... and spinning ...

or spinning-to-come. This is a beautiful black fleece, breed unknown, that I bought at my local farmer's market! Actually I fell in love with it at a small fiber fest but managed to resist it. Truth be told, while I was saying "No, no" at the fiber festival I was already planning to buy it at the farmer's market. The very patient vendor was Wayne Jesko. It's a medium wool in a lovely deep black to which this picture does not do justice.


Here's some wool spun from his wool & mohair roving. I used two slightly different shades to get a heathered look, although the pictures are a little washed out. I think this will be socks, one of these days.



Here is a superwash merino roving that I painted, and some singles spun from it. I really hadn't expected it to be this green, and I tried to persuade myself that the yarn wouldn't end up green.


Obviously, I was wrong. I was planning to spin a three ply sock yarn from this roving, but as I spun I started worrying about the durability of a merino sock. And I just wasn't happy about that green.

So I decided to dye some silk a coppery brown, and spin a third ply from that. I used sabraset dyes for the first time, and came up with this:



Not very lovely, is it? The dye penetrated unevenly, and the top got stiff and icky. Here's a close up:


Just calls out to you and makes you want to spin, doesn't it?


Here's an end fluffed up. It really wasn't horrible to spin, and it looks nice finished. But I've got to work on my silk dyeing technique.


Here are two coordinated yarns, from Abby Franquemont's August batts. I spun them with the idea of weaving a scarf with weft stripes, but I've been too chicken to actually weave it. Also I'm not quite sure what I'll use for a warp. I'd like to weave several scarves for Christmas presents -- so I had better get a move on, hadn't I?




Should I show it to you from another angle? Can you tell I love this yarn? or at least the fiber -- the yarn could be better. But it'll do.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to spin next. I have too many wonderful possibilities calling to me. Also I have just a little of the green top left -- two small partial bobbins. I could spin up some silk to finish it off, but I don't want to. But if I don't do that, what will I do with the wool singles? Fortunately I don't have enough bobbins for my woolee winder to be paralyzed for long.

Thanks for the suggestions for sister-in-law socks. I am waiting for something to grab me. If nothing strikes my fancy soon I'll just pick one at random. Hey! Maybe Ravelry could have a random pattern picker! So you could just say, "pick a sock pattern for me" and it would send you to someone's project page.

Of course, I would cheat if I didn't like the one it picked.