Spinning today (and the past few days)

Several months ago, I got a package from Blue Moon fibers called "Sheep 2 Shoe" which, although a slight misnomer / glossing over of details, is a neat idea where they provide you with fiber dyed in one of their colorways and instruction sheet, and you spin the fiber into sock yarn and knit a pair of socks. So, from sheep to your shoe - with a brief pit stop at the shearer, the skirter, the fleece washer, the carder, and the dyer - you get a pair of worsted-weight knitted socks. It's cool. The weird part was the colorway I received, which I feel sure I would never have ordered: navy, fuchsia, violet, pale lavender, cream, and crazy chartreuse!

I don't mind any of those colors individually ... but I would never put them together myself, and I would never buy them as a group. So what I suspect happened was they sent me something other than what I ordered, and I didn't realize it when I received it because I didn't look at it carefully enough. Anyway, now, I'm trying to work through my stash as much as I can, rather than buy more fiber. (I've had a few yarn slips lately, but am getting back on the wagon, and I've been doing well holding off on buying any more roving.)

So I pulled this out and followed the instructions they gave for how to spin it their way. They tell you to split the fiber in three pieces lengthwise, and spin each to a certain wpi, ply together, and then wash & set the twist. I've split it, spun it, and plied it, and will get around to washing & setting in a day or two. I think it's incredibly ugly!

The plies didn't exactly match - one of the thirds was a little heavier than the other two - so it's just muddy, and horrendous. Even if the plies had matched - and there are lengths of the yarn where they do - I just hate these colors from start to finish. Whoo-hoo! Hideous yarn! Adam had nice things to say about it, tried to make me feel better about it, but bleccccccch.

Now here is some yarn that I think is just gorgeous.



It's Mountain Colors' "Bearfoot" fingering yarn in colorway Sandstone - superwash wool, nylon, and mohair, surprisingly. It's divinely soft and I am in love with it. I rarely say such things, but I actually carried this around with me in the store and stroked it against my cheek. Tonight as we watched "Chuck" I wound it by hand into a ball, even though I have a perfectly good yarn winder, because I wanted to be doing something with it while we watched TV. It's going to be a pair of socks, because I don't want to waste it on a wrap that I will never wear. I can't wait to knit with it and watch the colors move across my needles.