Preparations

I spent a great deal of time this weekend getting a lot of handspun ready for Indie Knit & Spin next weekend. I had previously pulled all the handspun out that I was planning to put on sale, but I needed to measure and tag all of it. Some of it needed to be reskeined and much of it had to be remeasured, so it wasn't a quick job. I finally finished the last skeins today. And in case you'd like a preview, here you go:

That's more than 70 skeins of handspun, ranging from laceweight to super bulky and from less than 100 yards to close to 700. There's some undyed fiber and plenty of dyed fiber, with many different wool types represented.

Meanwhile, seeing as I'm hoping to get a lot of the above yarn out of the house, it was only appropriate that I spent a good part of the weekend spinning up some yarn to replace it. I finished the second bobbin of my FatCatKnits club fiber (superwash merino/sparkle) Friday night, even staying up a little late to finish.

I decided to try a new method of plying with my two bobbins. I chain plied all the singles but while holding both strands, effectively getting a four-ply yarn. To vary the colors, I alternated which bobbin I pulled the new loop from. The results were a bit unusual but not uninteresting. I finished rather late in the afternoon, so there was very little natural light to take a photo of the finished yarn, but I think you can get the idea.

The yarn has been skeined and washed and is now hanging to dry. It looks to be about sportweight and fairly well balanced; I'm hoping to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 yards. I don't know that I'll do this type of plying again, but it was certainly a fun experiment!