So I'm not doing TdF because I haven't really got the time... but Tour de France is not the only cycling race right now so consider me spinning along some of the shorter bike races.
Anyway... I got a blending board yesterday and here is what I made so far:
The orange rolags are mainly the BFL I dyed with Annatto a few weeks ago, mixed with various orange mill ends, including a little bit of sari silk. Its so soft and the colour is so peachy and creamy, reminding me of Bellini.
Then I blended a mix of different brown and green mill ends I had flying around, probably around 10 different types of fiber. It turned out absolutely perfect, deep and earthy browns and greens with lots of texture and colour variation. I have about 65g of this and I'm really excited to spin this!
Next is another test for my idea of a watermelon art yarn. The fiber content is extremely varied, a mix of several sheep races that I dyed two years ago. The initial fiber prep wasn't that great, densely carded with a lot of lanolin. The dyeing process didn't help any so now even carded again its not that pleasant to spin and I can't get it do draft evenly, but thats completely fine for this project. My biggest problem is with the black nepps, as they refuse to stay during spinning, losing a little bit of that watermelon vibe I'm going for.
Lastly I have a small test skein for a project I've had in mind for a very long while. Using hebridean wool (my beloved) as a base, I blended in small bits of scrap yarn that I have been collecting. I spun it long draw directly from the mini-batt and then i plied the two singles together. It worked way better than expected, especially considering my experience with the black nepps mentioned earlier. The resulting yarn is chunky and colourful. I might play around a bit with adjusting the size of the yarn scraps, maybe carding them by themselves first before adding into the batt. But first I'll see how it looks in a test swatch!
