Yummy Squishiness

Today I took a little trip to my LYS, that's Local Yarn Store for you non-fiber obsessed peeps, AKA my mecca, and spent well over an hour petting fibers of all kinds. I cuddled the Alpaca, chatted up the Mountain Colors, played with color combos in the rovings, and tickled the tencel. I even had a short conversation with some bright sock yarn about the merits of socks in the summertime.

I also hit up JoAnns and spent a few dollars on some copper wire and beads, a present for Lemon. She's been feeling a little blue the last few days as I picked up my knitting again after my extended wheel-moon and have left her to sit for longer than an hour at a time, so I figured a little gift to show her she's still my best girl wouldn't go amiss.

What does one give a spinning wheel? A blinged out threading hook of course! There's a small little hook that you use to pull the yarn through the orifice. In Lemon's case, it happens to be built in and the little knob at the end makes the perfect place to wind the end of the yarn when I get up so it's easy to pick back up again. However, I'm afraid that someday in our travels together, this little doodad might wiggle itself free and I'll find myself hookless. So I fashioned a fancy little threading hook out of the copper wire, and strung it on a small chain of blue glass beads. Then I made a small clip of matching copper to secure it in place on Lemon.

Here's the result. It hangs around the Mother-of-All (that's the head of the wheel), ready for pulling those lovely strands of handspun through the orifice for me. Lemon expressed her gratitude, of course, and how much she liked the blue/copper combo.

I also, while I was at it, added a little matching copper bling to the WPI tool that sent me into Paradise (ah, how aptly named) today. It measures, by means of wrapping yarn around it, how many wraps per inch there are in any given yarn. What use is this? It tells me what weight my yarn is. A worsted weight, what I normally spin, has 9-11 WPI. If I'm afraid that my yarn isn't going to be heavy or light enough, all I have to do it check!