Warning: I Am Going To Complain

Before I get to the complaining, I thought I would give a quick update on my real life (as opposed to my equally as real, yet somehow not real, fiber life.)

I gave a recital on Saturday with my flute-playing friend.  I thought it went really well.  It was my Junior Recital (in order to graduate with a Bachelor of Music in performance, we have to pass our freshman jury - essentially a short recital with additional technical requirements in front of a panel of faculty - we have to pass our sophomore qualifying exam, and then give a half-hour junior recital and an hour-long senior recital.)  I'm well on my way to getting this degree, which is pretty sweet.  I'll try to somehow post a sound link to my recital recording in case anyone is interested in counting how many mistakes I made.  :P  I don't actually have the recording yet though, so that'll have to wait.

Two more weeks left of school (and a week of finals) and then I'm home for the summer!  I don't actually have a job lined up for the summer, but I hope to spend a good chunk of my day practicing so that I'm prepared for my grad school auditions, then I can spend my evenings knitting!

Ok, on to my complaining.  I normally stick rather strictly to talking about my fiber-related life on this blog, because that's what people are here to read, but I'm allowing myself to drift from that a bit today (I promise there is a bit of fiber at the end of the post.)

I'm really a bit frustrated today.  I feel like I have been stuck living through a series of unfortunate events (although those of you who have read the series by Lemony Snicket, don't worry, my parents weren't killed in a mysterious fire that then led me to endure numerous life-threatening situations.)  Back in April my check card number was stolen and someone spent all of the money in my checking account which, ironically, was all of my money period.  Thankfully I caught it the day it happened and I contacted Paypal (through which my card had been used) and they suspended the person's account, then I called my bank and cancelled my card and filed a fraud statement and went through that whole process.  Of course they sent the affidavit to the wrong address, I didn't get it in time and therefore they claimed they didn't have enough information to settle the claim and it didn't end in my favor.  Alright, so I was pissed.

Well, today I got a call from the bank.  Apparently someone has gotten hold of my credit card number (which is different from the check card I had just gotten replaced) and charged quite a bit of money to it.  The card is now cancelled and I will have a new one coming in the mail shortly, most likely to the wrong address again.  This time I didn't have to deal with potentially losing my fraud claim because they flat-out denied the charge and contacted me immediately (instead of the other way around), but still, how annoying is that?  Why can't people just be nice and leave my bank accounts alone?

Ok, I'm done ranting.  Here's some fiber:

You've seen that.  It's the alpaca/angora blend that Anne so generously sent me.  Well, over the past week I spun it all up into a 2-ply fingering-weight yarn.  I didn't take pictures of it on the spindle - whoops!

I also forgot to take pictures of the plying process.  I tried out the "Andean plying" technique, which is essentially plying from both ends of the same single, folding it in half to create a 2-ply yarn.  This process involves a rather painful process of wrapping the single around your hand in a strange way to create a "bracelet" from which you can ply.  It's only painful because I wrapped it way too tightly and it was cutting off the circulation to my middle finger and was bending it in an uncomfortable direction... I'm sure it can be done in a perfectly comfortable manner.

Anyway, instead of plying directly from the bracelet, I wrapped the two ends of the single together around a tennis ball from which I would then add twist to ply my yarn.

Sorry, still no pictures.  I think I added too much plying twist, but I don't think it's too much of a problem.

I wanted to take advantage of the softness of the alpaca and angora fibers, so I decided to try my luck with making a brushed yarn inspired by this post.  Don't tell anyone, but I didn't actually have a brush per se, so I used a toothbrush.  (Don't worry, it was new.)

Et voila, 2 oz. of spindle-spun brushed yarn:

I plan to use it to line a pair of mittens that I have yet to make.  It's going to be so extremely soft, I can wait.

Also, I'm really sorry if people feel like I am giving them the cold shoulder by not replying to comments on my blog posts - sometimes I just have no contact info and no way to get a hold of you.  Sorry!