First of all, the Wild Flyer is completely and totally, amazingly cool. It is going to take significantly less time to spin this wolf yarn now, and I will have hands free to work on placing the mohair better, instead of freeing it from the hooks all the time.

Here’s the latest skein.

Second, I love the new wool. Nate wanted me to card up some white wool, white alpaca and that gawsh-awful-ugly silk noil that didn’t dye well. So I did, and while I think the batt looked pretty bad

I’m spinning it up to see what the finished yarn will be like and really, I was just extremely anxious to spin this wool.

It spins like a dream. It’s the softest, silkiest, most delightfully easy-to-spin stuff ever. I’m so excited to make a batt with those fibers when they’re actually dyed pretty! And I think the wool is so silky, I can reduce the alpaca a little bit.

It cracks me up that women are primarily the spinners, while it’s ALWAYS the men that come up and ask questions when I’m spinning in public. They’re fascinated by the “machine”. I’ve had them lay on the floor and watch the treadles, then slowly get up as they scrutinized how the treadles connect to the wheel, connects to the pulley, connects to the flyer, etc. Last night was no exception. We had one man come and ask about how it works, and two men come up and ask what kind of fibers we were spinning. Then they went on and on about how nice alpaca is, talking more to each other than to me and my friend. Then they asked to touch it.

Makes me laugh. Why don’t more men spin, I wonder? There are two men in our spinning group and they’re great.

So a friend of mine took the Weaving Works spinning class last week, and is in need of a wheel. We met up last night and I lent her my Clemes. She loved it. They’re such nice little wheels.