State of the Rose

I know that some of you must be curious to know what is going on with the spinning projects. I've been doing much more knitting than spinning lately, both because I have been captivated by the projects I'm knitting, and because my fiber stash is in a place where I don't have too much that I feel I can play around with without having a plan. Right now I feel like playing when it comes to spinning. I have knitting plans; I don't want spinning plans. In between my knitting projects, I have played around here and there with a bit of merino that I got at the Santa Monica Fiber Festival last summer. Marnie spun a bit of it, too, when she was out here for work a few weeks ago. Here's what it looks like so far:

The first ply

This is a sister fiber to the lovely "mud" roving that I spun up in the fall. You might think that I would make more of an attempt to prepare it differently, but in this case I'm looking for the subtle variations of the "mud."

I have a bad habit of hoarding my handspun rather than knitting it. I have recently been reminded of the great error of my ways by Mary Heather, who I taught to spin in September. MH has not only taken to spinning like a fish to water, she has already gone on to complete her first handspun project (which is freakin' gorgeous!) and has plans for a second. Although I have started two handspun projects, both will have to be ripped (more on that later), so I still haven't finished a darn thing!

I keep telling myself that I hoard because I have been spinning such small quantities of each fiber and that I need to spin more before I have enough skeins that will work together in a finished piece. I have an idea for a handspun turtleneck based on a wonderful sweater from last winter's anthropologie catalogue, and I think I have several skeins so far that I can dedicate to that piece. My hope is that this skein will coordinate with those as well. I think that the more colors I add, the more likely it will be that no single color will stick out like a sore thumb. At least that seems to be the principle that the great color artists like Kaffee Fassett and Brandon Mably operate on. We'll see how well it works out for me. I generally work more with shape and texture, and don't consider myself particularly talented when it comes to the multi-chromatic word. This will be an adventure.