Some Instant Gratification.

After finishing that big ol' mountain goat project, I have to admit I was pretty ripe for a quick, easy, soft little project. I dug through my stash, and found my 4 ounce braid of Sweetgeorgia Yarns's Fibre Club colourway "At The Ballet" from January this year.

This girlish, sparkly blend of merino and silk was perfect to perk me up! I took it out into the natural light, unbraided the fibre, and studied the ways the colours worked together.

The colours look beautiful all mashed together, but I thought the final yarn would be more dramatic if I keep the different shades of pink and white separate.

Mmmmmm. Yup.
So I broke the fibre into lengths that reflected the final gradient I would like to have in my yarn... light pink ---> white ---> rose.

And with that, I started spinning!

Now, I wanted to create a laceweight 2 ply yarn. In order to do this, I spun all the light pink fibre onto two separate bobbins.

Then I plied those together right away onto third bobbin, Andean plying when I ran out of one bobbin's worth of single.

When I had plied all the light pink together, I took that bobbin off my wheel, and saved my "twist" in the yarn by wrapping it around a paperclip - the twist didn't go everywhere, and I never lost the end!

Then I continued spinning down the gradient... I would try to spin an equal amount of one shade of colour onto two bobbins, then join it to my plying bobbin.

It took about a week to complete all 110g of fibre. After I washed and finished the yarn, I was extremely happy with the results! You can see in the photos below how the colours stayed true to themselves within the skein. I think I am going to knit a small lace shawl with this yarn that will show off the gradual transition from pink to white to rose.

Also! Goat update! I have decided what pattern I am going to knit with some of my mountain goat yarn! I am in love with the coats from the book 'Knit, Swirl'! I plan on making a nice long, big jacket with an off-centered body. Don't worry, I'll post pics when I get around to casting on :D

Cheers!
-Grace

A Gal and Her Goat - Spinning Success!

Alright... so, it's been a while since I started spinning my mountain goat. A few months have gone by. But I have good news to report!

A couple weeks ago, I finished spinning ALL the singles! My bobbins were full, I had already plied some of the wool, and I had even knitted a sample swatch to make sure I liked what I was getting!

Then I was asked to help out with another spinning task - I spun sample skeins and knitted a swatch of every roving base that Sweetgeorgia sells! A very interesting experiment - there will be more information on that event soon! - but it meant that my poor little goat had to sit on the sidelines for a couple weeks.

But this week, it was time to get crackin' at plyin'! I finished plying up all the singles last night, and gave them a bath and a wack. Here is a pic of 12 skeins drying on my poor little octopus...

But this morning when I woke up - voila! - a beautiful batch of yarn! I still need to work out the final yardage and stats, but I will update this blog post again with that final information.

  

What is next...? Well, I recently purchased a pound of one of my 'mistakes' at my new job dyeing at Sweetgeorgia yarn. I will most likely be spinning that into a sweater while Mr Jacob meets the Hooded Fang - I mean, the drum carder:

Cheers!

-Grace