Marnie, speak! Good girl.

What do you think of the shawl?

I ripped her out and washed and dried the yarn, so I could start over. There was a problem, several rows back, no life line and not enough shawl in existence to really warrant a tedious fix, so I ripped her. The deadline is so far off, that I'm not terribly bothered by that.

But it hasn't all been the foul smell of failure. The Dragon Hoodie is progressing beautifully.

I'm working on the hood right now and will begin all the little dragony details after that.

In spinning news, my parents sent me roving for Christmas. What? Christmas is a week away? Are you saying that when I get a package at my door, a couple weeks before Christmas, with my parent's return address, I should know not to open it? Insanity!

And look at what was inside! Each bag is half a pound of gorgeous roving. The left two bags are a rich olive green Corriedale roving. It appears that MJ has almost identical roving, herself. I met her in person for the first time this weekend, at a knitting get together. It's a little eerie that we both have matching Kundert spindles and green roving, if we hadn't been seen in the same location at the same time, someone could have assumed we were the same person.

I managed to snap a pic of the Corriedale, on the spindle this weekend. She has her own ray of sunshine here. That means this is the only picture with enough lighting to be any good.

It sort of makes the rest of the pictures look even worse. I began spinning this on the Kundert, and it spins well, but I really found myself feeling like I had to spin pretty thick singles on it, so I switched to the Golding. I may have to invest in a few more Goldings just so I can spin more than one roving at a time. This 0.9 oz has been perfect for just about everything. I love it.

This is how it looks plied. The color is really a true olive green, despite the variety of shades you see here. When I was spinning it near daylight, I saw undertones of yellow shine through, it's actually quite lovely.

The other roving in the bags is a Merino/silk blend. It spins up into more of a sage green shade because the white of the silk soften the colors.

You know, though, there's a pretty good chance that I'm not going to be able to spin all that roving by hand. I mean, I'm a relatively quick spinner (spindler? spinster?) but a pound of sock weight yarn is a lot of yarn to spin. So Julia and I are talking about renting a wheel. I'm a little scared to go down that road, but I think it's time. Look for news of that next year.

I think I may have spun a balanced yarn. I'm not sure here, I'm still a relative novice, but fresh off the spindle, after plying, it appears to rest pretty comfortably, without twisting back on itself.

This is some of the beautiful green merino and silk roving my parents sent for Christmas. I haven't washed it and hung it yet and it's still seems to be hanging in a manner that would suggest it is balanced. I didn't mean to but there you go. After taking the pictures, I gave it a quick soak, so it'll be knit ready by dinner time.

More pics after the bump.

That green merino silk roving gets even better after a wash and hang.
It really seems to even things out a bit and make the yarn look slightly less "hand spun." Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of the fact that I hand spun it, but I don't want it to be too obvious.

I plied Panda with belly rubs to get another shot of her donning my handiwork.

In fact, she is mid belly rub in the picture.
Can you hear her? "Oh, the suffering, the indignity, the....a little to the left please."

And do you see her bucket of toys and treats in the background? Yes, that's only one of two. Don't even get me started about the whole cabinet full of treats for the little pooper. She lives a hard life.