Spinning Lately

Last June, my mom and I took a spinning class at our state's sheep and wool festival.  The topic was color in hand-dyed rovings/tops, and we learned three ways to manage overwhelming or clashing color in hand-dyed braids.  The first (on the left in the photo above) is involves tearing the braid into small pieces to create a gradient.  The second is stained-glass - spinning the colored singles together with a solid neutral singles.  The third was fractal-spinning.  Then, I had a fair amount of leftover colored singles from the stained-glass sample, so I chain-plied that to get the fourth skein in the picture.  My stained glass and chain-plied samples have too much plying twist, so at some point before I use them I'll have to run them back through the wheel to remove some of it. 

This enormous skein is spun from Hello Yarn roving that I brought home from Yarn School in October 2012.  It took me over a year to spin!  I don't remember what my final yardage was, but I'm pretty sure it's over 800 yards, and it's laceweight.  My plan is to knit it into a large square shawl, maybe something like this, or this, or this.  I'll use it to wrap around my head in winter instead of wearing a hat.

Then, I spun up two alpaca skeins to go together.  The white one is un-dyed alpaca that I bought on vacation in Vermont several years ago, and the purple is a sparkly alpaca-merino blend that was given to me as a Christmas gift a few years ago.  They're fingering weight, and I've forgotten the yardage on them, but I'm hoping to knit something with colorwork.  I think the purple skein has a bit too much plying twist, so I'll need to remove some of that before I can use it.