Left to right: Unspun fiber; Jack "helping" spin on my Ashford Joy; me spinning on my Spinolution Hopper in the backyard; over 2000 yards of yarn spun and plied during one week of Spinzilla!
I ended up with eight 4-oz. skeins (so 2 lbs.!) of yarn spun, for total credit of 6078 yards (4052 yards of singles plus 2026 yards of plying). My goal was to beat last year's yardage, which was 2152 yards of singles, since plying didn't count last time. So I almost doubled my singles yardage from last year, plus I have 8 fewer bags of unspun fiber in my stash, which is a definite "win" in my book. And the yardage officially puts me in the Monster Mile club, too (I actually got almost 3.5 miles spun!).
The fiber for seven of the eight skeins is from The Dyeing Arts, which I am happy to see is still around, since the fiber I spun this year has been in my stash for at least 4 or 5 years. I spun up a bunch of Merino Dazzling Duos, which are superwash merino rovings in 2 separate colors (2 oz. of each color), and I plied the two colors together. The effects are pretty amazing--I call the photo below my "color study" (unintentional, but cool anyway):
Top to bottom: unspun fiber; first singles yarn; second singles yarn; final plied yarn
Left to right colorways: Cheshire Cat (purple/pink); King of Hearts (green/pink); Queen of Hearts (blue-purple/pink); Caterpillar (blue-purple/green)
The lighting on the singles photos is a little weird (because I was just taking pictures as I was spinning, I didn't have time to wait for daylight!), but the pinks are all the same, the blue/purples are the same, and the greens are almost the same. The effects in the final plied yarn are pretty cool, and the lighting on those is consistent--with one ply identical between the first three yarns (l-r), the final yarns coordinate but are completely different.
I still have to finish the yarn and figure out what my final weight is so I can try to pick some projects... but I've been busy catching up on knitting:
This is the Moera I was having such trouble with in my last post. I finally successfully cast it on last weekend, and now the knitting is almost done. I'm trying to finish up this sweater and another one for Jack by the end of the month so I can start my NaKniSweMo sweater on November 1st:
This is my swatch for a CustomFit Stonington in Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in Long Johns. The color is not quite so bright in person (someday I will figure out how to get reds to look okay in my photos!).
Which brings me to the 2014 Knitting Challenge... it's almost over! I am currently debating whether or not to start a 2015 Knitting Challenge. More on that in a future post--but if you're interesting in joining me for a 2015 Knitting Challenge, please leave a comment and let me know.
Until next time, happy knitting/spinning, everyone!
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