Red Sky at Night

I'm in the middle of a very long project, which is taking lots of time. I get ideas during the process, though, and some of them are just hard to put off. Distractions, digressions, and diversions.

One of the ideas involved color gradations in spinning. I googled around until I found some fiber dyed in the appropriate manner:


This is Sailor's Delight silk/merino from Yarn Chef on Etsy and is just perfect for a small sample.

I bought two lengths, 4 oz. each. My bobbins hold about 2 oz, so I divided each section of the top lengthwise, weighed the bundles and matched them up by weight for spinning:



I wanted the colors to match up closely in the plying, so I spun up each length, then plied the two bobbins together:



The fiber was a dream to spin, and worked up nicely as planned. I have 5 skeins altogether, which I plan to knit from violet-to-gold/gold-to-violet/violet-to-gold etc.:


The bigger project will have only one color run for the whole length, that is, the dyeing will be in longer lengths, so the colors grade from dark to light only once in the finished project. I know this will be grand to spin up: the interim colors are where it's all happening, and what makes dyeing and spinning like this such a treat. It's a lovely easy way to grade colors from one to another.

There's nothing really new or different about this idea, but I had great fun sampling. Lucky are we who can find such pleasure in simple things, eh?

Now back to work [sounds of nose and grindstone here].