Dusk to Night

After playing a lot of catch up on my spinning when we got home from vacation, I finally finished my spin in progress this weekend, and I am so pleased with it! It turned out exactly as I'd hoped -- but let me backtrack a bit to remind you. I was spinning these two colors of Falkland from Fibernymph Dye Works that I received as the second shipment of Lisa's Barberpole Fiber Club:

Because the colors were meant to represent the colors of the sky as the sun set and the daylight faded, I though it would be interesting to spin them in such a way that the lighter color slowly faded into the darker color. I knew I wanted a three ply, so I split each braid into six pieces (about half an ounce each) and made myself a chart for how each of the three plies would be spun. Each ply would use up four of the little bundles. The first ply went light, light, light, dark. The second was light, light, dark, dark. And the third was light, dark, dark, dark. If it plied up as I envisioned it, the yarn would gradually fade from all light to light with a bit of dark to dark with a bit of light and finally to all dark. I'm happy to say it worked out exactly that way.

The finished yarn is probably a light fingering weight and in excess of 600 yards, so plenty for the shawl that I'm envisioning (which will start out light at the top and fade into dark at the bottom). I don't have a particular pattern in mind at this point; I suppose if I can't find something that seems to work, I'll just have to design my own!

The colors in the yarn, as they were in the fiber, are definitely on the muted side, but now that I've seen that this method works, I'll definitely be trying it again with brighter colors. I think it would be really interesting to do a combo spin with two much more colorful and vibrant braids!

I decided to throw something a bit quicker on the wheel next to cleanse my palate, so I got out some merino/angora that I won in as a prize from a KAL through Lisa's podcast earlier this summer. There were two bundles of fiber (2 oz. each) in the package, so a two ply was an obvious option. I wasn't wild about the colors in fiber form, but they are blending really nicely in the singles.

I've never spun an angora blend before, and it was a bit tricky at first, but now I'm getting the hang of it. I do have to clean myself off with a lint roller after I finish each spinning session, though -- this stuff sheds like nobody's business! From the plybacks I've been doing with the singles, it looks like the finished yarn will probably be in the sport to DK range, and I'll likely beat the skein up a bit when I finish it to encourage a halo.

If the yarn/singles pictures look a bit better than my recent photos, it's because they were taken on my brand-new camera! My trusty Nikon DSLR bit the dust a couple of months ago, and while the Mister attempted to fix it (it was an issue with the shutter, we think), he was unsuccessful. I'd had the camera for probably nearly a decade by that point, though, so he decided to get me a new one for our 10th anniversary, which we celebrated yesterday. I still have to learn how to use most of its bells and whistles, but I seem to have managed okay to take a few decent pictures for the blog -- and it certainly does a better job than my camera phone!