Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Holy crap I made yarn

I've been spinning my little heart out lately. I have enough roving now to consider it a stash (6 braids). Here's what I bought last week to practice on before the Tempted roving for the SAL comes:

BFL roving from Fiber Optic in Spring Fling colorway:


The next two are both from CJKopec and are 100% merino. The first one is Raspberry and the second is Wild Berry.

This one is so freaking cute! It's Jungle Boogie Merino Top from Indigo Muse. I had planned for it to be the first one I spun, but I was advised against practicing with merino because of its short staple length.


Finally, I bought some superwash BFL from Spincerely in the Harvest colorway:

It became my first pretty handspun (the other skein was my first, but isn't very pretty in my opinion). I didn't spin all of it-I tried to split it in half so I could make 2 singles, but apparently my first half was spun  a bit thicker in places than the second. The second had more yardage, so I stopped on the second half before I was completely done with it.  I plied it tonight:


I think I may need to get a plying spindle. I fit as much as I could on my poor little Alice. I made a homemade lazy kate to hold the singles:


Finally, here it is resting for the night. I want to "thwack" it when it's wet (in other words, beat the snot out of it against the side of the tub), and I can't do that while it's so late. DH would kill me for making that much noise. I put my human physiology book to good use:


Overall, I'm pleased with it. There are definitely thick and thin areas, but overall it's relatively even. This is an improvement over my last spinning. I hope I have enough to make hat out of it.

In other news, I finished another WIP. Remember the Aragorn socks that I started in January 2010? And that they were supposed to be a birthday present for March 2010? Well, I finished them last week and my friend received them today. I am so happy that they fit her! I was worried that they may be too small.


I'm knocking out the WIPs, but I'm replacing them just as quickly with new projects. Currently I have the Lady Bertram shawl and the Ribbed Ribbons socks on my needles, and my poor Geodesic cardigan keeps getting ignored. Maybe one of these days I'll pull it back out.