Fiber weekend

I spent my weekend working on the alpaca fiber. Last weekend I washed up Victoria's fiber from 2 years ago. I love her color, it's a reddish brown that is sometimes referred to a maroon. J was so nice as to fluffy up the fiber and help it dry throughout this last week. This weekend I was ready to start spinning it into yarn. I wondered how her fiber would spin. I've read that the crimp in the fiber is supposed to help with spinning. Crimp is the wavy lines that you can see when you spread the fiber apart. So far I have only spun Tucker's fiber, and he has nice crimp. Victoria has a lot of wonderful attributes, but she lacks crimp. Because I had been under the impression crimp was better for spinning, I was pleasantly surprised to find I loved spinning Victoria's fiber. It spins so smoothly. I am spinning this into a very fine yarn, as that is what it seems to want to do naturally.

After spinning just a little of Victoria's fiber, I wanted to do that all weekend! It was so smooth and pretty. But, I also wanted to complete my sweater. I had done the sleeves over the last week, but when I went to put them on the sweater, I realized I had done the pattern wrong. They had to be redone. Saturday Zack wanted to go swimming, and since he needed someone to supervise him, I agreed to go. I took that as a great time to knit up those sleeves, for the 2nd time. I thought I was knitting so fast, as I finished the sleeves during his swim. Then, come to find out he swam for 4 hours!

That night I sewed the seams to put the sweater together only to find out that the front panels did not match up. I know I checked and double checked that they would, but here it was plain to see when I put the sweater on that the pattern on one side started lower than it did on the other side. So, I had to take out the seams, including the neck band that I had knit, to free up one front panel for me to adjust where the pattern started. Sunday Zack wanted to swim again, so I set up my chair and knitting right by the pool. Sunday he *only* swam for 3 hours, but it was enough for me to fix the front panel and put all the seams back together. It's done!

I still need to wash and block it. I have never done this step before, and anything new gives me a bit of anxiety. I'm sure it will be fine. I also need to find some buttons because it's a short sleeve cardigan sweater that requires four buttons. I don't want any old button on there, so this could take some looking. I'm thinking something black with a wood texture would really be neat.

I am so excited to have my own alpaca sweater to wear!