Fiber Friday Fun, Rhinebeck Edition

By the time you read this post, I'll be somewhere in the Rhinebeck, New York, area. I'm setting this post up ahead of time so there's not a long absence from the blog, but I'll likely wait to catch up with all of you until I'm home.

I mentioned sometime last week that I was thinking about taking another sweater project with me, and I even wound up the yarn and swatched for that sweater. But I realized that if I had two fingering weight sweaters on the needles, I wasn't likely to make a lot of progress on either one, so I have only taken my Shifty on the trip (with a sock project for when we're out and about) and I'll wait to cast on for my May(be) Queen. With any luck, I will make some decent progress on Shifty while I'm away and I won't feel quite so ridiculous about having two sweaters in tiny yarn going at once.

The "fun" in this post is all about how working with hand-dyed yarn can require some extra steps and awareness. When I finished winding my yarn for my next sweater -- Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce in a variegated and speckled colorway -- I noticed this:

Notice how two of the four skeins are a little lighter than the other two? Lisa doesn't really do dyelots, but she generally dyes multiple skeins of the same colorway at the same time. I don't know if all four of these skeins were dyed at the same time, but I did purchase them together. I was going to alternate skeins anyway because the yarn is hand dyed (that's always a good idea with hand-dyed yarn), but now that I've seen the difference in the skeins, I will be sure to pay attention to make sure that I'm alternating a lighter skein with a darker one. The variation doesn't bother me in the least, but it's a good reminder to look at my yarn and be mindful of what I'm doing with it.

I hope that whatever you have in store this weekend, it brings you joy! See you back here next week for a recap.