Finishing, Starting, and Planning Ahead

Yesterday was Indie Knit & Spin and it was a lot of fun, albeit an exhausting day. I did sell a number of skeins of handspun as well as several patterns, so I think it was a successful day. I still have most of the original pile of handspun, far more than I will likely ever knit, so I'm contemplating what to do with it. I may just mark it for sale on Ravelry, or perhaps I will open an Etsy shop. If you have any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them!

I did not buy very much yesterday, mainly because I was manning the booth on my own for much of the day. I did come home with two new things. First, a new Doctor Who-themed project bag from StarKnits:

Outside fabric

Inside fabric with pocket

I also picked out this 4 oz. braid of Targhee from Gwen Erin Natural Fibers:

Targhee is one of my favorite fibers to spin, so I'm looking forward to getting to this one.

But let's get back to actual finished spinning. This was finished up last week but not in time for my Sunday post, and it took almost all week to get a picture (this time of year makes it very difficult to get decent photos of anything during the week). This is my finished 80% superwash merino/20% trilobal nylon sparkle from FatCatKnits in two colorways, Sam and Dean. This was the first shipment in the current installment of the FCK fiber club, the theme for which is Famous Couples. Sam and Dean are the brothers who are the main characters in the TV show Supernatural. I decided to spin up each color on its own and then do a combined chain ply. To do this, I held both strands of yarn together and alternated which strand I pulled the next loop from as I plied. This did some really interesting things to the colors in the finished yarn.

The finished skein looks to be about DK weight and roughly 284 yards. I must admit that I was not a huge fan of the colors in the fiber, but I'm intrigued by how they mixed when plied. I'm really curious to see how this will knit up.

The finished yarn is not as soft as it could be, giving the merino content. I think this is due to the sparkle, which I found a bit bothersome as I was spinning. The last time I had sparkle in fiber from Ginny, it seemed to be much finer and very well blended. This sparkle was long pieces that stuck out, and I found myself pulling them out altogether at times. You can see some of them poking out in the photo above. I'm sure they'll be less of an issue when the yarn is knit and washed a few times.

Meanwhile, I am planning ahead. I really wanted to start something new last night, so I pulled out my Southern Cross Fibre October shipment, Corriedale in a very autumnal colorway called Splendour. I split the top into four long strips and am spinning them in order for another one of my pseudo-self-striping sock yarns.

I'm also hoping to spend some time later today getting started on another spinning project for the natural (undyed) fiber spinalong that Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works and the 90% Knitting podcast is hosting. I am somewhat ashamed to say that I've had some fiber from Louet North America that I was sent to review probably a year ago and I'd just about forgotten about it, so I am ready to start spinning it. I have 8 oz. of this beautiful gray Gotland that I'm going to spin into a two ply.

When I pulled it out, I also discovered a spinning project I'd started long ago and forgotten, another bit of review fiber -- 2 oz. of camel/tussah silk that I started spinning on my Bosworth mini.

This one won't count toward the spinalong as it was started before today, but I think if I spend a few minutes a day on it, I can finish it up rather quickly.