Weekending

Spinning Friday kind of flew by me, so that should likely give you an idea about the rest of my busy weekend. Lots of time in the dye room, and a full day yesterday with my trunk show at Yarn and Coffee in Santa Fe.

So in lieu of not much else, I thought I'd give you Spinning Friday today, albeit a bit late.

I got this 4-oz braid of Finn in a swap, although it's been quite a while back.  The colors are great - super saturated and looked fun, so I hauled this out of stash to spin.

I'm not sure if this braid had some issues before it came to me or not, but it was....odd.  There were parts of it that were a bit felted, but it also didn't really spin up like any Finn I've worked with before. (And I generally really enjoy spinning that breed's wool.)  The parts that were not felted spun up wonderfully, but there were sections with very coarse hairs (you can kind of see them poking out in parts of the roving picture, above), and some very short hairs - almost like the main parts of the fleece were blended with shorter hairs off the legs of the sheep.

At any rate, this was not exactly the relaxed spin I thought it was going to be, and it wound up being one of those spins with sections of nicely spun singles interspersed with little blobs where the coarser/shorter fibers kind of stuttered into the single.

Technical Specs:
Fiber:  4 oz of Finnish top  (I had a 3.5 oz skein when I was done plying as I had some bits that were felted enough I had to just pull them off and discard them).
Ply: 2 ply.
Weight: Bulky.
Yardage:  145 yards.

I'm still enamored of the colors, but I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with this skein - it's a lot bulkier than I would normally knit with.  Maybe a slightly fulled hat or some mittens?