Update on Isis, and laceweight yarns

Just thought I’d drop in a note saying that Isis is much better. I’ve been keeping her warm, and humidifying her cage with an ultrasonic mister, and giving her a humid hide-box filled with sphagnum moss, to help with the bronchitis, and have been putting antibiotic ointment on the eye to help it. She went to the vet yesterday, and they took another culture from her–it won’t come back until late next week, but the vet thinks there’s a good chance that she’s managed to kick this Pseudomonas infection (I hope so!).

The vet also looked at her right eye (which had a nasty ulcer) and says it’s massively improved! It’s not all better yet, and the vet thinks she still might lose the eye, but she’s got a fighting chance, and that’s all that can be really asked for.

(Last time, the vet said she would almost certainly lose the eye, and the challenge was to keep it from becoming a dangerous abcess.)

Oh, and the vet said she was absolutely beautiful, and everyone in the veterinary was crowding in to admire her when the vet was examining/working with her. 🙂 She really is quite the beauty. And sweet-tempered, too.

Someone asked me whether I sell my handspun laceweight yarns. (I apologize for not emailing you back; there didn’t seem to be an email address.) Unfortunately, no, I don’t–actually I’ve often wished I could hire someone else to do it for me!! I can only spin about 15 yards of two-ply per hour, so it’s very, very slow going. The main reason I haven’t tried hiring someone is that I did the math–15 yards per hour means 100 hours’ work to spin 1500 yards, so at $10/hour it would be $1000 to have someone else spin the yarn for my shawls! Of course, they might be able to spin faster (I spin on drop spindles, which are slower), but still, it would be extremely expensive. So I don’t.

On the other hand, I do know where you can get good laceweight yarns. Carolina Homespun ( http://www.carolinahomespun.com ) has a fantastic baby alpaca laceweight yarn, very soft and very fine. If I hadn’t already been committed to this project, I would have bought some to knit with, it’s that beautiful. I’ve also seen Suri Elegance at other shops, which is a fine, silky yarn from suri alpacas–the only downside is that it’s obscenely expensive (I saw it at $66 for about 400-500 yards). The baby alpaca is much cheaper.

Tien