Handspun sock yarn

I think I've had enough of the carder now. I made my three mixes, and each twisted up little batt here had to go through the carder 3 times. Sometimes 5. Sigh.

So, since I am the dyer and mixer here, I get to name the colors (as the pros who have etsy shops do). This one is 80% Romney and 20% Kid Mohair. I bought the mohair from Kathy's fibres, all pre-prepared, but it was still difficult to make it blend. The mohair fibres are short, and liked to stick to the small roller on the carder. In the end I'd get a handful of wool, spread it thinly, spread a thin layer of mohair over it, roll it up, stretch it lengthwise and then run it through the carder. It was veeeery time consuming. I'd then pull off the batt, split it into lengthways strips, stretch them out, and put them through again. And again. The mohair was white, so it muted the colors a bit, but at least there aren't too many white streaks.

Marius. 210g.

But then I moved on to Tencel. This one is 80% Romney and 20% tencel. Sort of. So much tencel got pulled off onto the small roller of the carder that I can't be sure of the percentages; it just wouldn't stick to the wool, stupid, short, slippery little fibres. The worst thing about tencel, though, is that it's soft and a bit shiny, like silk... just like silk... and I might love the stuff, so I'll probably have to do this again in the future.

ValJean. 174g.

I also can't get over the fact that tencel is made out of wood!

The yellow and natural is purposefully semi-mixed. I put a teeny bit of brown into that green, and a teeny bit of green into that grey-green. And some sparkly Angelina may have accidently fallen into the mix ;) but I think I can live with it.

Then there was the Romney/mohair/tencel one. I was on a roll with my fibre-sushis at this point, though it was still time consuming. I did two batts of the black (now a charcoal grey, I guess) and two batts of the natural. When they were mixed as much as I could be bothered to mix them, I ran them through the carder one more time, adding pinches of all the colors that I had collected cleaning the carder, all the 11 colors. I didn't want them to blend too much. I was thinking "Hundreds and thousands" and got rainbow smudges instead, but I like the effect.

Cosette. 188g.

Today, I finished spinning up the 'fawn' one.

100g of 3ply yarn that's about 20-22 WPI. Thinner than fingering weight, again, but only 304m. I spin densely! Of course, when I say "only 304m" what I really mean is "Squeeeeee!  912m of singles from 100g beats my old record by more than 250m!" I'm a bit pleased with that. Hehe.

BTW, according to my kindle I'm 94% of the way through "Les Miserables".