She started in on her roving right away when it came. I went ooh, aah, watching her spinning it at Purlescence, and I could only wish; when I spin, which isn’t often anymore, my yarn is never as fine as the stuff I most like to knit up these days. The finer I want it to turn out, the further down my fingertips I hold the fiber at my wheel; with almost no sense of touch left at the tips, spinning like that is a strictly visual task. And one can only stare at a small spot for so long. I could make perfectly lovely yarn out of it, but there was no way this soft merino was going to turn into the lace shawl knitting I so much wished for.
Jasmin had an answer to that. She asked me to bring a half pound of it back to her. I was stunned. I kept asking her, “Are you sure!? Are you serious!” I knew how much work that was! But twist my arm, heck yeah, and I handed over those eight ounces.
That was a week ago. Yesterday (that was a lot of work done fast!) she handed it back to me: in the form of three skeins, three-plied, (three plied! That’s way more work than two-plied!) fingering weight, 794 yards’ worth of that merino, enough for one of my shawls. In absolutely the most gorgeous colorway (well, um, yeah, I picked it out. “Oh Pretty Woman.”) Oh. My. Goodness. Thank you, Jasmin!
I have to add: my friend Nancy came over yesterday, before we saw Jasmin, and I told her, “You have to see this.” She walked into my living room, saw the amaryllises, and gasped out loud over Lene’s: “That one just towers over the others!”
Yeah, my friends tower over me all the time. It’s so cool.
