The Spin I'm In

For a quick minute, I thought I might have two new skeins of handspun to share with you today. The week started off pretty calm at work, so I was able to finish up the singles for one skein in just a few days. Almost as soon as I started the second, though, I got bombarded at work, so it had to wait a bit, and instead I have only photos of singles to share today. But at least they are pretty singles!

Both of these yarns are being spun more or less the same way, and it's one of my favorite ways to spin yarn these days. I split each batch of fiber into thinner strips, which I'm then spinning end to end one after the other so I can preserve the colors. I will be chain-plying the resulting singles (for the uninitiated, that means creating a mock three-ply yarn with one strand by essentially creating really long crochet chains and twisting them) and hoping for a fingering weight yarn with both. Because I was spinning both batches of fiber the same, I decided to spin the singles for both before plying. On the one hand, it's easier to ply singles that have had some time to rest a bit (the twist gets a little less active over time), but on the other, I also didn't have to worry about making adjustments to how I was spinning from one project to the other, which makes it really easy to go on auto-pilot as I'm spinning.

The first completed singles were spun from Corriedale in the colorway Caravaggio:

In addition to the deep red and brown you can see here, there's also some beautiful blue and light tan, those the darker colors predominate, as you would expect in a colorway inspired by Caravaggio.

Peeking from underneath the finished bobbin is the second skein in progress, which I'm now about a third of the way through. This is Kandinsky on Rambouillet, and the colors are simply stunning and so saturated.

I still have quite a bit of actual work that's going to occupy me for the start of the new work week, but I hope that once that's done I'll be able to finish these singles and start plying. So perhaps at this time next week I will actually have two new skeins to share!

Part of the reason I've been so keen to spin up older club shipments is that I'm still in the club and still receiving new shipments each month. The two most recent have arrived in the past several weeks; July took its good time arriving due to all the mail delays.

July was Dahlia on merino/silk:

The color is blowing out a bit, and the shine of the silk isn't showing as best as it could. I'm pretty sure this wants to be some two-ply lace.

August is Flora on Bond, and this makes me think of an apple orchard:

I'm thinking two ply for this, too, but very barberpoled -- maybe a fractal?

Both of these new clubs are going into the stash for the time being, though, because I am determined to get through more of the backlog!