The Proverbial Carrot

Usually I like to spend my Friday evenings at my wheel. By the time the end of the week comes, my brain is usually so fried that following any kind of knitting pattern is a lost cause. On top of that, the Mister ofter falls asleep very early, so it works out well for me to be sitting at my wheel and watching or listening to something on my laptop. For the past couple of weeks, though, circumstances got in the way, so it was extra relaxing to sit down at my Lendrum this past Friday with some nice fiber.

I managed to finish up the first bobbin of singles of the Bee Mice Elf mixed BFL/silk (which drafts pretty much effortlessly, let me tell you).

I immediately started in on the second bobbin and got a layer done before I got up for the night.

Now, as nice as this fiber is to spin and as much as I like the colors, it does get a bit tedious after a while to spin such fine singles, and I find myself thinking of what I should spin next. It helps that I have some really yummy stuff that is next in the queue, and it's what's keeping my nose to the grindstone to get this yarn done.

This is my most recent Fat Cat Knits Mixed Blessings Club shipment, five delicious ounces of Polwarth/silk, which might just be my most favorite blend ever. This duo came with the names Betty Boop and Olive Oyl.

These club shipments always force me to think a bit more before I start spinning, because I have to think about how I want the colors to mix, if at all. I could always go the easy way out and spin each braid up separately and ply them together, but I wanted to do something more interesting with this pair. Then I saw someone post a combination yarn in the FCK group on Ravelry and knew I had to copy it. If you look at each end of the two braids, you can see that they'd transition nicely from one to the other. So I split each braid in half lengthwise and matched up the ends, like so:

I'll start spinning at one end, overlapping when I get to the breaks, and spin all the fiber onto one bobbin. Then I'll chain ply to keep the colors distinct. When I'm done, I'll have a bright, self-striping, pseudo-rainbow yarn.