New Year's Yarn

And we're back. It's been a bit of a rough reentry -- I think we all got rather used to sleeping in and having leisurely days -- but tomorrow we go back to school and work and get back to the usual schedule. As nice as it was to be away, it was equally nice to sleep in my own bed last night and have all my stuff around me.

Though I did a lot of knitting while we were away, I did really miss my spinning. I thought briefly about bringing a spindle with me, but I decided against it because I was worried about it getting broken and decided I didn't want to risk it.

The night before we left for Florida, once I'd improved enough from the stomach virus to be able to get out of bed, I spent a little time at the wheel finishing up some plying, but I didn't get a chance to wash the yarn until last night, so I'm calling this my first yarn of 2013. It started as 4 oz. of BFL swirl from Gale's Art that I bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool last year (i.e., in 2012). The colorway is called Velvet Elvis -- isn't that the most perfect colorway name ever? In any case, you can see why I bought it -- I just couldn't resist these blues.

I didn't have a real plan for it when I started spinning; I basically just wanted to get it on the wheel and get it done in a hurry, so I spun singles that were slightly thicker than my default. The finished yarn is a two ply that's roughly sportweight. My 4 oz. got me approximately 255 yards.

I'm really quite pleased with this yarn, though as usual I have no idea what to do with it. I have quite a bit of ply twist in it (perhaps a tad too much, as it's still curling back on itself in a few spots), but that's the way I tend to like my yarns. I didn't split up the fiber any way but in half, but interestingly the colors match up in some places and barberpole in others, almost like a fractal.

Sportweight isn't a weight I use a lot, so I'll have to do some thinking about what to make with this, but, as usual, for now I'm happy just to admire the skein. I do love these colors.

Simply washing a skein didn't cure my yen for spinning, so once I'd unpacked, done a couple loads of laundry, cleaned the bathrooms (I didn't have time to do it before we left and I wanted to make sure I'd gotten rid of all the stomach bug germs), and gotten Rainbow to bed, I sat down with my laptop and my miniSpinner. As I'd just finished one MDSW spin, I figured I might as well start spinning up my last fiber acquisition -- specifically, this polwarth/silk blend from Into the Whirled:

It's been a while since I did any spinning from a batt, and in truth I'd been putting off spinning this one because I was worried that my spinning wouldn't do this gorgeous batt justice, but I got over it. This color progression obviously begged to be kept intact, so I'm breaking off strips from one side to the other and spinning them in order. When I'm done, I'll chain ply. I started with the orange-ish shade you see at the top and got into the purple-y pink by the time I was done last night (unfortunately, the gloomy day wouldn't let my camera capture it without a flash, so please pardon the glare from the silk).

I spent several more hours on it this afternoon, so now I'm well into the dark purple in the middle. It's spinning up beautifully, and I must admit that I'm loath to do anything but spin at the moment, but I thought it wise to give my fingers a little rest for the remainder of the evening. Besides, I'm ready to start the sleeves on my sweater and I have some Downton Abbey season 3 to watch tonight!