This yarn is called Prairie Prayer and it's one of the Circle of Wagons yarns. In case you don't know, a very important gal, Holly is facing some health issues and mounting medical bills, and so spinners far and wide are donating yarns, variations on a theme, to help defray some of her, you know, costs and worries. Anyway, this is my yarn for Holly. Below is the story of it's spinning and since it's also a spinning challenge, on Sunday make you way on over to Lexi's blog and vote on your favorite of these thoughtful yarns.

You know, my first inclination for Circle the Wagons was to do something gruesome, it would have been so easy and natural. However, I really wanted to challenge myself, work outside my normal gory-osity, I decided to take it in another direction, go for pretty, go for green, go for hope, and friendship, while still evoking the prairie. I wanted this yarn to be about everyone being there for everyone else, so I used only gifted fiber. Every bit of fiber in this yarn was given to me by fellow spinners, have a look, if you've ever sent me fiber, it's probably in there! I started finding green and then by carding wonderfully soft locks and roving together with tussah silk noils (natural and green) and organic natural caramel cotton. I spun this into a lumpy bumpy single around a core of blue cotton that I unraveled from a placemat that I received in a recent fiber swap. I also autowrapped it with a really thin single of natural merino wool, letting this wind on of it's own awkward accord, much like life twists and turns of it's own accord. While spinning this single, i held some sweet-smelling hemp to the side and let it grab on at an angle, mimicing the tall kansas prairie grass waving in the wind above the smaller, shorter tufts of green. I also spun in some flowers I hand felted out of flame-dyed, uncarded polypay wool with yellow and pink centers. Not too many flowers, just enough to pretty up a long journey, to bring home the fact that on any trail, any hard journey, there's beauty, even if it's small and unpredictable. The same thing goes for the sky, throughout I switched tension and let little cocoons of the threaded blue sky poke out and lighten it up a bit. To top it off, I spun in is one huge handfelted Sun, because the sun is always there to shine on everyone, no matter what you're going through. All in all, I wanted this yarn to speak to a long journey, to the helpfulness and love of friends and community, and to the prairie, which had all of that in abundance. With love and hope to Holly, jacey

Circle the wagons
90 yards
US#13+
auctioned for $55