Professional Sleeper

K,

You know that I'm not getting enough sleep when I get home after my test yesterday, sleep 3 hours, do a little work and play a little games, then come home and slept another 13 hours.

Anyhow, now I'm awake, and I'd like to show you all the spinning I've done the past few months, because I really haven't found a better place to fit it in.


I think that I've showed the Ultraviolet Blue before, but I just wanted to throw this up for comparison with my newly spun Plum Wine wool. These are made from the same wool, but the Plum was spun on my new Fricke 160 wheel, which I absolutely adore. Someday when I can take pictures outside (it's been storming the past 4 days) I'll tell you a bit more.

Plum Wine, 4 oz, ~164 yds, mystery wool origin from Syvilla Tweed Bolson.

Then I bought some of this beautiful Iowan-grown wool from Home Ec in Iowa City and dyed it with Kool-aid. That wasn't so gorgeous, so I then overdyed it with food coloring. You can tell I didn't just have my regular acid dyes with me.

This is the craziness that resulted, except imagine a bit more red and purple. I just happened to capture the wrong color side. Here are the singles I also spun on the Fricke.


And the lovely 2-ply yarn.


I really liked this yarn. Home-grown Iowan (just like me), 4 oz (slightly less than me), about 358 yds. Unfortunately while dying it I removed most of the lanolin because the water was too hot, but it's very soft and springy. I'm not so fond of the red streaks throughout. You can especially see them while it's knitted up.


So I provisionally cast these on and knit the hand of the glove first, which I truly love. I adore making gloves.


Then I cast on about 41 stitches and began making the cuff back and forth in seed stitch, knitting 2 stitches together every other row to connect these to the glove. However, after I finished that, I decided I didn't really like the sizing. The bottom of the cuff was too small, and the wrist of it was too wide. Now I've been experimenting with knitting two together at the wrist 2/3 rows and throwing in short rows at the bottom portion. I'll let you know how it's going.

I plied you some yarn, which I think you received and enjoy.

Karaoke 50% soy silk, 50% wool, ~1 oz spun on my spindle, 2 plied on the wheel.
Also spun on the spindle and plied on the wheel we have the most delicious chocolate yak wool.


I loved this. Loved it, still love it, adore it, hope I can someday have a large sweater made of it. 4 oz. of pure yak down, spindle spun and 3 plied on my wheel.

Last but certainly not least, hand-dyed and handspun on the Fricke merino wool, about 7 oz. I absolutely love this stuff, and was able to spin it so much softer than the last batch of merino on my spindle. Of course, the first merino was also the first wool I've ever spun, so I'll excuse myself on that one. This was really interesting, because the original roving was pure hot pink with deep blue patches. No purple. When it was spun, these blended rather nicely, to make some hot pink, a little blue, and a lot of purple looking yarn.

When I wet set this, however, it bled on itself, I think. The funny thing is, the water didn't show much bleeding, but when it dried it was far, far more purple and magenta than before. I also think I might have beat it up a bit too much while setting it, because the three plies all felted against each other a bit. However, since this is destined for a baby sweater, that'll probably be a good thing. Those babies. They can be rough.

Berry Mush, ~7 oz Merino roving, hand-dyed by me, unknown yardage. Probably about 350 yards.

Whew. There you go. I'm probably going to have to go internet silent again this week, since I'm completely behind in the class we've got a test in, but at least I'm somewhat caught up on sleep.

A