Totally Tubular Handspun

This weekend, D decided to brave the (VERY!) cold and go snowshoeing for a couple of hours.  Me... um...not so brave.  I decided to sit inside with Emma on my lap in the sun and spin.  I was able to finish up the 4 ounces of my Totally Tubular spinning kit I had purchased at the Great Basin Fiber Fair last fall. 

This kit is sort of a mish-mash of ends from Three Bags Full and Crosspatch Creations, and is sold through Carolina Homespun (among other places) in various colors.  Essentially what you get are complementary colors of various of their blends in a large 4-ounce plastic tube (great for storing straight needles in the future!).  The colors I picked (surprise!) were teals, blue, and purples predominantly.  The fiber has a lot of dyed CVM in it, but there is also some mohair, silk, silk noil, and probably a few other small sprinkles of other wool types, best I could tell.

To spin this up, I divided the 4-ounce package into four 1-ounce piles of approximately proportionately equal amounts of each of the colorways.  I then took each of those 1-ounce piles and pulled the roving into about 1-inch pieces, which I then put in a big pile and hand combined to mix the pieces.  I then drew these 1-inch bits at random from the pile and spun as finely as I could, given the different fiber types and the silk noil/waste scattered throughout.  The result looks like this:

• Fiber:  Wool, silk, mohair and the kitchen sink in various shades of greens, blues, magenta, white, and bits of multicolored silk noil/waste. 
• Yardage:  About 438 yards.
• WPI:  14.
• Plans:  I was originally thinking socks, but I think the yarn may have too many bumps in it for that.  Perhaps some garter-stitch gloves. The original suggestion was for a faux entrelac triangular shawl, but I'm not sold on that, given the way I spun the yarn up. I'll let it age in the stash while I think about it. I suspect it will need some copious sampling to tell me what it should be.
• Notes: Overall, this is a fairly soft, bouncy blend that was a lot of fun to spin with all the color changes.  It'd be a great way to practice joins!

All for now.....

Comments

[Chris]

Very pretty!

[Karen]

It's really pretty yarn! I bought some mish-mash at Rhinebeck last Fall but when I tried to spin it a month or so ago, it didn't work out very well.

[margene]

Ooo, I love it!

[Marcia]

I bought huge amounts of both Crosspatch and Three Bags fiber at SOAR but never thought of mixing! It's gorgeous! I am knitting some of the yarn made from the Three Bags Full fiber as we speak!

[minnie]

ooooooooo. i think that would make a fun hat/scarf combo. particularly if it's soft. i think gloves would have too much wear. maybe clapotis to show off the colors?

[amanda]

very pretty! and much more practical than snow-shoeing!

[Laurie]

Pretty, and much warmer than than outside. Marination will help. I look at it and see archive rather than use.

[Anne]

My first thought was hat. Actually, my first thought was that I wonder how it would look spun straight and navajo plied, and that if you had half and half you could do a double thickness hat a la EZ, with the navajo as one side and the mixed as the other. It's gorgeous though... I must go check out their site!

[Sheepish Annie]

Absolutely beautiful! What a great way to spend a chilly day. I did a little of the spinning myself yesterday during the ice storm we had in southern Maine. Not quite as pretty as yours, though...

[cyndy]

Thanks for explaining how you accomplished such good looking yarn! I'm sure it will let you know what it wants to become, when it is ready ;-)...

...in the meantime...it can sit around a just look pretty...