How do you get to the MET?

Practice, practice!

I'm a little late with getting this one up, but here's my plied up first try on the wheel:

 

Eager to get more yarn under my belt, I threw on my smaller whorl and got a little more consistent. I split the BFL I'd gotten in half and made myself some faux rolags (fauxlags?) to spin up. I was pretty pleased with the single that resulted, although I completely forgot to take a picture of it in the tizzy of having company over last night and showing off my wheel's capabilities. I went straight from finishing up my single to plying it with some black cobweb-weight merino from Colourmart that I happened to have in my stash. (I figured that a nice dark solid color would compliment the color transitions without confusing the eye the way I thought plying two singles from the dyed BFL would. That, and I'm not ready to Navajo ply. Need a little more experience with singles and regular plying first, I think!)

However! I did finish plying it up today and remembered to take photos, both on the bobbin and in the skein, so now I will dump them upon you!

 

 

I'm finding that, at least for right now, it's a lot easier to spend the time ripping off sections of fiber and wrapping them up into little cocoons to spin from. It's still got a learning curve, but I think that drafting from a rolag comes a lot more naturally to my hands than inchworming or even spinning from the fold, which I was really the only way I could handle drop spindling. 

There's something insanely relaxing about the long draw...just slowly stretching the fiber out and letting the twist do all the work in regulating the width of the strand. I can't by any means do it perfect with every draw yet, but when it works (and I remember that a Death Grip on the fiber is a Bad Thing), it makes a beautiful, even strand with so little effort that it makes my heart sing.

Seeing as it only took me a few days to spin up entirely half of my painted fiber stash, I made a little order on Etsy. I laid claim to two braids of Unwind Yarn Company's handpainted BFL, in Memphis Blues and Wide World, as well as a custom-dyed 4oz of Corriedale from Fangrrl Fiber Arts that was made specifically to fulfill my request. 

The lovely green of the Wide World is (my hands willing) going to become a dk-weight single to be knit up into a simple pair of fingerless mitts for a Christmas Present. The other two, well...We'll see what they want to be! ^_~