Friday, May 9, 2008

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Rose Garden




So, early on, I'd hoped to keep the colors separate on the Rose Garden Merino roving. It didn't work that way on the first skein- the colors mixed and blended and came out just fine. Fine enough that I decided not to worry about colors on the second (and last) skein.


Guess what?


Without trying at all, the colors on the 2 bobbins matched up. Not perfectly, there is a lot of barber pole-ing, but there are also huge areas of solid green, solid rose, and solid blue. Go figure.


Unfortunately, I need both skeins for the lace scarf, and I would have preferred them to be either totally unmatching, or totally matching. On the other hand, the striping doesn't show so much in these pics, and since I'm not making socks with this yarn, it may not matter at all. It'll be pretty no matter what.

The skein is soaking now, but here are some pre-washing pics. Handspun yarn hanks bloom (fluff up) and shrink anywhere from 2"-6" after washing, and Merino tends to shrink on the high end of the scale because it's a highly crimped wool. Right now, the skein is about 28" long. We'll see how long it is after drying.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you alternate each skein every other row to break it up a bit more?

Kathleen Taylor said...

Thanks for the suggestion.I think that's what I'll do- or at least every couple of inches (I'm not sure how stranding up the side will work with lace- if it will hinder blocking later by keeping the edge from being elastic enough).