Clearing the Bobbins

Without planning for it or intending to do it, I somehow managed to finish up two spinning projects just before the start of the Tour de Fleece (which officially started yesterday).

First, on my miniSpinner, I finished up another four ounces of Frabjous Fibers Merino/Sparkle. This was a commission of sorts for a friend who works at my LYS. She's not a spinner but was lusting after the fiber, so she asked me to spin it for her.

This colorway is called Purple People Eater, and I was strongly tempted to keep the fiber for myself. But a deal is a deal, so this is going to a good home very shortly.

On Thursday (or was it Friday?) night, I finally finished up the Crown Mountain Farms Columbia top that had been on my Lendrum for a while. The plying especially took some time; the yarn was so fluffy that it nearly filled my bobbin when I still had about a third of the singles left. It took me about an hour, but I managed to get the rest plied by plying about a foot of yarn at a time and then manually winding it on by turning the bobbin. In the end, the bobbin was so packed that it was touching the arms of the flyer on both sides from one end to the other.

I'm still not wild about this colorway, though it did tone down and turn out more autumnal and less 1970s after plying. I'm still a little behind on the fiber club (this was the May shipment; I'm working on June right now and am expecting July to come this week), but I am making good progress.

Interesting and somewhat surprising fact: When both of these yarns were dry and I measured yardage, I discovered that they were exactly the same length -- 355 yards. I'm not sure how that coincidence happened, but it's pretty amazing. Perhaps I should have played 355 in the lottery that day!