Spinning Faster

Because my thumbs have become very painful and spinning was no longer a peaceful form of meditation I have had to develop a different way of drawing out the fibre.  I suspect that I am finally doing it the correct way [thank you U-Tube] after all these years of doing it tough.  However, it needs quite ruthless pre-drafting to get the yarn to spin with no pressure on my fingers and thumbs and the bonus is that I seem to be producing more yarn faster.  This is good because I am limiting myself to about 60 minutes per day/session or whatever.  I have finished  spinning the first bobbin of the brown section of 'petal soft' and have done quite a lot of the second bobbin.

The pink portion is very pretty but I am going to have to spin the grey as well before I can really decide what I am going to knit.  At the moment my plan is to knit a Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton sweater, 'Danbyholm Pullover' from the pattern book "NORO  -  Meet the man behind the legendary yarn".  I will not, of course, be knitting with Noro Yarn as I only spin what I knit.

However, after visiting New Zealand, D3 brought me back a skein of black possum yarn and I have been putting off knitting it because (a) it is black and hard to knit at night (b) the pattern I have chosen for it is a lace cowl (c) it is years since I even attempted lace although, when I was doing office work which involved sitting waiting for the phone to ring while my boss (and husband) saved up all the letters to be typed until the end of the afternoon and expected them to be posted off before I went home to cook the dinner.  I knitted quite a lot in those days and one garment was a lace cardigan in Bluebelle Crepe which was a 4-ply yarn and was quite fine.

Anyway, I have ordered, from America, a pattern and chart holder so that I can mark exactly which row I am in and what I need to do in that row.  When it arrives (mail from USA is slow  -  they have trouble harnessing the dolphins) in about four weeks I will break out the possum and see how I go with the lace and the blackness.


I have an ulterior motive of course or I would never have got around to ordering such a sensible item; trying to type my grandfather's Will.  I think that I have mentioned before that it was written in a great hurry because it is badly typed with spelling errors, inserted words where they were missed and, unlike all the other Wills which I have typed, most of the UPPER  CASE  bits are not underlined.  A Legal Typist would have been embarrassed to present such shoddy work.

Although the laws on intestacy were very sensible in South Australia in 1956 to die without a Will may have split the estate in ways which would not have been fair or reasonable.  It was a sensible Will and would have been exactly what my grandfather would have wanted  -  maybe he was able to make his wishes known but my recollection is that he had been quite demented following a CVA. Certainly there would have been a larger amount to pay in Death Duties as it would not have enabled putting the estate in Trust for future generations.

I will get back to typing it out when my row marker arrives and I can keep my place amongst the heretofores and the therebeforementioneds, the bad typing and the general air of having been done in a bit of a hurry.  The camels are harnessed and waiting to transport it along the Birdsville Track to Perth when the dolphins arrive in Sydney.