Jan
It’s Pimpin’ Pimpin’
(Little Kat Williams reference for those of you not familiar. He’s hilarious, even to this silly white girl who knits all day.)
Okay so in addition to the awesome boxes you can get every month from Phat Fiber, and the wicked give aways on their blog NOW the geniuses over there at Phat Fiber have brought us a forum.
Here’s the great thing about it: it’s open to anyone. If you’re a contributor and want to see what people thought of your stuff, it’s for you. If you think you might want to contribute but aren’t sure what other people sent in, or if anyone liked it, it’s for you. If you got a box and want some place to share your spoils and what you did with the samples, it’s for you. If you didn’t get a box but want to see what everyone else got, it’s for you. If you’re not sure what the box is all about and you want to see what people got and how they feel about it, it’s for you! See how that works, sheer brilliance. It’s just starting out so it need people to tell Jess what they’d like to see in upcoming boxes, it needs people to tell the contributors what they liked (or didn’t, we’re all grown ups and would love the constructive criticism) about the samples they received and most of all we want to see what you’re doing with all those wonderful little bits and pieces.
Now, since I’m already pimpin’ pimpin’ let me just wax poetic about how much I love the combed top rovings from Vines. I am an extremely new spinner and hers are the first full sized rovings that I’ve bought. They are very high quality and beautiful, but so reasonable in price that I could feel safe to ‘play’ with them and not worry about wasting a crap ton of money if I screwed it up too badly. I bought two full sized braids from her as a result of winning a sample braid from the Phat Fiber blog awhile back. (So, see! Contributing to Phat Fiber DOES work!)
The rovings I bought where a BFL combed top in the colorway ‘Seaglass’
A small portion of this got spun into this:
last night. I only did a very small amount because I’m still very new to the wheel spinning thing and I was worried it wasn’t going to look okay or that it would be so lumpy and splitty that it would be impossible to knit, so I was judicious in how much of that wonderful roving I was willing to sacrifice to practice.
However, the yarn that it produced is soft, even and gorgeous! So I will be working on spinning up the rest of the braid here in the next week or so to make several hanks of hand spun for myself.
The other roving I got from Vines was this beautiful rambouillet braid in ‘Pink Pistachio’.
I am thinking I’m going to buy this batt:
To spin and ply with the Pink Pistachio. This batt (click on the picture to take you to the listing) is from one of my spinning mentors and co-contributors in the Phat Fiber boxes, CJ from eXtreme spinning. I think the two would look lovely together and I happen to know that CJs fibers are beautiful and soft since I got some samples of hers in my Phat Fiber box (and also because she sent me that gorgeous hank of undyed soy silk/wool that she spun for me to dye as seen in a previous post).
As a matter of fact I just changed my mind and purchased this before I posted this blog, because I don’t want one of my greedy readers (yes, YOU!) to snap it up before I have a chance. So it’s mine, but do check out the rest of her gorgeous fibers and hand spun yarns.
I gotta tell you guys, the wonderful stuff I have discovered in that Phat Fiber box is going to lead me straight to the poor house. I keep telling myself I can’t buy any more fiber or yarn, but then the next thing you know: whammo! More fiber shows up in my mail box. It’s totally worth it though to have completely one of a kind custom yarn that I made myself. I can’t believe I didn’t learn how to spin years ago!
Maybe if you’re lucky (and you signed up) I’ll include some hand spun yarns in the Rock Your Socks Off club boxes. Who knows what you’ll get in there!
