Giving Up

I have given up -- at least for now -- on my attempts to make the Naughty Puppies blend into something I can spin. It's a gorgeous color. It's wonderfully soft fiber. I can spin it if I give it my full concentration and overtwist aggressively. The moment my concentration lets up, the overtwist lets up, and the yarn falls apart. Worse, when the yarn doesn't fall apart immediately, it falls apart when I try to make a join -- meaning it would probably also fall apart when I tried to despool it from the bobbin.

I'm feeling sorry for the fiber and myself. This fiber is soft enough and black enough to become high-fashion evening wear -- some sort of lacy, but warm, scarf or shawl draped over a black dress at the opera. I'm feeling sorry for the fiber that I haven't done it the high fashion justice it deserves. I'm feeling sorry for myself that I might have ruined some fiber -- or that I'm simply unable to spin it.

I don't know that this fiber would ever have made it to a high fashion garment. The fiber is soft enough, but I don't know that my skills are to that point yet. I'm comfortable that I can make good yarn, but my knitting certainly isn't up to par. My real weakness might be fashion. As far as fashion goes, I'm a farm boy at heart. I loved the opera when I lived in Seattle, but I sometimes wore blue jeans and often rode my bicycle. One of the things that has to happen for me to promote high-fashion alpaca is that I have to develop my fashion sense a little better.

Maybe that's why I focus so much on the warmth and softness of alpaca and the softness of handspun alpaca yarn. Fashion can always use warmth and softness, but you don't need high fashion to appreciate warmth and softness.