Romneyed out, neck coolers, and garden stuff

That, my friends, is 1167 yards of 2-ply, award winning silver Romney yarn- about 2lbs, which, along with the lovely charcoal lamb, and the Romney-ish white, is more than enough to make a traditional yoked sweater, which is what I intend to do with this yarn. It's unlikely, but if I run out of yarn, I have at least 2lbs of award winning white Romney roving (from Iron Water Ranch) and at least that much charcoal, nowhere near award winning but nice enough for all that, roving as well. I'm set for Romney.

I'm also tired of spinning solid color stuff. So I dug through the stash (I'm still stashbusting, don'tchaknow) and came up with this:

a Jelly Roll batt from Decadent Fibers. It's about 4' x 6', and 1lb of lovely hand-dyed wool (they use a blend, but I think it's primarily Corriedale). I love love love the deep jewel tones of this batt- Pat and Christine did a wonderful job! Of course, spinning from a batt is a different from spinning prepared pencil roving- it's not just a matter of finding an end and taking off. The layers have to be separated, and then each layer has to be pulled apart a bit more. I could run it all through my drum carder, but I don't want the colors blended even more, so I'm mostly just grabbing handfuls, stretching it some, and spinning

which results in a slightly thick-n-thin single, which combined with the random coloring, will make for a really lovely plied yarn. I hope. In any case, it's nice to be working with a bit of color again. This yarn will not only be softer than the Romney, it'll have a lot more bounce.

I've also been sewing up neck coolers as gifts- they go together quickly and 4ozs of the polymer crystals goes a loooong way (I've made 11 so far, and I have enough crystals for a few more).

Bee Girl bought a Sunflower kit in the Target Dollar Section (I love Target, and I especially love their dollar section- which in this case was 25 cents because it was late in the season so everything was on sale), and she carefully planted the 4 seeds on the south side of our house. I'd say she got a quarter's worth of beauty.

We planted 6 Big Boy tomato plants- they're now about 4' tall and have spread out about 6', and they've set hundreds of tomatoes. I see salsa in my future.