It's Quite a Pop

When I finished the third skein of mostly blue yarn for my sweater project, I knew that I needed to spin a contrast skein that would pop. And the thing about spinning is that even if you think you know what the finished yarn might look like based upon the appearance of the fiber, you're nearly always surprised, especially when the fiber is multiple colors. As the fiber is drafted, the colors blend and change. If you have a lot of white or undyed areas in your fiber, for instance, you often end up with muted or even pastel shades of the dyed colors. So I knew that the intense shades in this fiber probably would be toned down a bit:

I didn't mess with the colors at all in splitting up the fiber for a three-ply yarn. I just stretched the whole length out, folded it into thirds, and pulled it apart at the fold lines. Each section of fiber had a bit of all of the three main shades -- golden orange, dark purple, fuchsia -- represented, though not in the same spot. So there are spots in the plied yarn where all three plies are roughly the same, spots where two of the three are the same and one ply contrasts, and spots where all three plies are different.

Even though I was prepared for some shift in the colors, I did not expect all that orange to pretty much disappear and turn into gold and a orange-y pink. The purples got lighter, too, and the really dark purple is only still evident in the sections where it appears against two plies of gold.

After washing and drying, I've got about 358 yards. This is Rambouillet and poofed up quite a bit, so my skein shrank as it dried. I also have a teeny tiny skein (about 15 yards) of a two ply that was made from the singles that were left when two of my three bobbins ran out:

I don't know that I'll use it for anything, but I like using up every last bit of yarn or fiber when I can (it makes me feel strangely virtuous) and it's pleasing to squish.

Remember that other bag of fiber that I was considering? That is what's on my wheel now -- it's among the oldest SCF fiber in my stash, and I'm still on a mission to spin that all up. Though I could not find the other skein in my Ravelry notebook, I did remember that it was a semisolid coordinate for a multicolored club shipment, and this morning I found that skein in my stash.

The club colorway was called Get Happy, and there's the same reddish purple in it. So I thought I would spin the semisolid, Bougainvillea, to match. This actually makes for easy spinning because the yarn I'm trying to match is a two ply, so I'll just spin from one end to the other, wind the singles into a center-pull ball, and ply from both ends. If I do a good job of matching the first skein (which is approximately 416 yards), I will have enough for a sizeable shawl or perhaps even a short-sleeved sweater -- though I don't know how advisable the latter would be given that this is an alpaca blend. I don't have to decide that now, and this will be a good thing to spin while I await June's SCF club shipment, which is another blue that I may spin for my sweater.