The fibre's arrived......

Went out on Friday, and it was another nice day for travelling.
My top priority project isn't one that I could bring along so I was looking forward to the drive as I could start on a new sock pattern that's been waiting in the wings. Country Girl Socks from HeartStrings Patterns. I'm using Knit Picks: Risata,(42% cotton, 39% Wool, 13% Polyamid, 6% Elite) Colour: Burgundy. I'm loving this pattern and it's not the first one that I've bought from HeartStrings. The first pattern was the Flared Lace Smoke Ring. They're both easy patterns to follow with great written instructions. The designer, Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer has a lot of really nice downloadable patterns on the website it's well worth a visit.

I won't post too many pictures of the mill again, as I've put most of them on my flickr page. But this is the bag of Alpaca lusciousness that I picked up...

I brought 8 lbs of pretty dirty fleece to the mill, and I got back 6.4 lbs. This fleece was already two years old by the time I bought it and the vm in the fibre had gotten even more brittle and a lot of it was tiny pieces of straw which was near impossible to get out. I don't have a drum carder, and I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of cleaning, so the next logical step was to bring it to the mill. I was apprehensive as this was the first time buying a fleece and dealing with a mill, but I don't regret it. The alpaca was processed with no blending of other fibre's, and it's come back feeling and looking great. I'm looking forward to spinning it.

On the way back home we stopped in to visit some family in Stettler, AB, and I can't help but post pictures of the little ones who greeted us......



We had such a good time.....never a lack of entertainment in the company of these three.