It's a Monster

For the first time in my spinning life, I actually thought I might not fit all of the skein I was plying onto one bobbin, even when using my giant miniSpinner WooLee Winder bobbin. Fortunately, one bobbin of singles ran out just when the bobbin was nearly completely full -- but that still made for one enormous skein of plied yarn!

This is roughly 355 yards of three-ply Charollais. Because the singles were spun woolen, the finished yarn is a bit inconsistent, but overall it looks like it's a heavy worsted to Aran weight. I still have half of the original bag of fiber left to spin (I'll just add on to the two bobbins that still have some singles on them), so assuming I can match what I've done with this skein, I should have somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 yards of yarn when I'm done. I think this yarn would be excellent as a heavier outerwear-type sweater, perhaps paired with a neutral like a brown or a gray. I have quite a bit of undyed fiber in my stash that would work well, so perhaps that will be an ongoing project for the next few months, with the goal of having a sweater's worth to knit up this winter.

Almost as soon as I finished the plying, I started a new spinning project with the most recent shipment of the Fibernymph Dye Works Barberpole Fiber Club, which arrived earlier this week. This shipment's pairing is again a fairly subtle contrast, but I really love it.

Racing the Dusk (L) and Encroaching Night (R)

These colorways were inspired by the colors in the sky that Lisa observed as she and her husband were on a hike as part of a canoe trip they took. As they were descending from the peak they had climbed, they were racing to get to the bottom before night fell. The variegated color, Racing the Dusk, is really subtle, with very pale shades of green, purple, and pink. Rather than spin these up as a plain barberpoled two ply, I though I'd do a gradient three ply. I split up each color into six roughly equal pieces (so about half an ounce per piece) and am spinning them as you see here:

Apologies for the bad lighting; I took this on Friday night because I couldn't wait to start spinning.

Each ply (as shown in each column in the fiber photo) will have about 2 oz. of fiber in it total. The total skein will gradually fade from the lighter color to the darker, just like the color of the sky changes as the sun sets. The first bobbin is already well under way.

I am enjoying this spin so much. The Falkland fiber is so well prepped that I hardly have to put any effort in to draft it, and the small bits of fiber go so quickly that it feels like I am making a ton of progress in a very short period of time. I doubt I will finish the entire spin before we leave for vacation on Saturday morning, but I'll at least make a dent.