Silk Spinning

The weather here the last couple of days has been just glorious! I've been able to get out and walk at lunch time every day for the last week and a half, and wow! It feels good!

Yesterday I decided that it would be a glorious thing to spin some silk. I just love spinning silk on my spindle during my walks - the way it shines - the way the colors just glow. The sun hitting the silk at all different angles while I'm spinning... It's almost perfection.

There are so many flowers blooming right now. There is one stretch of the pathway that is just solid lilac bushes. The smell is so beautiful walking past it. And the flowers just match perfectly with the silk that I'm currently spinning.

This silk is stuff that I picked up years ago at the Knitting and Stitching show at Ally Pally in London when I was a fairly new spinner. I couldn't resist the colors and the saturation that you get with handdyed silk, but wasn't sure what I would do with it. To be honest, I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with it - but I sure am enjoying the spinning.

The spindle is a Copper Moose American Beauty. It's probably my very favorite spindle in my small collection. It's about 1.5 ozs. It spins and spins and spins. One snap of my hand, and it spins all the way down to the ground. I love the notch, the colors, the hook is just right. I haven't spun on this particular spindle in almost a year probably. I started spinning something that just wasn't panning out on it, and I don't like emptying spindles until they're actually full. I finally decided that was silly so I wound off the bit that I had spun onto one of my UPS label rolls. Kind of like using TP rolls - but they're sturdy! I have a UPS station at my job, and keep a very sharp eye on where the label roll is. When it's empty I snag it and take it home.

I wind off most of my spindles onto the UPS label rolls until I figure out what I want to ply them with. I'm thinking that the 2 rolls of silk singles on the right might just work with the stuff that I started spinning yesterday. I'm a bit concerned though that the purple overtones might not work with the aqua/green... We'll see.

Progress continues (slowly) on my OCLC. Square #5 should be done in the next night or two... I'm just so pleased with everyone's comments and compliments on it! Thank you!

I'm even more pleased with who has complimented it! If you go down to the previous post and check in the comments you'll see what I mean! I was so excited - I mean - gosh! I was literally bouncing.

My boyfriend just looked at me, with one of those - uh huh, that's nice honey expressions - I think most of you know what I mean. Not many people really "get" how exciting all this is.

Anyway - I hope everyone else has beautiful warm spring days, beautiful flowers to see and smell, and is just generally happy to be alive!

Have fun!