emchick

First, the finished Harmony in Red skein:

69 yards, 2 oz Targhee. I had a difficult choice to make when after splitting the roving in half, one finished single came out to be 68 yards and one came out 95. I considered joining them and plying from both ends of the ball, or adding some of the second skein to the first, but in the end decided to leave them alone and ply them as is. The skein is still longer than my other fun ones, and the two skeins are uneven in kind of a nice way, where the first is more thick-thin and the second came out much more evenly thin. I'm very happy with the finished result - I got the deep red I was after, and the light blue comes out, in tiny bits, making for a nice change and a nice contrast to the deep red.

The Targhee is also more squooshy and soft than the Corriedale I've been using, but was harder to spin. I think my predrafting was to blame, since I have a new skein started that's going along much much better. Here is the painting and inspired roving:




Van Gogh, Irises. White, light gray blue, and dull green-blue. I'm psyched.

I think my dyeing experiment was a reasonable success:

The red gets as deep as I wanted it too, and I like the light blue. I'm not sure if the light blue will show up enough once the yarn is plyed, but for now, it's looking good. I have one skein spun, with 68 yards, and am about half done with the second skein. I should be done by the end of the week! (I guess it sounds kind of lame taking a whole week to spin one skein of yarn, especially such a small skein, but that's drop spindling...slow. I've been admiring wheels online, but for now I know nothing about them, have no space for one, and want to get better more into spinning before committing to something so huge.)

I also bought See Eunny Knit's Deep V Argyle Vest Pattern...I wear lots of collared shirts to teach and have been wanting a vest like this. And it'd be my first time steeking, which seems so exciting! What will this mean for my other projects though? Eek.

I named this yarn Tigerlily in my head while I was spinning it because of the tiger stripes the singles had when the orange met the dark blue. Now that it's done, the name doesn't feel as appropriate, but can't be changed. That'd just be too crazy. And, as I suspected, my new spindle doesn't seem suited for skeins any longer than the ones I made on my last spindle. Oh well.

55 yards of bulky 2-ply, with the last of my Corriedale. Yay!