Here is my first skein of Morning Glory yarn, 250 yards and 2 oz. I'll be happy if I end up with 500 yards of the blue. It is a little heavier than fingering weight, and it is nice and fluffy! Just what I was aiming for.
Now the rest of this is all Cary's fault. Ever since she said that the blue reminded her of morning glories, it has been downhill from there! I have all sorts of ideas bouncing around in my head for morning glory patterns is lace and in stranded knitting. Since I didn't want to try to match the colors in the blue morning glory blend, I made a leaf blend instead. I used bright green, emerald green, and just a touch of green and yellow firestar, with the same 50% BFL, 25% silk, and 25% alpaca base. I really like the way that these turned out as well! I am trying to decide if I want to use beads in this design or not. We'll see how the swatching goes, and I may need to save some of the ideas that I have for when I have a bit more time to play with them. 
I'm also working furiously on my Sockapalooza socks, and am nearing the toe of the first and hope to finish it and cast on the mate this weekend. I'll have a picture of them when I'm finished!
Last week I dyed up some fibers to blend on my drumcarder. This is the first full batch of blended fibers that I have worked on, and I'm really pleased with my results. I started with 4 piles of fiber, each one containing 1/2 oz. BFL (blue-faced leicester), and 1/4 oz. each of alpaca and silk. The BFL and alpaca had some purple as well. I had hoped for a bit of a darker color, but since it was my first time dyeing as well, there was quite a few areas that didn't get dyed. It made me glad that I used light grey alpaca instead of cream! I think that it added a bit of depth to it. I also added a sprinkling of blue and bright pink firestar in the last pass through. 
To blend the three fibers and the colors, I started with one pile of fiber and carded each one in the same way. I started with a thin layer of BFL, then I made a "sandwich" of alpaca, then silk, topped with BFL, and fed that in all at once to keep the silk from bunching too much. I carded each pile into two batts, and then split them in half and carded them with each other. Then I took one of these batts and blended it with half of a batt from one of the other batches to make sure that I had a fairly even blend. I added just a hint of dyed firestar (a few grams) to the last pass to give a bit of depth and shine. 
Cary saw a picture of these batts and said that they reminded her of Heavenly Blue morning glories, and I just love those, so the name stuck! I ended up with 8 batts and have spun half of them, and hope to ply what I've spun tonight. They were are dream to spin, and I actually decided to draft from the fold, which I don't do often, to add a bit of loft to the fiber as I was spinning it. Holding the bit of fiber over my index finger didn't work as well as I would have liked, so I placed it over my thumb instead, which worked surprisingly well. I was aiming for a fingering weight, so we'll see how well I did with that tomorrow! I'll be using this to knit one of my shawls for Journey to a Shawl.
After finishing my Maple Garland Shawl last week, I decided to do some spinning. These are some luxury sock batts from Abby at Franquemont Fibers. They were very easy and a joy to spin. The batts are 68% superwash merino, 30% silk, and 2% firestar. The sparkle is very hard to photograph, but it is subtle.
I spun a fairly fine single and then chain-plied the singles to preserve the three color gradations. The color is called Orchid, but I think it looks like a sunrise, with the blue/purple, red/purple, and the yellow/pink. I ended up with 212 yards and 2.5 oz. three-ply yarn. I need to find/dye a complimentary colored fiber to spin for some heels and/or toes. I really prefer ankle socks, so I can get by with a little less yarn that average. And I will knit these toe-up to make the best use of the yarn that I have. This will probably be my project for our trip to Nashville for graduation in the beginning of May. 
Now the rest of this is all Cary's fault. Ever since she said that the blue reminded her of morning glories, it has been downhill from there! I have all sorts of ideas bouncing around in my head for morning glory patterns is lace and in stranded knitting. Since I didn't want to try to match the colors in the blue morning glory blend, I made a leaf blend instead. I used bright green, emerald green, and just a touch of green and yellow firestar, with the same 50% BFL, 25% silk, and 25% alpaca base. I really like the way that these turned out as well! I am trying to decide if I want to use beads in this design or not. We'll see how the swatching goes, and I may need to save some of the ideas that I have for when I have a bit more time to play with them. 
I'm also working furiously on my Sockapalooza socks, and am nearing the toe of the first and hope to finish it and cast on the mate this weekend. I'll have a picture of them when I'm finished!
