A Mixed Bag

It's the weekend, which means I have been spending some time at my wheel. Before I show the most recent spinning, however, let's return to my combo spin yarn, which has been washed and dried since last you saw it.

The good news is that it super squishy and round (though it's not actually glowing as it appears here -- blame that on the filter on my photo editing app that I had to use to get the colors appropriately dark).

The not-so-good news is that there's not nearly as much of it as I would like. It's definitely on the heavy end of worsted weight toward Aran and probably even bulky in some spots, but I only have about 820-ish yards based on my rough estimate. The sweater I was hoping to knit would need almost twice that in yardage. So it's back to the drawing board. The ply twist is rather tight, so I might end up running the yarn back through the wheel to remove some, though I don't expect that that would do much to get me more yardage, and I do like the look of the tight twist. I think the issue is just that even when I'm not spinning my default yarn (three-ply fingering for socks), my hands still want to spin yarn that's the same quality -- dense singles tightly plied. So this is a dense yarn, though the tight ply twist should make it wear well. What I just may end up doing is using an Ann Budd basic pattern (a top-down version, anyway) and knitting until I run out of yarn. Perhaps that will mean a cropped sweater or one with shorter sleeves, but I'm sure I can work with what I have.

I will say that I'm quite in love with the chain-plied skein that used up the final singles, and part of me wishes I had chain-plied all the singles, though realistically I know that would have been a bad idea and given me a very inconsistent yarn.

I have a little more than 100 yards in this skein, so perhaps enough for a hat or at least a headband, or maybe I will stripe it with something else.

Seeing that my hands wanted to spin my default yarn, I decided that the next thing on the wheel should be just that, and I decided to do it with the most recent fiber added to my stash, the March 2019 Southern Cross Fibre club shipment, Corriedale in a crocus-inspired colorway called Spring.

I decided to maintain the colors in this yarn, so I split the fiber vertically into four long strips and am spinning them in succession. In the end, I'll be chain plying for a self-striping yarn.

I started spinning this on Monday evening and am more than halfway done with the singles, no doubt because I don't have to think much when spinning this thickness. It would be lovely to get this finished up before I head down to MDSW at the end of the week, but I make no promises!