Have Ewe Any Wool?

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Finally!!!

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The first bobbin of the Merino is FINALLY done! I can now move on to the second bobbin! Wahoo! The Merino is very soft and squishy and I spin rather thin, so it takes an unexpectedly long period of time to spin up what appears to be a relatively small amount of wool. I wonder how long it's going to take me to fill the second bobbin???

I had planned to run out to a spinning group this evening and start on the second bobbin, but a dear friend happened to be in town for a quick visit and that definitely trumped spinning! Several of us met for dinner, knitting, and chatting and had a wonderful time. I did manage to knit several inches of the second Panda Silk sock. I think I'll have a new pair of socks by the end of the week! Then it's on to finishing the "psuedo twin-set" of green socks - the Jawoll Magic and Plymouth Zino.

Oh...I forgot about a photo I took on New Year's Day when I met my in-laws for lunch in Fredericksburg. We parked in the Municipal lot, and when I looked up, the back of one of the buildings had "Washington Woolen Mill" painted on the back. I thought, "How cool is that? I wonder if it's still in operation?". All of the buildings on that block now house cafes, boutiques, and other little shops, but at one time, it appears there was a booming wool industry there! I'm not quite sure what this building actually housed - the original very large mill burned down in 1910 and only a small part of a stone wall from the mill remains. There was an "extension" of the mill built in 1909 that made woolen pants, but I don't think it was housed in this building. The photos of that pants factory show a much larger building that doesn't look at all like the building shown here. Most notably, the pants factory had a pitched roof rather than the flat roof of this building. Here's an interesting tidbit - the actual Woolen Mill had been used as a hospital during the Civil War - they called the hospital the "Washington Woolen Mill Hospital". Perhaps the building pictured here is an "out building" of the original mill?

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