Yaaaaarn!

Awhile back, last month, there was a sneak peek of what's on the wheel. Well, guess what? It's off the wheel, plied, washed, and done!

I'm really pleased. It's 430 yards of 2-ply that ranges from sport to worsted - 10 to 18 wraps per inch, depending on the stretch of yarn. I use Eucalan no-rinse wool wash in a hot bath and let it dry. It came out soft and wound up two large cake balls.

Reds, purples, oranges, yellows. It's in a box and shipping to my dragon now, who will knit it into a slouchy hat for the cat!mom. I can't wait to see what it looks like!

What's on the Wheel

Haven't been spinning much lately, too many other things to do. However, I banged up my right shoulder, which put a stop to things like knitting and beading. Spinning, however, doesn't take much shoulder motion, and my chair is nice and high backed so I could brace myself. Back to spinning it is!

This is what's on the wheel right now. I wish I could tell you what it is, but honestly, I have no clue. The Cat Mom, on hearing her kitten had taken up spinning, sent me a Box 'o Roving - no labels, no clue what fibers they are, just random colors Mom liked. Some of them were rough, at least two were completely unspinnable (I suspect they were for felting) and some of them were soft and fluffy and wonderful. 

So I arranged them in orders where the colors looked nice together, and started spinning!

It's - mostly - a nice thin single. And I've spun enough of it that at this point the bobbin is so heavy that my little Ashford Kiwi doesn't really want to take up the yarn right any more. The plan is that my Dragon will knit the Cat Mom a hat out of it, and for a hat you need yardage, so the colorful mix needs to be plied with something else and not to itself.

It's all so colorful and bright I decided it needed something darker and sort of neutral to offset it. Digging in the roving stash, I came up with BlueMoonFiberArts Blackbird colorway, in superwash merino. 

 

Which looks much lighter than you'd expect as roving, but spins up beautifully dark with just some subdued hints of color. I'm hoping it'll ply with the colorful scraps and make them pop.

Now to spin a comparable amount of the Blackbird to go with the Random Roving! I have no real way to judge this except by guesstimating. I'm excited to see what it plies like, and how much yarn I end up with by the end of it.

Scrap Yarn Sweater Dress

What do you do with your beginner sample works? You know the things I mean - the lumpy swatches of awkward knitting or the even lumpier over and under twisted chunky bits of homespun yarn, the mangled bits of jewelry wire, and the tensionless bits of weaving. All the things that scream "Hello! I just started this craft and I'm not sure what I'm doing and I'm making a lot of mistakes!" Yeah, those bits.

Trash bin? Usually. But in the case of spinning, well, I'm loathe to discard any actually useable bits of yarn. Even if it's overspun chunky.

Fortunately, there's always uses for scrap yarn. Even better, dolls will never complain that you've dressed them in something that looks like your first knitting project! Particularly not when the doll in question has been sitting around naked for months because nothing I have in doll clothes will fit over her abundance of curves.

Shadow: Finally, clothes!

Shadow again, my Iplehouse EID 1/3 girl, and the scrap yarn sweater dress made entirely of bits and bobs handspun from roving by yours truly. At the top there's what I call "Alliance Boyfriend" (being a handful from my "Heroes of the Alliance" roving bag mixed with a handful from my "Boyfriend Sweater" roving bag). Around her waist is some "Alchemy Flambeau", and the skirt part is "Optimus Prime". Optimus and Alliance Boyfriend were spun around the same time when I first got my spinning wheel, with Flambeau coming several months later when I had learned some better technique.

Alliance Boyfriend - merino/silk/bamboo

Here's "Alliance Boyfriend". It's made of rovings from Paradise Fibers - Ashland Bay Merino/Silk in "Autumn" and Ashland Bay Bamboo in "Aegean Blue". It's a chunky worsted weight, 2ply, about 16 yards.

Alchemy Flambeau - polworth/BFL

Swatched on US3

This is "Alchemy Flambeau". Still a bit on the thick and thin side, but look at the weight difference! 2ply sock yarn. The roving is a mix from BlueMoon Fiber Arts - a handful of the "Flambeau" in Polworth (the grayish side) and "Tea and Alchemy" in Bluefaced Leicester (the reddish side).

Optimus Prime - silk

OP again

Lastly, there's "Optimus Prime", which was the first thing I spun on my wheel. It's pure silk mawatas, Knit Picks Hanks in the Hood in "Warm Spring". I peeled each layer apart and spun them together with the colored ends butted up against each other (blue to blue, red to red) so that the color gradations were longer, and then I plied it to itself into a 2ply chunky worsted. Having tried several cheaper silk hankies from other places, I definitely recommend trying Hanks in the Hood - the brilliant color and smoothness is to die for. Excellent quality, and at that chunky weight I got 26 yards from it.

Cast on and free form knit with US8 needles, and viola! Something useful out of My First Spun scrap yarn.