There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income. (Edmund Wilson)

Remember the BFL I spun up a couple of weeks ago? I used the mini skein that I had Navajo-plied to knit this large square on my sock blanket. I really love the way it turned out! And as it happens, my friend decided that she didn't need the larger skein of the BFL as a late payment (although I still feel guilty and wish that she would have taken it). So there's 257 yards of this same yarn to knit into something pretty.

I've been able to spin about 5 days this past week, which is wonderful. I spun 3 ounces of a natural wool. This is part of a pound of wool that is also owed out to someone. I'm doing the singles at about 32 wpi, using a supported long draw, and then I'll 2-ply them into a nice worsted. The wool is delicious to work with, extremely soft with really long staple length. It's also extremely fly-away; this is the first time that I've ever had the need for a spinning cloth on my lap to catch the stands of wool as they drift out of the drafted roving. I'm looking forward to seeing how fluffy this yarn ends up after it's spun and plied.

I did interrupt the white wool (which, by the way, is being called "white wool" because I've forgotten what breed sheep it came from and I just don't care enough at the moment to go back and look it up) to start plying the Crown Mountain Falkland. I had mistakenly believed that if I plied it on Friday night, I would be able to bring it with me Sunday to show off to everyone. (Sunday was our annual Knit in the Park -- I don't think I've had a chance to talk about that.) Anyway, I tried to Navajo-ply the singles, but the yarn just wouldn't cooperate. I don't know if it's because I made the singles so thin and my hands just weren't up to the challenge of working with the delicate strands, or if I didn't spin it enough (or maybe I overspun it). But for whatever reason, I kept breaking the singles. After about eight or nine re-starts, I gave up and decided to just do a two-ply. I'm getting a real pretty 2-ply heavy lace/light fingering weight yarn. I'm hoping it blooms when I whack it into a full fingering weight. I had to stop in the middle of the plying, so it's still on Yarnell waiting for me to finish it. The good thing is that I think I'll have some really nice yardage from it.