Not a Bad Match

Hello, friends, and happy Independence Day to those of you celebrating today. I have mixed feelings about this holiday, but this weekend certainly felt like a reason for celebration because we spent it with my aunt and uncle, who we hadn't seen in person since December 2019. We had a quiet weekend of talking and looking at old family photos and laughing and eating entirely too much. My heart was so full of gratitude for the science that enabled us to be together safely.

Before we left on our trip, though, I wrapped up my week of vacation by plying and skeining my most recent spin, the Bond/Suri alpaca from my Southern Cross Fibre backlog. It was still slightly damp when we left, so I waited until we got home this afternoon before taking photos. I am quite happy with this one!

It is a pretty decent two-ply light fingering weight totaling a tad more than 400 yards. I was trying to match the skein I spun from the club colorway it was intended to coordinate with almost exactly five years ago, and it's close:

The main difference I can see between the two is that the older skein is much more tightly plied; overplying was often a problem for me in those days because I was so used to spinning sock yarn, where lots of twist is warranted. The yardage in both skeins is close enough that they should work very well together in a project, perhaps a shawl. And it feels really good to get another skein of SCF fiber spun up; I think I have only one bag of fiber older than this one was.

Before I start the next spinning project, I'm going to focus on that very long-term spindle project I shared last Thursday and that I was planning to take along this weekend. I actually made some pretty amazing progress while we were gone -- take a look at this cop!

That fiber underneath the spindle? That is all that's left to spin for the first single! I really did try to finish it up last night, but I still had this much left to do when Rainbow wanted to go to sleep (and we were all in the same hotel room, so that meant lights out for me, too). I will try to finish this evening, while our neighbors set off their fireworks. That cop is already starting to fall apart on me, so it's going to be a careful and slow process to get the last bit spun. I am determined to finish this project this summer -- this month, even, if I can manage it -- so I'll be starting on the second single just as soon as this one is wound off and my spindle is empty again. So I hope you won't get too bored of seeing this fiber, because it's going to feature here for the foreseeable future!

I hope that however you've spent this weekend, it brought you some joy!