You spin me right round...

So, a couple of years back I decided it might be fun to learn to spin. Took a couple of lessons, and bought a nice little wheel (Majacraft Suzie). Then, as sometimes happens, life intervened and the spinning took a back seat to other things. Lately, the urge has returned, and I've been taking baby steps back into the wonderful world of hand spun. I wasn't that proficient when I stopped, and I'm certainly no better with such a long layoff, but by turning to the spinning newbie's best friend -- that would be Blue-Faced Leicester roving -- I managed to produce some passable yarn. But what to do with it?

Now, in the past, yarn produced generally went right into the stash, with no thought given to any particular project. Since my initial goal was to sample many different types (sheep breeds) of wool, that wasn't surprising -- not too much you can do with many little 50 g. skeins of wildly different yarns. But now I'd really like to concentrate on actually making something from the spun yarn, so I set about swatching.

My first thought was a lacy scarf, and so I turned to "Zen and the Art of Stash Diving" from Crochet Me on-line magazine. I really liked how that pattern was developing, but quickly realized that I wouldn't have nearly enough yarn to make a scarf of the length I wanted. Rip-it!

Sometimes inspiration comes at you in a blinding flash, but usually I experience it as a slap upside the head -- why not make the pattern that most folks are coming to the blog to get -- "Could It Be Any Easier?" neck cozy. And so I did.

The roving is hand-dyed from the folks at Sakina Needles, and purchased through The Loopy Ewe. Colorway is "Mango", and fiber is Blue-Faced Leicester (BFL). Spun to (roughly) a worsted weight yarn, it's soft and absolutely delightful. Won't that be a nice pop of color for those grey winter days?

And since I still would really like a "Zen, etc." scarf, I started one of those in some hand-dyed yarn I picked up at Maryland Sheep & Wool this year. It's 55% mohair, 45% merino dyed with natural ingredients (osage, madder and cutch) by Juanita Breidenbaugh (who doesn't appear to have a website). Pretty, yes?