"Animals Smell When Wet" Spin Challenge

my last-minute grab for the "Animals Smell When Wet" Spin Challenge. I read about it on the night of the deadline & knew i just couldn't pass this one up! so i grabbed everything spinnable, waterproof & non-animal I could muster around the house at 8pm, spun & shot this little raffia bounty, & submitted it before wednesday rolled around! woot!
okay, for the Spin Challenge regs:

Animals Smell When Wet

The downside of wearing fuzzy knits in the winter is that they do get that wet sheep smell on a rainy day. So the challenge for this yarn is to spin a yarn that meets the following criteria:

• -to spin a yarn from non-animal derived materials;

• -to be waterproof

• -kint-crochet'able and wearable.

(see more pix at: flickr)
For my entry I wanted to spin up our old umbrella, but it turns out it had already met another fate, so I nabbed the raffia I had stashed for basket-weaving and the old bit of Retro 1960's shower curtain fabric that was lying around and pulled this together.
Contents:
vegan batt (inc. soysilk, ingeo, cotton fluff, denim, tinsel, glitz); linen ply thread; raffia; shower curtain; poly string for core thread; thick gauge metallic cord; thinner metallic thread; sequins; plastic bag with treasure beads that didn't make it in. Also pink, pearl & gold tinsel shreads & orange cotton ply thread not pictured.

I spun it up on my trusty Ashford Country Spinner, knowing the small guide hooks on the jumbo flyer just weren't gonna cut the mustard for this yarn. The poly string core was chosen for waterproof-ability, & i just began pileing all the ingredients on mosaic style. The raffia liked to slip unless it had something to grab onto, the little threads from the shower curtain were good for that, and winding the metallic threads around it helped to keep it in place. Raffia can stiffen up, so i used the batt for added softness. I think it needs more yardage for the straw hat /or parisol i had in mind, but it is way too pretty to live its life as a bath mitt & isn't water-proof enough anyway (even though the fiber batt has lots of anti-microbial fibers in there, my sense is that it may not want to be hanging around wet all day!) & - so, it is either going to become a belt, or a string-bag! I'll keep you posted!

So, here's where you come in:

Would you like to vote for your favourite Spin Challenge entry?

go to Pluckyfluff's Blog and place your vote!

VOTING: Weds the 5th- Friday sept. 7th - we will vote using the "comment" section. all yarns will get a thumbnail posted on the blog next week. (you can vote anonymously by selecting "anonymous" as your identity when commenting.)