Handspun Undone.. kinda

Just recently I finished spinning up some commercial Wool/Soysilk Blend. I was very excited about it because I it felt like it was taking forever to spin. I was impressed with how much yarn was produced. Okay, I don't know what the yardage is yet but I think its a fair amount. I was planning on using the yarn to knit the Morning Surf scarf on the cover of the recent Spin-off thinking how I wanted it to be relatively lacy. But then I chickened out as I often do when it comes to knitting something thats not simple knit purl knit purl. So I went online to find another pattern and picked this. Its probably a little more complicated (since I dont know how to PSSO) but I think it will be perfect for this yarn. Besides, I have this month's spinning meet up and I'm going to take the pattern and have someone show me how to do it. They are such nice people in the group.

Speaking of, just this past week I set the twist on the yarn and to my disappointment the color ran. Ick! Okay, when I say ran I don't mean just a little dye. What I am talking about is the OH NO my water is no longer clear its (insert color here.) In this case my water was a dark orange color. The water wasn't hot it was luke warm. The yarn wasnt sitting in the water for hours it was there less than two minutes... not more than five, before I took it out. The only reason I took it out then was because I didnt want the color to bleed on the lighter fibers in the yarn. Seriously... disappointed. A major commercial brand should not bleed when the fibers are set. My husband commented that the water looked like Kool-Aid.


*SIGH* Okay, but its not the only thing I did this week. I spun the roving that I purchased at Knitch from Gale's Art. (She has an etsy store.) I wanted to keep the colors true so I split the roving into four long pieces and spun them with the expectation to do a two ply. That way the long repeats she created in the roving would ply against itself and make a somewhat self striping yarn with defined blocks of color. When I finished I pretty much changed my mind and decided to Navajo Ply. (See a theme here ;P) I am seriously no good at it. Every time I do a Navajo ply I end up with a very dense yarn. I believe the culprit is that I am treadling too fast on the ply. I think. I'm welcoming any opinions or advice to the contrary. Oh and when I set the twist on this fiber... Just a small light green tint in the water. Yea for well prepared fibers from small business owners!

And a quick note in unrelated (i.e. real life) news. We are finally getting some of our stuff moved into the new place. And yet again I realize two important things.... I hate packing and I hate moving. It's even worse at the moment because my husband is injured and can't lift more than 5 pounds and only on one hand. Of course this would be the optimal weekend to have these issues since the father in-law could only help us move all our big stuff like dressers, bookshelves etc on his trailer THIS weekend. That's just our kind of luck though. Bah! I can't wait til this is over.