Friday, January 15, 2016

Spinning Friday: January 15, 2016

Wow - it's been a month since I've done a Spinning Friday post.  Go grab some tea or other hot beverage - I've got a lot to share today!

I've spun a LOT since the turn of the year.  Most recently, I've finished two 2.5 oz braids that came from FatCatKnits as part of Ginny's 2013 Fairy Tales Club.  I took the first colorway "Angry Dwarf" and separated the lightest parts from the brights, and then spun up 2 small skeins to use for colorwork.  This is a 2-ply sportweight and my plan is to use it for an easy stranded knit hat.


I then took "The Prince" colorway and spun that 2.5 oz braid up into a 2-ply worsted weight that I want to use for a pair of textured fingerless mitts at some point.


Since I'm working from deep stash right now, I grabbed a 75/25 BFL/silk roving from Funky Carolina in the "Austin" colorway.  I originally bought this braid because the colors in it were sort of outside my usual color choices - burnt orange and a burgundy.


There were a lot of very lightly dyed sections inside the darker colors, so this spin came out a lot lighter than I had anticipated - the burnt orange was VERY toned down and it's more a set of muted pastels.   Pretty - but not what I thought it would look like.  This is 388 yards of a fingering weight 2-ply.  This one is slated for a shawl of some kind.  I have a coordinating tonal dye that I think I'll try to use with this.


Last but not least for the new year thus far, I also spun up a gradient colorway from my shop, "Iceberg" on Falkland wool.  I split the braid in half lengthwise to keep the colors lined up for this 2-ply.


This is 311 yards of a 2-ply sportweight.  It's slated for a lace cowl.

Currently, I'm working on two 2.5 oz braids of a dark/light swirled merino wool from FatCatKnits and her Famous Couples Club.  This is the December pair: Rhett and Scarlett.


My plan is to spin each of these up into singles and then ply together for a fingering weight and then use a very dark - maybe black or charcoal gray - tonal dye as the contrast for a striped shawl.

For those of you on Ravelry who are interested, I'm currently participating in 4 challenges, which sort of run concurrently and have morphed together all my 2016 resolutions regarding fiber stash.

  • From now until March 31st, I'm working on the Great Big Stashdown Spinning Party.  I've picked a selections of fibers and some personal goals for that one which you can see here.
  • I'm in the 16 in 2016 group, with a goal to spin 16 pounds over the course of 2016. 
  • I've joined the Spin the Bin Challenge 2016 as part of the CTA spinning group.  For this challenge, you pick a certain set of fibers - I chose randomly from my stash - that fits into a bin and you spin those up over the course of the year. 
  • And finally, my own personal 52 skeins/52 weeks challenge.
There obviously is some/will be some overlap as I'm not spinning separate braids for each of these challenges, but I AM going to try to get through a fair amount of fiber stash this year and challenge myself to make some gorgeous handspun yarns to use!

No comments:

Post a Comment

WIPocalypse October 2018 Check-In

I worked on a bunch of things this month as I've settled back into a 5-day rotation on my projects, which seems to be working pretty wel...