Two thrums plyed

HA! Does that title lead you to expect some Native American content? No, just more Fresno spinning content. :) As you read a few entries ago, I'm not very excited over the bland blue thrums I spun up. (If you have not been reading long, "thrums" is the name of a roving with bits of this and that produced by Spinderella) Remembering some dark purple thrums I puchased 2nd hand a few years ago from Tan Summers, I went on a treasure hunt Friday night. Found it and proceeded to spin a few yards yesterday.



Looks pretty, huh? Well, it had been stored wound into bumps stuffed into a plastic bag, then wedged into a Sterlite storage bin in the wool room for a couple of years. The roving was compacted, lumpy (I suspect the lumpiness was not caused by storage) and pretty dry. Much to my dismay, the pretty spots of color were from what looked a lot like dyed NEPS! Indeed, I don't recall seeing such neppy roving before. I'm afraid most of my color in this yarn will fall off, as neps are wont to do. :( I plyed it with some of the bland blue and this afternoon the yarn was dry and ready to photograph.

I think I like this two-color yarn a lot better than the bland blues, so I'm gonna spin up more of both batches of thrums. The dark thrums are now unbound on the bathroom floor, enjoying a steam sauna. I'm hoping that a bit of rehydration will make them more pleasurable to spin. While the dark thrums are steaming, I guess I'll spin up another bobbin of the bland blues.

Not much going on today - I have to cook for the dog this weekend, so I have rice steaming. I've read 3 books by one of my favorite authors this weekend - Phillip R. Craig. He writes lovely mysteries set in Martha's Vineyard. I think these 3 are the very first 3 in the series, and I've already gotten all the rest from the library, so I will have to find a new author to stock up on when I return these next week. Interested? Start with "A Beautiful Place to Die," then "The Woman Who Walked into the Sea." Just go on from there.

Back Again, finished yarn in hand

Hi, everyone. Gee, I can't believe it's been so long since my last post. Whew - I've been busy at work for a change and been going to bed early on top of that. Sleeping instead of being on the computer has made me better at work, and non-productive here. Oh well.

As promised in the title, I have spun the 2nd bobbin of that Spinderella thrums and plyed it up. I finished that and the very last bit of my Border Leicester (for my Pi Are Square shawl) this past weekend and I sure do wish I had more of the BL to spin. It was wonderful. :) I've gloated about it on the photo pages (my old stuff is here if you haven't seen it) way back when I started spinning it, and maybe again when I was working a bit on it at the fair last October, but I gotta say it again - great fiber, wonderful roving and not bad spinning, if I do say so myself. heh.

Anyway, I'm sure you're sick of reading and want some eye candy. With no further ado...

The blue yarn on top is the plyed thrums from Spinderella. I took it to work and showed it off. It looked really great held up against Phil's jeans, but I'm just not thrilled with the color. I think it has too much black and not enough of the bright royal bits. It doesn't take much black to really drab a color this stuff is plenty drab. I'm going to try plying it with some dynomite royal blue romney I have here. I was going to post a photo of that yarn, but apparently I didn't take it's picture (or I lost it, entirely possible). I know where the yarn is, tho, so photos will be coming. I think I have about 8 or so oz of the roving left - plenty to ply with the remaining 12oz of the thrums.

The yarn below the light blue thrums is that I spun from the BL roving. Gosh, that was wonderful wool. I emailed Rose and asked her to send me 2lbs of silvery fleece. I washed the fleece and sent it off to Stonehedge for processing. Deb and Chuck did their usual spectacular job and I was thrilled with the roving. It was SO easy to spin that I had to lock it up at night so it wouldn't spin itself. :) The photo directly above was taken before I started my PiAreSquare shawl, so it's pretty old. The shawl was the very first big thing I ever knit with my own handspun and I was amazed at how different handspun feels from mill spun. Kind of alive, ya know? I'm hoping to bore you silly, so I'm gonna post another shot of this marvelous fiber - this is the singles on the bobbin - check out that shine!!

Hmmm... Will this entry be complete without a shot of the in-progress shawl? What the heck! I stopped knitting on this shawl the beginning of last winter - I knitted up all of the yarn I had spun and needed to get the rest of the roving spun up. I was thinking I might do the edging and collar in a different yarn, but now I'm thinking I'll do the edging in the same yarn and try to spin up some really soft grey stuff I have for the "shawl" collar. This Border Leicester, while very fine for BL, is just a teensy bit too harsh for the back of my neck.

sandeleh

Wow, that was different. One of the reasons I'm blogging instead of putting up more photos at Webshots is that the photos are no longer mine. I can't download any of my own photos as jpg images - only as Webshots proprietary format that only their software can display. And I'm paying for that "service!" So, since I don't have a photo of my shawl on my own computer, I have to link to the one on Webshots and to see the pix you gotta click on it, get taken away to Webshots and I can only hope you will return here. (sigh)

spinning again

Yes indeed. After a longish hiatus I drug the wheel back out and started on some new thrums from Spinderella. This is called Blue Bayou and has a little bit of everything in it fiber-wise, but is pretty bland colorwise. I'm wondering if I should spin something else to ply with it. My only other experience with Spinderella's thrums was about 5 yrs ago and it was a purple base with lots and lots of colorful slubs in it. As a matter of fact, I'm wearing the hat I knit from that yarn. :) I dyed some white BL top with grape koolaid and spun another singles to ply with that first thrums. Guess I need to take a quick pix so you can see what I'm talking about.

If you look closely you can see all the bits of green, yellow, pink and blue imbedded in the purple base. I did a very simple hat - cast on 100 or so sts with a provisional cast on, then after about 6" of 2x2 rib, I turned up a hem and knit cast on sts with hat sts. After another few inches, I decreased every other st around (leaving a 1x1 rib) and knit another 2 inches before a round of K2tog. A plain round, another K2tog and then I drew up all the remaining sts with the tail of the yarn and pulled it up tight. The cap is not long enough to fold up, but the double thickness over my ears keeps me from getting ear aches in the winter.

I've got a pretty extensive stash, and I'm sure I have more thrums in there somewhere. Maybe a navy color, eh? And I have at least another 1/2 lb of the purple base in the hat. I'm out of the BL roving I dyed to work with it, tho, so I'll have to use something else. Columbia? Dorset? Finn? Clun Forest? No worries - I'm sure I can find something.