Whee! Yarn!

First wheel yarn! Yay! I actually like this a lot more than I expected to - the colors really popped when it was spun up. The roving kind of had me worried - I had two 4oz Braids that I dyed and this was the darker and muddier looking of the two. (Ironically I am currently plying the second 40z which spun up into much cleaner brighter singles but I'm wishing in hindsight that I'd Navajo plied like this one since the plain 3 ply is doing some unattractive green/yellow/red barber poling in places).


I went a little nutso this week and in addition to cleaning my work area at home I built a lightbox finally so besides being my first wheel-spun this is also my first set of lightbox photos. It is working pretty well - but I already feel like I should have made it larger (its a standard small packing box with muslin sides). Its good for 1-2 skeins or a single 4oz braid but it gets crowded in there when I try to stuff more than that in it.

Otherwise been crazy busy getting ready for Saturday - I'm getting set up for a how-to-dye event for my church knitting group and I'm sort of terrified (like why does anyone think its a good idea to have me teaching stuff? To large groups?). We have the koolaid and the space and I thought we had the burners and the oven (which turns out to be convection and so I have to look up how to work around that now), but no microwave which is maybe just as well considering the number of people planning to attend.

If I survive I'll post pictures when its all over.

I snuck in some of my own dyeing on Tuesday as well and now have 8oz of SW Merino/Tencel ready to spin and more sock yarn (because what I really needed in my life was more sock yarn).

I'm a little disapointed with how much dye the SWM/T took up vs. how much white is left on the braids, but it was enough of a PITA to keep from migrating off into its little individual fibers while it was wet that I'm debating if I'd rather spin it as is and overdye if its too spotty or overdye it in roving form. I may go with both tactics and overdye the lighter of the two as roving and spin the darker. Or something.

Right then. Onward.