Cabled 4 ply goodness

I spent the last couple of evenings at home plying. Lots of plying. I ended up with 400 yards of 15-16wpi cabled 4 ply. This is all from the silk and the silk/wool blend that I spindle spun on my walks.

Basically a cable ply involves taking 2 singles and plying them together. Then you get to take another 2 singles do the same thing. I had 2 almost full bobbins on my Joy (which admittedly are quite small) with the separate 2 plys. Take those 2 bobbins of plyed yarn and reply them again in the opposite direction.

There's a great article on plying by the wonderful Judith McKenzie MacKenzie McCuin in the latest issue of Spin-Off online here.

I did finally find the new SpinOff at Borders on Wednesday. I'd had a hard day at work and wanted to sit down and read my magazine before I started the whole dinner-go-round. I told the Boo that I just wanted to sit and unwind for a few minutes before we went to the grocery store. He looked at me and said, "Mom, how can you just sit and read that magazine? Isn't it boring?". I looked at him in total disbelief. I was speechless. I just waved towards the monstrosity of stash that lives in the corner of my living room, and said - "what are you talking about? It's me". I've heard a couple of people say that this is the best issue of Spin-Off in a very long time - and I have to agree.

Why does 400 yards not sound like so much to me? If you think about it - that's 4 football fields! I guess because it's not enough to do a cute little top for me? I really couldn't say how much this weighs. I need a good scale (or even a crappy scale that would come close).

I took these pics with the BBE's camera, which I don't like as much as my little camera.

The pic up at the right is closest to accurate as far as color. But with the high silk content, there's quite a lot of luminescence which is just about impossible to capture properly.

I am really not used to his camera and prefer mine. But I thought mine was lost. It seems I left it on top of the car the other morning as I was on my way to work. I knew I had it - I tried to take some pics of the new yarn before I left for work, but the lighting was just not right, so I took it to work with me, though it didn't make it to work with me if you know what I mean. I'm afraid I panicked a bit after not being able to find it for a couple of days and bought a new one off of e-bay. Sigh.... Still - the new one is a better camera. Another Fuji FinePix but this one is an E550 .

Of course Boo calls this morning and tells me that one of my neighbors found the camera. It was on the bridge leaving the property. He said it looks a bit messed up, but is still taking pictures. I'm wondering - I know I got insurance on the camera when I bought it. I'm going to try to take it back, and get a new one from the store I bought it from. Hopefully they will replace it with an upgrade, and I can sell one of the cameras - or give it to Boo for his birthday. I'm feeling a bit embarrassed and haven't told anyone that I went ahead and bought the new camera. But I have to say I'm excited!

I swear it's the Universe playing a joke. If I hadn't bought the camera off of e-bay do y'all think I would have had my old one returned to me? Hard to say of course, but it's like magic. I've decided that I'm going to go ahead and finally paint my living room - I've been putting it off for so long. It really needs to be done - but I've been thinking that I want to move, and that it doesn't make sense to go through all the effort and expense of painting if one is going to move. Now I'm thinking f it - I'm going to paint that damn living room, and I'm going to love it!

OK one more pic of the new yarn - with my hand there for scale. Please realise that I have very large hands for a female. I wear a size 10 shoe, and my fingers are just as long as my BBE's, and he's 6'1".










And here is just a random pic that I took with my camera when I was wandering around the property where I live.