Worth waking up for

This morning Mr Bee leapt out of bed, and I do mean leapt. He threw the covers onto the floor and raced downstairs. I was rather groggily confused, but certain that if there were a fire then he'd at least have mentioned it.

He came back up and said, "didn't you hear the knock?" "The knock?" "Yes, the knock - it was the postman." The postman? For me?



It's my package of goodies that I bought from The Sanguine Gryphon (it arrived so quickly I wasn't expecting it!) and contains the most wondrous fibre...



This is a 2oz batt in the Histology colourway: "90% merino, 5% silk tussah, 5% rayon. The merino is berry pink and periwinkle, and the silk/rayon appears as silver streaks running through it, rather like a histology slide stained with eosin and hematoxylin, for you biologists out there."

I've never really been one for the red-white-'n'-blue combo, but blue is my favourite colour and this colourway just looked like so much fun! The blue in is beautiful, it's almost exactly the same shade as my handbag as well.

And yes, silk. I haven't tried silk yet, because my ethical vegetarian side can't use new fibres made from boiled bugs (the only silk I have so far is in the form of a chairty-shop jumper I'm going to unravel). Then I discovered that Bombyx silk is made from boiled cocoons, whereas Tussah silk is 'wild' silk - the cocoons are collected after the moths have hatched. Ethical quandary over! (Please, PLEASE, no one disavow me of this!)

But there's more, there's more!



Mmmmmmmmmmm - Forest Sun: "90% merino, 5% silk tussah, 5% rayon. The merino is forest green and chocolate brown, and the silk/rayon and golden streaks running through it like rays of sun between the trees." A full 6oz, and this is what I plan to spin up to make the Swallowtail Shawl with.

I deliberately went with this colourway partly because it is so beautiful, and partly because it's out of my usual colour range (blue/black) yet still the sort of thing that I'd wear. The green especially is glorious. I can't get it to photograph properly, so check out the Etsy page linked to above.



I can't decide how to spin it yet. Do I try to separate out the colours, do I heather it... 2-ply? Chain-plyed? Luckily I should have enough to experiment with. My Mermaid's Hair Yarn was my test yarn for how much I could get out of 2oz - so I then estimated I'd need 4oz for the Swallowtail (although this was before I managed to make a shawlette out of 2oz!) and got a further 2oz for playing.

But anyway - no spinning until at least next Wednesday. The other week I decided to start up a student forum (where we all get to practise giving papers) in my department, and the first session is next week. We've basically gone from talking about it to doing it in 3 weeks, and unsurprisingly this meant it was very short notice for getting papers for the first session! So I'm doing it. So I now have a week in which to write a paper.

I am also still getting the odd twinge in my ankles, so another week off will be good. I am desperately hoping that everything feet-wise is OK, because I really want to spin!

Well, I'd better go and put these batts away - if I keep petting them they're going to felt!