The Start of Something Big

It's been less than a year since my last sweater spin, and that one was certainly a big project, so you'd think I wouldn't be in a hurry to start another one. But I've been wanting to do a combo spin for a long time and decided I was in the mood to give it a go, so I got started on what I hope will be another sweater spin this past Friday night.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, a combo spin is where you take multiple braids or bundles of fiber that are dyed in different colorways but that coordinate with one another, split them up into smaller pieces, and then spin yarn that's essentially a giant mash-up of all the different bits of fiber. For mine, I kept things a bit simpler. I'd specifically bought three braids of Targhee/bamboo/silk (an 80/10/10% blend) from Gale's Art earlier in the summer to do a combo spin with. The colorways were different but similar enough that I thought they'd go well together. Because I had three braids, it made sense to do one ply of each colorway, which would also ensure that all three were evenly spread out over the whole project. Last week I split the three braids in half, and Friday I started spinning the first bobbin.

I picked the fiber at random -- it was just in the bag that was closest to my chair when I sat down to spin -- but it happens to be the one with my favorite blue, this gorgeous turquoise. The colorway is Fairy Tale, and it's a beautiful blend of this blue, a pinky purple, a gray purple, and a couple of shades of green. It's spinning up fine and effortlessly.

Something I really enjoy about spinning fiber with bamboo content in it is that the bamboo doesn't take the dye, so you get these little streaks of shiny white running through the fiber. They get diffused as you draft, but they do keep things interesting.

As I'm spinning very fine singles for a three-ply fingering, this is likely to be a slow-moving project. I'll end up with two 6 oz. skeins, and I'm hoping that when I'm done I'll have enough yardage to knit myself a Tegna. I think it would be something nice to knit when we go down to Florida over the winter holidays, as it'll be lightweight yarn with that bamboo and silk content, so ideally I'll have this all spun up and plied by mid-December. That gives me about two and a half months, and I think that's reasonable. Plus, it's not hard to convince myself to spin this fiber blend I love so much!