As you may have noticed, I so frequently start off my posts with a little story before I get around to showing fibery pictures. Well, today’s no different. Today, I’m going to tell you why I hate Hymenoptera.

When I was in 11th grade, I took Bio II as my science credit. I had a wonderful teacher, Ms. Powell (though not everyone liked her - she was very strict and expected a lot of her students). One our first day of class, she did what many high school teachers do on the first day: she handed out notecards and asked us to fill them out with pertinent information, such as our full names, homeroom teacher, emergency contact info, etc. One additional piece of information she requested from us was our least favorite animal. It was a biology class, though, so that didn’t seem like too odd of a request. The course schedule was broken down into quarters, each with a different topic: botany, zoology, microbiology, and genetics. When we got to the zoology section, our notecards resurfaced: our first assignment was a lengthy research paper and presentation on an animal of our choice. Sort of. See, we’d already made our choices, we just didn’t know it - Ms. Powell had assigned each of us to do our least favorite animals.

I had written down wasps on my notecard. Ms. Powell narrowed it down further to mud daubers. Wasps. Order Hymenoptera. I hate wasps, and all their cousins that belong to that wretched order, Hymenoptera. I learned to respect mud daubers after doing the presentation (they’re solitary, non-aggressive wasps that don’t really do all that much damage and do keep the other pesty insect populations in check), but I still hate wasps. And bees. And ants.

I heard what I thought was another carpenter bee burrowing away at the wall between my porch and my bedroom this morning. When I got outside, I found that it was a wasp. A mean, ugly wasp. I did a few Google searches to see if I could figure out what kind of wasp it was, but none of the photos I pulled up looked right. There are plenty of wood-boring wasps out there, but this one looks like your ordinary, mean-spirited, aggressive yellow jacket. I am not happy. Have I mentioned that I hate wasps?

Anyway, on to the fiber. But first, a picture of a cute cat to soothe all those jitters and anxieties brought about by discussion of nasty wasps:

Seymour, sleeping the afternoon away

I was getting ready to go out late yesterday afternoon when I noticed Seymour curled up under the dining room table. He had apparently knocked over a roll of paper towels to use for a pillow. It was definitely one of the cuter things I’ve ever seen.

Ok, now on to the fiber. For real this time.

When I got home last night, I finished spinning up the singles I had started the day before. Though it wasn’t as smooth and easy to spin as the Corriedale I spun a while back, the Louet did spin up pretty evenly, and I had fairly consistent, thin strands of it. Doubled up, it would have been somewhere between a laceweight and a light fingering. However, I opted to ply it with some brown Romney I had. The Romney did not spin up so evenly, and on average, I ended up with a far thicker yarn.

Handspun singles: 1.5 oz. of Louet 100% wool top in colorway Grape Jelly & 1.5 oz. of undyed Romney

A closer look at the bobbins of singles

However, despite their differences in weights and textures, I still wanted to ply them together to see what I got. And the result is pretty, if not exactly what I was initially imagining I’d get. It’s 3.0 oz. of a sport/DK-weight yarn that measures 14 wpi and approx. 214 yds.

3 oz. of a tweedy handspun

A closeup look of the handspun, with a penny for size comparison

I’m rather pleased with it, and I’m still thinking it’ll make a nice Argosy Scarf (a short one). I think I’m going to spin up some more of the Louet and ply it with itself, though, to see what that looks like. But for now, I’m quite happy with the skein I’ve managed to create. Spinning is fun!