Summer's End

Today marks the close of my LYS's summer contest, so yesterday I took in my last two entries for the spinning portion. It still remains to be seen whether my effort was enough to capture the title, but I'm very pleased with my entries, and that includes these last two.

First up, Chameleon Colorworks merino/tencel in the colorway Support the Girls. I had started this on my Jenkins Turkish spindle earlier in the summer but never made much progress on it, so I took the spindle parts out and fed what had been spun onto a bobbin of my miniSpinner until I reached the unspun fiber and finished the rest from there. This ended up as roughly 672 yards of heavy laceweight.

I'd spun this particular blend before (not long after I started spinning) and found it difficult to work with at the time, so I'm happy to say that I had a much better time with it this time around. It is a slippery blend, though, so I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner, but the finished yarn does have an amazing shine.

The colors more or less matched up when I plied, which was completely unplanned and unintended, so this yarn will self-stripe to a certain extent when it's knit up.

The last yarn was finished at the last minute, and at the end there I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. This is Masham from Crown Mountain Farms from last year's fiber club (it was the last bundle of fiber from last year that was unspun), and I spun the singles on my Bosworth Midi spindle. I was committed to doing the singles for both plies on the spindle, and that's the reason I wasn't sure I was going to finish in time. But I managed to finish up the second half on Thursday while I was home with Rainbow (her daycare was closed for the day). In the interest of saving time -- and going easy on my wrists -- I opted to ply on my miniSpinner, which took all of a couple of hours on Friday night.

The finished two-ply yarn is fingering and about 375 yards. The colorway, Siddhartha, was much more vibrant before it was spun but seems to have toned down some in the process of being spun.

The fiber reminded me a little of Wensleydale in that the staple length was long and the fiber was wavy, rather than crimpy. It's not the softest yarn, but it is much less wiry than the Wensleydale I've spun and it has a slight halo that is rather lovely.

So, that's the end of the spinning for the summer, but don't think that means the wheels (and spindles) are going away until next summer. I'm going to be spending less time spinning and more time knitting now, but the spinning bug hasn't left me yet and there's still a lot of stash to spin up, so stay tuned!