Spinning & Un-broken Phones

As a method of procrastination, I appear to have spun all of the things.  Summer is here, I bought new oil for the old wheel, I've got better things to do - so obviously I'm spending hours with the wheel!

The steady trundle of my old wheel is hypnotic, & the small pleasure of seeing the bobbin of yarn grow as it fills with yarn is addictive.  

The yarns this month are a wee mixture from a stash that has been slowly building.  It'd be great to say that I'm implimenting a 'one in-one out' policy, if not 'all out', but I don't really trust myself. 

Another *very* exciting event this week is that I had my phone screen fixed!  Once the initial barrage of glass splinters had passed, I had largely grown to accept the dilapidated appearance of my phone.  Yes, there was tape over the top holding the pieces in, but it worked, and I was ok with it.  

I have a rant but, long story short - friends & family teasing about state of phone / concerned about my delicate wee face = not a problem.  Ladies at work implying at the condition of my phone reflects my lifestyle choices and how dilligently I'll do my job = not ok.  It's fixed now, but for the wrong group of people.

 

On to the yarn! (you can also see all of these in my Ravelry stash).   After my ravings about gradient yarns earlier this month, I couldn't help but spin up all of the gradient braids I could lay my hands on. 

I have no preferred method for spinning gradients, I'm aware that many people like to chain ply to preserve the gradient to it's best, but I quite enjoy the overlapping effects achieved by splitting the braid into two, & just seeing how the two halves marry up when you ply them.

In this case, with the polwarth, I left a lot of black on one half & a lot of blue on the other, so the marching is dubious but has resulted in wonderful short-ish runs of 'barber-pole' effect, which worked really well!

 

This lovely grey skein is a sample from Sara's Texture Crafts, (who dyed the beautiful yarn used in the Fearlas Mor sock pattern). 

It's made up of Alpaca, BFL, Merino & Silk.  Is is light, very easy to draft and well blended.  It's dreamy and I think I might have to find some more of this beautiful fluff.  As it stands, I see a little pair of wristy/mitts?  We shall see.  It ended up at 88 yards of... probably DK.

Polwarth from Fiber Artemis.  This one was good.  The fibre itself feels so smooth, and as such feels a little dense so I worried about how easy it'd be to spin, but this was wonderful too.  So even with minimal effort.  The gradient is lovely too - I'd usually go for a more prolonged gradient, in that this one changes colour relatively quickly, but we'll soon see how it knits up!

I've noticed that in this etsy shop, you're allowed to chose which base you'd like the colour dyed onto, which seems like a very nice option!  I have another braid still to spin from this dyer, this time a mix of polwarth & silk, so very intrigued to see how that goes!

Last but not least, Merino/Seacell/Shetland from Hilltop Cloud.  I love how the seacell pops through this yarn a little bit, giving little runs of pearly white through the warm berry shades.  This is another gradient braid, which changes gradually from purple, then pink, through orange to yellow.  Yum.  It's like a fruit pastel roll.

As ever, fibre from Hilltop Cloud is never difficult to draft, and spins up easily.  This lot has ended up around a DK, so I'm thinking a wee cowl might be in order!



That's my lot, I'm off to a BBQ now for my grandpops birthday!  What do you have planned for this weekend?