More handspun

It's Monday again which means it's time for my weekly blog update. One of these days I'll get on a more frequent schedule but until I do Monday is blog day. This last week I did some spinning and finished a pair of socks but I'll stick to the spinning for this post.

My most recent creation is the result of having a few bits of BFL top lying around which had been dyed in various shades of green. I used these bits of fiber to soak up excess dye from some of my earlier experiments with darker greens. Some of the top was a saturated yellow-green and some was a much less saturated blue green. I split these into strips and alternated them as I spun. I then plied the resulting single to itself to get a nice sport/dk weight yarn.

Before I spun it up I was thinking that I would probably over dye the yarn but once I saw how it was coming out I decided to leave it as is. I really love this little skein and I can't wait to knit it up into something. Spring is coming, though, and I no longer feel the need to knit mitts or winter hats. I only have about 170 yards and I'm not sure what to do. I'm thinking I might do something with stripes. Suggestions?

Prior to knitting up my BFL leftovers I was working on a couple of pounds of Falklands. Well it started out as a couple of pounds of white Falklands wool form Hello Yarn. Some of it got spun up as a two ply which I have been making into the wintergreen mittens (the subject of a future post, I promise). The remainder I used getting the hang of spinning on my old Quebec Production wheel (also due a proper blog post). I spun the singles on the production wheel and turned them into a three ply yarn on the Lendrum (with some cursing). A couple of weeks ago I finished up the last of it.

Since it was spun over the course of several months with long breaks in between, the final skein doesn't quite match the previous ones. It is better plied but it is also thicker and stiffer; the last skein is an aran weight and the others are dk/worsted. I'm currently trying to decide if I knit it up alternating skeins or knit separate projects.

I'm getting ahead of myself. After I finished all of the spinning I decided to try dying it (the cat thought it should be left as is for her comfort).
I got the big stock pot and tossed it in with some blue dye and vinegar. Thanks to temperature gradients I didn't get an even colour, but I'm still happy with the results. The final, thicker skein is 350 yards and the others are 126, 260 and 442 yards respectively. The two large skeins are much too large for my ball winder to handle so I've balled them up by hand. I took this picture after the 350 yard skein was balled but before I did the 442 yard one.All of this Falklands yarn has a beautiful sheen. I would jump on the chance to knit more Falklands. It drafts beautifully and produces a really beautiful worsted spun yarn.

Now I just need to decide what to knit.