Kundert. Great e-shopping experience. I told him what I would like, and he told me what would be the best then made it... and it arrived here in less than a week..I love spinning with it, that is some extremely soft yak and silk mix I tried it with.

I leave you with a shot comparing the two spindles.