Spinning

I haven't been completely quiet on the fibre front, far from it. One thing I can take to sea with me is knitting, and I've now become famous on my new ship for sitting in front of the computers monitoring my instruments with knitting in hand when the instruments need watching at all times. The fact that I was knitting with a chunky handspun merino seemed to particularly excite the New Zealand members of the crew. I haven't talked about my knitting here, because I tend to talk about it on Ravelry instead.

I've also been doing a lot of spinning, as the winter evenings start to close in. I finished spinning the dark camel-and-silk roving I started spinning two years ago here (I had one kilogram of pale and one kilo of dark) and I turned the pale yarn into a pullover for myself, for which I've yet to take pictures. Then I found in my stash, this fetching brown-and-white merino.

I have a vague memory of having bought it at the Christmas party of my old spinning group in the UK - P&M Woolcraft would come and set up a stall of temptation. There's a kilo of this too, so I've been spinning it semi-fractally, trying to keep an even length of colour change, but also allowing the occassional patch of long unbroken brown or white in the singles. The end result is a variegated yarn that will have a semi-solid tweedy look it it. I've been spinning it to a light fingering (4-ply) weight, and I am starting to think that it would be ideal yarn to use for a Lattice Lace Pullover (Ravelry link). I'd originally intended dyeing a semi-solid green yarn, but this is changing my mind.

One thing I've been doing is spinning the singles and plying much more firmly than I have of late. It's been clear to me that I spin singles well, but I'm a bit too tentative with the plying, fearing a tough hand to the yarn. But that doesn't help with the longevity of a garment.

I have two skeins of this yarn so far - about 1100 metres in total - and enough roving for one more skein. Plenty for the project I have in mind. I'd better get my skeins clear though, because I've just heard that my local guild is having a drop-in day this weekend: a handful of people, a big pile of rarer fleeces, and the chance to try them all in a single day. How can one resist taking as many empty bobbins as possible?