BFL - a Fiber to Love

I finished something last night - kind of. This is 2 full bobbins of Blue Faced Leicester that I dyed and spun. I love everything about it. I'm incredibly happy with the way the color turned out. What you see here is pretty true. There is a little bit of a light turquoise but mostly it's shades of violet leaning towards magenta. I tend to dye in a very loosey-goosey way. In this case, I put the water, fiber and vinegar in a pot on the stove and added a little violet Cushings dye powder. That was it! What happened is that the dye broke a bit but I love the effect. Sadly, this wacky method of dyeing means that the chances of replicating it are slim to nil.

Spinning this stuff was a pretty sweet experience too. How sweet? Well, usually I tell you that the even-ness seen on my bobbins hides a mess underneath. Not this time. It's not perfect but this is mostly evenly spun. There are a few thickers spots, which mostly occur where I move from one bunch of fiber to the next, and there are thinner spots which are best described as thread. Most of it is smooth and even.

I pondered what to do with it quite a lot and, at first, I thought that I'd knit it as is. It's pretty tightly spun and I think it would probably work well and since it's pretty thin, there's probably enough yardage to do something fun like a shawl. But then I remembered that I really don't care to knit with lace weight yarn and that's what this feels like.

I'm actually pretty sure that this is lace weight because, for the first time, I did a quick wrap round a ruler and I came up with about 28 wpi. Even if I'm off by a bit this is certainly in the lace relm and not going to work for me as is.

Thankfully, while taking a tour of some "new to me" blogs the other day, inspiration struck. I saw a post where someone had taken 2 different batches of the same fiber in different colors and described how they plied it - first with one color against itself, then combining the 2 colors, then plying the remainder of the second color against itself. The results were so beautiful. Sadly I have no idea where I saw the post but I'm sure it's not a unique idea.

I told hubbo about my plan the other night and he pointed out the obvious flaw - I don't have any more BFL to spin. Duh! Right now there are just 16 days till Maryland Sheep and Wool. I'll just add a little undyed BFL to my (long) shopping list.

Speaking of MDS&W - are you going? I haven't seen anything about a planned meet up yet. I'm sure someone must be putting something together.