Hey! I Know That Camel

My friend Dana's camels are pictured in the current issue of Spin-Off!(page 50, Fall 2007 issue). I've not only met the camels pictured, I have spun their fiber, and have a couple of bags of camel blends in my stash. My favorite wools to spin are longwools, but my favorite non-wool fiber is camel- it's so soft and it spins like butter. Dana's blends are fantastic- camel with assorted dyed wools, mohair, and sometimes glitz.

This is Lily, in 2001.

And this is a lace scarf that I knitted from Dana's camel blends (also in '01)- it's camel, wool, a bit of black alpaca, and some glitz. I loved spinning that fiber. Don't look too closely at the scarf- it was my very first lace project and there are mistakes galore. I still love the scarf anyway.

The Spin-Off article (by Carol H. Rhodes, who I forgot to mention also taught at NCFF last weekend- I would have taken her all-day Spinning for Knitting class, but I'd already committed to teaching my two workshops) is a really good one, with lots of info about the prep and spinning of camel.