Feels Like Cheating

Each of my children discovered at different times, they both were quite confused. Emma discovered it first, she walked into the living room and instantly stated, "what is that?"



Me: It's from our new alpaca, Blueberry.
Emma: Yeah, right.
Me: It's dyed wool. Come over here and feel it, see how it is different from alpaca.
Emma: I only touch fiber from animals I know.

Gotta love a pre-teen with standards.

Later Zack came up from the basement, the instant he could see my spinning wheel he exclained "it's blue!" Even the kids know I've only spun natural colors. He looked real close:



I wanted to try something a little different. I had a request for one of my hats, in blue tones. I haven't ventured into dying, and we don't have any alpacas that produce blue fiber, so I had to think on this one. I decided to buy some blue dyed fiber, I was open to any type of fiber, I just wanted blue.

I purchase this BFL braid from WonderWhyAlpacaFarm (a wonderful Michigan based alpaca farm - her farm blog is here):



Given I have always spun yarn from raw fiber off our own animals, this was quite the change for me. Not only is it blue, not my usual natural colors, but it is also wool (BFL = Blue Faced Leicester), not alpaca. Add on that I am used to spinning raw fiber I flick into a cloud rather than a more formally prepared fiber, this was all a very new adventure for me.

I was cheating on my alpacas, cheating on my natural color loyalty, and cheating on my home prepared fiber cloud method. It sure spun up much faster than my typical method, cheating indeed.