After a long absence, I'm back here!

So much has happened since I began this blog and moved to Iowa. I had just learned I was suffering from an inherited horrible, terminal, cancer syndrome that I had never heard of before. I'm adopted, and for years was wondering about the strange symptoms I experienced at times. Not until I had to have a colonoscopy was the truth revealed, and I'll never forget how pale that doctor's face was when he told me what he had found.

Since then I have been treated at Mayo Clinic, which sees a lot of people, some from far away, like me. There are about 200,000 of us in the US. I have had a bunch of surgeries since then and a lot procedures each year to keep me cancer-free, plus I had developed cataracts in my eyes and had to have one fixed.As of this writing I am stable and only need annual followups until the next thing goes wrong with me.

I have sent somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 pounds of wool and fibers out for processing over the last 3 years to Morning Sun Fiber Barn in Wapello, Iowa, and have spun up so many hanks of yarn it is silly. I have plans for it all, then sometimes I think I should try to sell some of it, so I can buy and process more fibers. Kinda support my habit. I want more sari silk, another half a kilo of it. It is so fun to work with. Sharon at the mill does such a nice job on all my fiber blends, I couldn't be more happy with the results.

Here are some more yarns I have spun up over the last 2 years:

This is a 45/55% blend of apricot mohair with white Romney wool, thread plied, Thick And Thin yarn.

This is thread plied Thick And Thin yarns made with Border Leicester wool I imported from Australia, from a champion stud.

This is my first totally original art yarn. This is a white BFL wool Lock yarn. The locks are attached to a singles yarn, spun at the same time the locks are added. The locks are securely attached.

Here's my Lock yarn next to Lexi Boeger's Tailspun yarn. She makes hers in a totally different way than I mine.

This is a close up of my Pink Cloud art yarn on Etsy in my shop, Luana Handcrafts..

Pink Cloud is another original art yarn by me. It features pink BFL wool and white kid mohair clouds.

See the clouds? It knits up really nice and pretty. the clouds are securely attached and won't come off, but I recommend this yarn be dry-cleaned only.

This is a yellow tweed yarn, made from hand-dyed, daisy yellow Corriedale wool, daisy yellow kid mohair, white nylon, yellow variegated sari silk, and clear angelina fiber.

This is a hand-dyed azalea pink blend of BFL wool, kid mohair, white angora, white nylon, purple/turquoise sari silk, and clear angelina.

This is hand-dyed crabapple red Corriedale wool,  red sari silk noils, red kid mohair, and white angora, white nylon, and clear angelina.

Dyeing To get There...

We took the first truckload of our belongings to Waukon, IA on May 1st. We are in the process of buying a place near Luana. But there are contingencies that have to be gotten through yet. So nothing's for sure, yet, but we have this feeling that it will work out okay.

From there we went to my Mom's in MN and we went to a wool and sheep festival where I bought a BFL cross fleece, or 4 pounds of one. It was very clean and pretty, no VM, just a few twigs of hay to remove. Here it is, the raw fleece on the left, the washed wool on the right side.

Then I dyed part of the wool a gorgeous cornflower blue, along with the nylon blending fiber, 1 oz. I also added angora, glitz, and sari silk in blues.

To blend them, I divied them up into nine portions and then carded them 4 times together.

It carded and spun up beautifully!

Here is a close up of it!

 

I am going to knit socks with this yarn.