in november, 2007, i went to my first fiber festival: kid 'n ewe and llamas, too! it was a small town afair in boerne *i'm sure some of my fellow fiber enthusiasts were there! but despite being small, there were some great booths! i bought some bamboo fiber from my favorite booth there. i have never spun bamboo, but these rovings were just too beautiful to pass up. 
my buying strategy is always just to buy what i like, even if i don't have any clue what i'm going to do with it. i almost never have a project in mind when i buy fiber, but then, when the idea hits, i have it there. but i've also never spun bamboo, and find it a little frightening. and so, it sat in it's bag, unspun, silently intimidating me. so after i got some inspiration, i decided to break it out, and have a go at it. what a dream! it was awesome. it spins alot like silk, which is what everybody says, and i HAVE had experience with silk before, so it was pretty familiar. it was a little more slippery, in my opinion though, but with my wheel on the slowest ratio i was making great progress! it was FUN to spin, since it was rainbow dyed with longer red repeats in the middle, i could watch the colors come and go. it was fascinating to see how the colors came, at first with such intensity, and then as the next color would come along, to watch how they blended together. i always knew bamboo was a shiny fiber, but once the twist enter the drafted sections, the colors shone with such intensity! it was quite mesmerizing! i zoned out for about an hour, having found my rythym. and it went pretty seamlessly, i only hit a major snag once. it was a great experience for my first time!
my final design for the finished yarn isn't set in stone yet. right now i'm thinking i will ply it with fine white silk, but i think i want to do something novelty with it, i'm just not sure what. but i think i'm set on the white silk, because i want to keep the color of the bamboo the focal point of the yarn, and the white will make it pop! plus, the addded shiny-ness of the bamboo, i don't want to detract from it's beauty.
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