Well, a very long time ago I produced this hot pink wool from the nastiest fleece I ever worked with.
One of four dye baths I did with this Romney fleece. Blogged it at the very start of the blog, so I won't re-tell the story here. Suffice it to say - I finally did something with some of this pink wool. Did a nice blend with some gray Corriedale from a ewe named Sierra and added a bit of white icicle fiber for some sparkle.
It seemed to take forever to get this done, I had 99 grams of batts to spin. Mostly did it while I was sitting at the computer listening to podcasts and my Celtic music station on Pandora radio. Nice way to pass the time, to be sure!
Spun the singles on a spindle and chain plied them on my wheel.
I ended up with this:
A lovely mauve yarn, with a touch of sparkle. Softer than the Romney alone and more interesting than either color wool would have been. I'm pretty partial to heathered colors anyway, I like the character and interest that they have when worked up into something. I originally thought I'd do a scarf out of this, there is a pretty one from Spin-Off by Stephanie Gaustad called Helix Scarf. It is a ruffled confection that is a very interesting knitting pattern. Besides that, it would be great with my winter coat.
The next thing I've been working on is a pretty good sized quantity of batts that I had made of some of the pink Romney from way back when. I blended it with some great light gray Corriedale from a ewe named Sierra from my favorite shepherd in Colorado. I also decided to blend in a little bit of white icicle to add some sparkle to the yarn. My original plan was to knit up a ruffled scarf that I found in Spin Off some time ago. An odd thing happened as I worked with this blend. The Corriedale was a little "sticky" to work with. I had washed it quite a while before I actually did anything with it, so it "rested" in that state. Since the blending was already finished, I went ahead and spun it up the way it was. But I also decided to re-wash some of the fleece that hadn't been used in the blended batts. Much, much better... feels clean and pleasant again. I had no idea such a thing could happen with fleece as it sits waiting its turn in my stash. I'll definitely chalk this up as a learning experience! I doubt that I could spin a fleece "in the grease" since I found a little stickyness so icky to work with.
I still have a little more to finish up but I am on the last batt now. The sparkle of the icicle doesn't really show up on the pictures - most sparkle fibers seem to be pretty camera shy. I wonder sometimes how people get shots of Angelina that show the multicolor glittery effect.
