You may recall, from a post back in April, that I was working at spinning down my backlog of Hello Yarn Fiber Club installments. At the time I wrote that post I said I had 2 bags left to spin. I’m pleased to report that those last 2 bags are spun and done.

I have to say, I think spun and done may be my new favorite phrase.

Hooray! Spun and done. I’m just going to keep saying it.

The May 2010 fiber was 4 oz of BFL/tussah silk called Floating Down.  I left it as singles and have about 200 yards.

And the July 2010 fiber was 4 oz of Mixed BFL Wool Top called Troublemaker. I plyed it and got about 175 yards worsted weight.

As much as I loved this fiber club, I am so glad to be done with it. I just don’t spin often enough to have 4 oz of fiber arriving at my house on a monthly basis. And seriously, it’s not like I don’t have a whole lot of other fiber to spin anyway.

Maybe now I can actually get to that. Care to join me? The Tour de Fleece is right around the corner and I hope to have a fleece spun and done.

I told you I was going to keep saying it.

Like a lot of spinners, I tend to spend time at the wheel in fits and starts. I always get very inspired after SPA, though, and this year it seems like my inspiration has stuck around a bit.

By putting in time with the wheel consistently each week I am slowly but surely working my way through the backlog of Hello Yarn Fiber Club installments.

Some has been finished and plied and wound into skeins.

And some is waiting to be plied.

And some is being spun.

When the 4 oz I’m currently spinning is done I will only have two 4 oz bags left.

Then I’ll finally be able to spin all the other stuff I’ve been buying. This is quite a relief, because, as you can imagine . . .

It’s been piling up a bit.

Spinning is such a great hobby.

You spin and spin and get lovely singles.

You soak the singles and thrash them around and wind them into a skein.

You make yarn.

Then, of course, you want to spin more and you make more yarn and the yarn piles up because you have time to spin or you have time to knit but you don’t have time to do both.

It’s a conundrum, no?

If there’s one thing I can count on every year it’s that SPA will inspire me to spin. This year it inspired me to spin a lot. Not only did I spin for the 3 days of SPA but I continued to spin a bit every day after I got home. Yay me!

I calculated that while at SPA I spun 12 oz. I finished a 4 oz bag of Hello Yarn that I had started at home, I started and finished another 4 oz bag of Hello Yarn, I started and finished 4 oz of BFL/silk from Sereknity that I purchased at SPA, and I spun 2 oz out of 8 oz of Targhee that I bought from Spunky Eclectic while at SPA.

The remaining 8 oz of Targhee have been spun but not plied but everything else is plied, soaked, thwacked and skeined.

Hello Yarn Fiber Club Sept 09
Finn in the color Winter Storage
210 Yards

Hello Yarn Fiber Club Nov 09
Rambouillet in the color Pallid
264 yards

Sereknity BFL/Silk
225 yards

They are all in the worsted weight range.

And they are all labeled.

Be impressed.

As always, SPA was a wonderful experience. As always, I took very few photos.

There’s this one of Sharon with our wheels on Thursday when there was no one around.

And there’s this one of Sharon and Manise drinking tequila.

And there’s this one of Manise’s handspun.

That’s it.

I don’t have pictures of all the laughing and the talking and the joking. I don’t have pictures of the knitting and spinning and shopping. I don’t even have pictures of all the eating and drinking and hanging out.

What I do have, though, are the memories. And those are, no doubt, the best thing of all.

I did a lot of plying this weekend.

The end.

On Sunday I:

Baked chocolate chip cookies.

Spent some time spinning. The fiber is a Hello Yarn monthly installment,  it’s  a combo of merino, bamboo and nylon. I’m thinking socks.

Did some knitting. This is the project I started on Saturday and it’s a sweater for Dale. The pattern is the Spartan  Sweater from Interweave Knits, Fall 2006.

Made jambalaya. It was goooooood.

I also watched football (boo Pats), blocked the Stupidly Easy Triangular Shawl, and packed up a box full of love to send to Hannah.

It was a good day.

The Tour de Fleece started this week and I am in! My goal: spin up all these bags of Hello Yarn Fiber Club installments.

That’s a lot of 4 oz bags!

My first day of spinning was Sunday rather than Saturday but I’ve been going great guns ever since, managing to spin a bag a day, even on my working days.

Sunday/Day 1: “Thrive” Corriedale Wool Top Feb 09

Monday/Day 2: “Peat” Superwash Merino Wool Top March 09

Tuesday/Day 3: “Five Plum Pie” Hand-Dyed Falklands Wool Top May 09

Wednesday/Day 4: “Alpine” Romney Wool Top July ’09

Just keep spinning. Just keep spinning.

I feel like Dory in “Finding Nemo”.

Remember all those singles I showed you last week? There were 4 bobbins full in one photo plus 3 center pull balls in another photo. That’s a lot of singles, dear reader!

I’ve been plying like crazy to get them finished and – behold! They are singles no more!

It was a regular sweatshop around here, I tell you, but it feels great to have empty bobbins and 7 finished skeins of yarn.

Now I can go ahead and fill them up again!

I have a confession to make. I haven’t spun in several weeks. And here’s the thing – I want to spin. So what’s the problem, you ask? All my bobbins are full.

That’s only 4 but there are 3 others that are full that didn’t make it into the photo shoot.

I also have 3 center pull balls that I wound off of bobbins before SPA.

This means that I have to ply before I can spin. And I don’t want to ply. Plying is boring. Plying is tedious. Plying is not fun.

But if I ply then I will have finished yarn and then I can spin again. So I will ply.

I won’t be happy about it, though.