Attempt at "Periwinkle," whatever that means

5 oz. scoured fleece from Romney Ewe #1 -- (Lydia's flock in Newbury, MA). I had pulled it into locks at this point. Dey so fluffy... (sqwunch, sqwunch)


The locks, now dyed. (This was as "Periwinkle" as I could get as a beginning dyer - the tips didn't strike that well, but that may just be the nature of raw lock tips. They lightened the intensity of the yarn a tad, but not that much.)


Locks separated and organized by length, all ready for combing


About a comb load's worth. Though Lydia bred out a great fleece flock, her pasture was very muddy with lots of twigs and other matter, but all that falls out in the combing. Sure makes for a dirty floor though ;-) After combing waste, I'm averaging about a 6-gram sliver...


Poof! This stage always amazes me. How those scoured, dyed and otherwise "handled" locks can open up this nicely. I could just bury myself in fresh-combed poofy fleece!


A fully combed load (4 passes) being dizzed off into a fat, airy sliver. (It's way fatter than it looks, I'm guessing most are between 4-5 inches in diameter.)


That sliver now being wrapped into a bird's nest. (This nest I wrapped pretty airy, sometimes I pull them taut as I go. Either is perfect for spinning from though.)


I didn't take photos of the spinning, but you know what a bobbin of spun single looks like. The one thing that I originally had trouble with was plying on my wheel. I was doing that step on my plying spindle but then discovered a somewhat unorthodox way of doing it, and hey, it comes out evenly so I ain't gonna fix it! So here's the freshly plyed yarn, skeined, soaked to set the spin and then a good whirrr in the salad spinner. It's now drying outside (yeah, right in the sun, I'm impatient.)

These next photos represent the color I was after but the actual yarn is not as lavendar-tinted. Quite more subtle, actually.



On its way to becoming a "Finished Object." I LOVE that center-pull ball winder! I've been winding by hand, and this is just soooo much nicer to pull from.


Edit 9/29/09
I left this post at that point up to now on blog, since this was to be a present for my sistah. I've already gifted it to her though, so here's her finished mitts after a final post-knit bath. This was a "heavy-worsted weight" grist spin, knit on size US 7 needles so they took a couple days to dry because they're thick enough to be nice and toasteee. Sistah said she WUVES em! Awwwwww. On my monitor, this looks more intense or deeper than the actual DOS (depth of shade) but the color tone is reasonably accurate. I'd say it came out reasonably periwinkle, eh?