Rewarding Rewards

I've written a few times about my growing kickstarter addiction and I know I mentioned that I was supporting Sara of Smudge Yarn's project to fund the development of her Irish yarn business. For my reward I chose unspun fibres, the colour blend is Illuminate (inspired by colours in illuminated manuscripts) and I chose to have it blended with metallic fibres. It arrived in the post shortly before I went on holiday and I couldn't have been more delighted.

I don't know what I imagined illuminated manuscript colours might be but, as soon as I saw the blend, I understood completely. The mix is fantastic and the fabulous coppery fibres perfectly highlight the other colours. I don't think I've ever been so excited to start spinning something and I even managed to start before I went on holiday.

I tend to spin quite finely. My spinning teacher described me as one of nature's laceweight spinners but even my best attempts ave been fairly inconsistent up until now. But something about this blend suited me perfectly. I mean, absolutely perfectly. I think I only broke my thread three times during the whole lot, which is utterly unprecedented. There are a few burrs (texture!) but, for the most part, the yarn is smooth, consistent and exactly what I was aiming for.

Most of my spinning has been Navajo plied but, because I was hoping for the maximum length from this, I decided to just go for two ply. The result is somewhere between laceweight and 4ply weight but I'm hoping it should still be suitable for the project I had in mind. Unfortunately, the 270 metres on this skein probably isn't enough so I'm hoping that I might be able to buy another 100g of the same blend.

I'm not sure what I'm looking forward to more: knitting this skein or hopefully spinning another!