|
 |
|
"Northern Lights" is the first thing spun from the superwash merino I picked up from Ursula's Alcove at the Ohio ren faire. This particular bag of roving was, while not entirely exactly a fiber preparation I was familiar with, extremely even and ludicrously easy to spin. It was so easy that I got a little cocky, and the second bobbin of it was spin with firestar nylon (you wouldn't believe the things I have "just lying around"....) I tried spreading a thin layer of the nylon over the batt of merino while I was spinning, but the nylon kept wanting to stick to my hand instead of spinning in, so I switched to holding a small bunch of the nylon in my hand with the batt, so that I was drafting from both sources at once. That mostly worked.
I plied from one bobbin of plain merino, one bobbin of merino/firestar, and a monofilament nylon with itty bitty grey glass beads on it. I took great pains to get the beads spaced pretty evenly through out the yarn. That was a royal pain in the tuckas, on account of me being graced with only two hands. I would recommend using either larger beads, or a carry thread that they don't slide around on. I recalled, while trying to string the beads, that I don't particularly like beading, especially the part of beading that involves getting itty bitty beads into an stupidly thin needle. But in spite of being a totally, insanely hateful process, it's really pretty, so I'll do it again. I'm dumb like that.
There's a second, smaller skein, made of the leftovers without any freakin' beads. That went much faster.
I named it "Northern Lights" because it looks a little like the auroras, and the news said we were supposed to have some around the time I was working on this, so it was sort of an inspired yarn. And no, we didn't actually get them where I was.
Stats: 8-10 WPI, 2 ply w/beads, 101 yds with beads, 12 yards without
