Here's a little photoessay about my most recent spinning creation.

8 ounces of superwash merino roving from Matahari Spinnery. Most of the shades are warm, but I wanted to introduce a little surprisey contrast of green. It ended up too pale and blue and I just didn't like it. These dyes are pretty old and not always predictable.

So I stuck the offending portion of the roving into a pan of hot water with two packs of cherry Kool-Aid for 20 minutes. This browned and greyed most of the offending portion and left just the smallest blips of the cools. Cool.

Outside drying.

I knew I wanted to ply this yarn and originally I was going to simply divide it in two, spin each half and then ply them, so that they would mostly (theoretically) match up and I could get a gradient from one end of the skein to the other. I divided the roving in half lengthwise (A and B), then divided the skein into lengths of "lighter" and "darker". First I spun A dark, then A light. That's the bottom bobbin. In watching the colors go by, I decided that rather than pairing the light with the light and the dark with the dark, there should be more coherence, so the second bobbin started with B light and ended with B dark.

The result, I think is quite pretty. No one should be surprised to see these colors from me, I suppose. By quick calculation, it's about 220 yards of bulky yarn. No project in mind for it... yet.