Spinning Wheel, Got to Go Round

I can go months without getting the wheel out, but lately, I've been dreaming about spinning. It's probably because I am in the *first sock-book deadline* crunch, writing up patterns furiously all day, every day, and having a brain that feels like curling ribbon in the evenings. Right now, I have to keep my head in the game, which means no recreational knitting, and I only have 1 sock left to finish for this portion of the book (something like 32 designs so far, and over 44 different sock versions knit- since December). So I've been spinning in the evenings as I watch TV.

I finished the Lumpy Bumpy Mystery Roving- I ended up with 3 skeins, a total of 7.5 ozs, 219 yds, 11 wpi yarn that I am really happy with. It's a DK/worsted weight, and this roving told me it wanted to be mittens as soon as I started spinning.

After all the lumps and neps, I wanted something I could spin smoothly- so I chose the last bump of a Rambouillet/Cotswold cross that I washed and dyed myself, and sent to my wonderful processor, Abi at High Prairie Fibers, to card and turn into roving. I used Country Classics dyes- neon Yellow, Pink and Blue (I can't remember the exact dye names and the jars are in the basement). Abi processed the roving to be self-striping, and the colors blended for a bit of green, peach and purple. It's a dream to spin (as are all of Abi's rovings) and the first skein came out perfectly- 3.8 ozs, 171 yds, about 16 wpi, 2 ply. It's heavy fingering, or sport weight, and it's destined to be socks. The yarn will be self patterning, though it'll probably be a *Trekking* sort of self-patterning, and I won't be able to make the 2 socks match because I only had one bump of this roving left (out of 2.5lbs) and the color repeats match up over 2 bumps, not within the bump itself. I envision a simple lace pattern with this yummy yarn.

Check High Prairie Fibers out: http://prairiefiber.homestead.com/index.html