Resurfacing

I'm back, the cases are unpacked, the second load is in the laundry, and the house is a complete disaster and I'm buried in e-mails, but I thought I'd take a moment to upload a shot or two while I run backups.

Remember this?


Which looked like this when it was spun?


And how we were wondering what it would look like when it was knitted? Well, here's the answer:


This isn't the best shot (the color is a bit faded), and I'm posting it just so you can see how the colors striped across the fabric. I'll upload better shots of the shawl itself on my own blog, but this is the thing I thought you'd find interesting---if only because *I* did. :-)

Remember that when I drafted the roving, I decided that I should break it up into color chunks if I wanted to preserve any of the color. It made sense to create strips which were predominately red, predominately yellow, or pure green. In other words, when I stripped the roving, I made a point of NOT getting pure yellow or pure red; there was always a bit of green in every strip. That gave me different hues of green rather than different colors, and I think that really worked out nicely. Now that I understand how it handles, I won't be afraid to do the same with other multicolor rovings where the colors run lengthwise in the fiber. I think that overall green tone kept the lace from disappearing in color shifts.

The one really critical thing I've learned by knitting this shawl is that I really do like a firmly-plied yarn, so I need to focus on getting things even during the ply. If I don't do that, then the singles separate a bit here and there. The second thing I discovered was that knitting hides a multitude of spinning sins. :-)

On other fronts, this is what was in the suitcases. (It's amazing how much fiber you can cram into a suitcase or so---even when you're packing it around a carder, books and a couple of training DVDs, four extra bobbins, a jumbo flyer and two of those bobbins, replacement parts for the wheel, and PVC for a niddy noddy.) I couldn't quite fit everything; there's superwash, dye, and raw fleece in a box making its slow way across the Atlantic. Do you reckon that this will keep me busy for a bit? ;-)



Wanda, the shaft to the new spindle was safely tucked in a PVC pipe---complete with caps---and put in my backpack. Airport security didn't even blink. :-) And have I told you yet that it's beautiful? Or that even my non-spinning family that it was a truly cool gizmo? :-)

And on a last note . . . . WOW! You guys have been busy over the past month! I'm soooo impressed!