whackadoodle coconut

hi.  remember me?  I'm whackadoodle coconut. this week (and actually the last few months) have been quite busy for us around ye olde household.  I've been working on getting the house straightened up, cleaned up and organized.  makes a girl feel better knowing everything is in it's place.  so this week with the heat and prepping for spinzilla, I've been practicing my spinning and finishing up a couple projects. First - the evolution of the yarn I've had in my stash for over a year now.  I thought it was a nice mix of spring time colors, but I never really liked the way they looked together on my test spin.  then I had an idea, what if I blended the colors like I did with my sherbet yarn?  and voila! and here it is.  the evolution of yarn!  it's a nice mix of bulky yarn.  I think it looks like cotton candy and my husband said it looked like yarn for a baby.  I'd agree with that.  it is fresh, pastel and...

Spinning has been put on hold for a little bit.  I've had a knarly pain in my neck and can't really hold my hands above my head and use my spindle lately.  So instead I've been dying some yarn and knitting for myself and a friend of mine. I recent dyed up some sock yarn to see the difference between 100% wool and superwash wool.  There was a little difference, but not to the extent of my Spud and Chloe yarn that I use to tie my skeins with.  That yarn gets super saturated with the best colors and I was hoping it would work on the Debra Norville yarn I purchased for a project. I'm not super dissatisfied since the colors wouldn't have gone well together like my current results do.  I used a combination of Kool Aid and some inexpensive food coloring for these skeins.  I wanted each to have a blue undertone so they would all match.  Except for the yellow of course, which turned out really bright!  Go figure.

this week has been a little busy since I went out with a friend early on and then took a couple days to spin some yarn and watch the last couple Bond movies I had before returning them.  my latest spinning was an adventure to say the least.  I had a lot of trouble getting the fiber to attach to the leader and almost gave up, but the last try was successful and I went ahead and worked up about an ounce of practice. yesterday I plied them together and what I had thought was going to be a muted rainbow of sorts, it turned out really "fall-ey".  by this I mean, the colors while separate didn't take too much of a scheme, when spun and plied, resulted in a very pumpkin color.  I was disappointed, if you get right down to it.  I tried a new plying method, chain plying or navajo plying.  It's a way to keep your colors together when you are spinning stripey yarn and still produce a 3 ply (like) yarn from singles. I certainly didn't master the technique by any me...

I have a few new projects in the queue that I will be making.  First a second Summer Blooms Shawl by Susanna IC for my mom with this yarn and these beads. And then I will be making Cameo by Wendy Bernard for myself out of Noro Retro.  I am so glad that I was able to pick up this yarn.  I haven't seen it anywhere and I don't know if it's discontinued or anything.  It's a tonal grey color with bits of brown and white in there in some of the places.  Really looking forward to it!

I just purchased my first noro yarn.  I have heard that it's awesome yarn to work with and the color changes are spectacular plus the colors are amazing.  So I weighed out my yarn and split it in half to make a pair of socks and I have to say that winding it on my nostepinne I could see all the color changes and they are indeed glorious!