Land and Sea

I am so thrilled with the skein of yarn that came off my wheel yesterday. You may remember that I finished half of this particular FatCatKnits club shipment (Undersea Life from January 2017) just before we went away; I was saving this colorway for last because it was my favorite. I think you'll see why -- just look at these colors! They were inspired by all the brightly colored fish you see around a coral reef.

As with the other colorway, I split the fiber in half lengthwise and spun each half onto its own bobbin, then plied the two together. There was definitely more overlap in the colors in this skein than in the first, but I think that's mainly because there were more colors and shorter sections of them. This skein ended up a little shorter than the first, at 255 yards, but I've got more than 525 yards total with the two, which should be plenty for a good-sized shawl. Here's a shot of the skeins together:

I love how the little bits of flax really give the yarn a tweedy look. And while they were a bit annoying to spin, I do like the finished result, and I'm interested to see how the yarn behaves when it's knit up.

Almost as soon as this skein was off the wheel, I started a new spinning project. I don't think I ever managed to photograph and share this fiber when it first arrived in the fall, but here's the Southern Cross Fibre October shipment, a colorway called Boil and Bubble on a new-to-me fiber called Charollais.

The fiber is on the coarser side, so I figure it will be good for socks, and I'm spinning into a traditional three ply (hoping for fingering weight, but I have no idea if this fiber will bloom when it's washed). I split the top into three sections widthwise, and then I'm splitting each section into fourths lengthwise in order to spread out the colors a bit.

So far it's spinning incredibly easily, and the colors are just amazingly vibrant. I'm excited to see if they stay so bright in the finished yarn.