My first couple of sessions with the Majacraft Aura were not as successful as I had hoped, but tonight I sat down and everything magically made sense. I’ve got the hang of the foot pedals and tensioning, both of which are very different from my Traveller. I’m still not crazy about the wire rings the yarn has to travel through; they catch and make me have to hand wind the sequins, but other than that, it’s pretty awesome.

I spun my little heart out tonight and filled up a bobbin: TEN OUNCES on the nose. It’s made from 3 bags of carder scraps and embellished with 10” teeswater locks, angelina blobs, English Leicester locks, sequins & beads. The skein is so monstrous; it will probably take a week to dry. I thought it was appropriate to spin a yarn on my Lexi-brand spinning wheel, block it on my Lexi-brand yarn tensioner, and it will eventually be made into an art piece mimicking Lexi’s nailed wall-art from the Lillehammer show.

Here’s the quilt I made for my sister-in-law’s new wee one. I used a Moda Jelly Roll in “Authentic” and a log cabin-style pattern. I really loved this fabric when I bought it, especially the ones that look like newsprint. I had gotten tired of looking at it after all the sewing, but now that the finished product is all put together, I love it again. The only thing I would change if I could would be to put a thicker batting inside it, but my machine isn’t built for that.

My quilt teacher told me to do the outer binding by hand, but I cheated and used the machine. (The kid would have been graduating from high school by the time I got any hand-sewing done.)

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I had intended to do a blog post about my new Doppio gloves, but I plan to submit them to Knitty. They have a clause that submissions can’t have been shown anywhere else on the internet prior to publication, so they will have to remain a secret for now.

Well, my Aura came and is still sitting almost untouched. I was very excited about its arrival, but a death in the family kind of took the wind out of my sails. (After a few years of chemo and other treatments, I lost my Gramps to thyroid cancer, making this the third consecutive year that I have lost a grandparent.) I’m still rather bummed, but I’m reemerging into the spinning world and I still plan to post lots of review information and sample skeins from the new wheel when I get them done.

Other stuff I’ve been up to:

-Learned to quilt. I gave my first attempt at making a quilt to a friend, and it was hilariously obvious that I had no idea what I was doing. So I took an official quilting class at Quiltworks and now I’m a mastAr. I got one of those Moda jelly rolls and split it into 2 small baby-sized blankets. One for my friend, to make up for the fact that I gave her the world’s most poorly made quilt, and one for my sister-in-law. For the record, BOTH of the babies are already here, so I am doubly late on these gifts.

- Knitting a pair of gloves. (“Why are you ALWAYS knitting gloves?” my husband says.) My old pair is worn out & pilled, and the new pair I made a couple months ago just don’t excite me. For the new ones, I am using the best yarn on earth (Numma Numma Doppio) and making up a pattern based on the Froop Loop socks from Knitty.

- I crocheted a set of “action figures” of my favorite tv characters, with the intention of hanging them as christmas tree ornaments, and one of the guys from the show saw them and asked me to make him a set. More on that later when I get done taking pictures.

I ordered my Aura the other day. At first I wanted to support a local business, but then it occurred to me that sales tax from buying in-state would be almost $80, so I found someone far away to order it for me.

I was going to write a longer blog post but I guess I don’t really feel like it. This week is a bummer.

For the first time in a long time, there are a few new handspun yarns in the shop, with more to come as soon as the others finish drying. I’ve really caught the spinning bug this week thinking about this new wheel I want, but since it’s backordered, I will have to make due with New Zealandy (the Traveller) until it gets here. Hopefully 3 - 4 weeks doesn’t feel as long as it sounds.

So long, Frank, ol’ buddy ol’ pal. You went to a good home, and hopefully you’ll keep spinning beautiful yarns for many years to come. Remember that time we managed to get 9 ounces on one of your bobbins? And how about those tail-spun Lincoln locks that are currently on display at the Lillehammer show? Yep, we had some great adventures, but now I’m movin’ on up to the east side…

…to a deeeeeeluxe Majacraft Aura in the sky.