Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Spinning and Handspun in the New Year

I've been doing a little spinning in between my knitting. Mostly knit a row or two, spin for a few minutes. Or, occasionally hubby will want me to watch a show I need to pay attention to and I will get half an hour or even an hour to spin.

Doing little bits like this means eventually you do finish things but mostly, they take a long time. Like this:

Please welcome to the stash about 498 yards Superwash Merino fingering weight. I purchased this from a destash and started it way back in November. I was really hoping to do something different, like a two-ply but when I saw the amazing purples and dusty blues in this fiber, I knew I wanted to keep them separate so I spun it fine and navajo-plied to keep the color progressions. As you can see from the tag it came from Fiber Optic yarns and it's their colorway Sweet Georgia Brown. It's going to marinate in the stash for awhile but eventually it's going to be amazing stripey socks, I think.

I was so excited to finish my Sweet Georgia Brown that I immediately went and grabbed something else from the stash and started it up. Again, I originally thought of doing a two-ply because I wanted the colors in this gorgeous fiber to really blend and become something else. I love the roundness of a three-ply yarn though so I ended up splitting the fiber into three pieces, spinning singles and doing a traditional 3-ply.

Please welcome to the stash: Nanners, about 254 yards worsted weight BFL/Silk from Funky Carolina (also a destash purchase) I love the beautiful shine you get from the silk and the amazing bounce from the BFL. It's not the colors that immediately appeal to me but I do like it. I'm not sure what it will become though. It needs to marinate for awhile.

Having finished those two things though, I needed something else to put on the wheel. I went diving in the fiber stash and came up with this:

Something completely unexpected. Superfine Merino/Alpaca in a gorgeous red that shades into a deep maroon offset with a bright, teal blue. It's beautiful and I'm very excited to be spinning it. I'm going to keep you in the dark about what it will become though, you know, just in case it becomes something else. Don't expect to hear about it too soon though, it's going to be on the wheel for awhile.

3 comments:

Teresa said...

Love the blues and puples of the first skein. Looking forward to seeing the alpaca silk become yarn!

Annie Reinhart said...

Hi, I just stumbled upon your page after seeing your photo for the beginner knitting class in Little Falls.

Are you the yarn bomber in town?! That's awesome! I saw it a couple of months ago and it made me smile. It's awesome to see bombed trees downtown. :)

Thanks for brightening my day!

Annie

Sarah Kalkbrenner said...

Hi Annie,
Thanks so much for the lovely comment. I'm glad you found my blog.

I'm actually not one of those responsible for the yarn bombing but it made me smile too so I knew I had to take a picture with it. I believe Lost Lake Designs' knitting group was responsible. I have a scheduling conflict and so am not able to be a participant in their knitting group.