Yesterday after I’d returned a project to a client, I sat down to spin. I left the cotton in my spinning basket to consider the error of its ways and pulled out a 50 gram bump of Fleece Artist fibre BFL instead. Despite having five braids of Fleece Artist roving, I have never actually spun any, so this was an experiment as well as a soothing of the injured spinning soul.

Just ignore the uneven bobbin; that’s what happens when you spin and try to watch Castle at the same time. You forget to move hooks regularly, even when your usual practice is to move a hook every time you pick up a new piece of fibre. (Speaking of which — Castle, not spinning — I want a shirt that says, “I’m just saying whoever killed her also murdered the English language.”)

It’s lovely to spin, nice and soft, but then, it’s BFL and I would expect nothing less. And the colours are just lovely; the golden ochre sets off the plum and the lavender beautifully. HRH kept looking over and saying, “I really like those colours.” Fleece Artist doesn’t identify colourways on their skeins and fibre because they’re aren’t perfectly repeatable; there’s no dyelot or colour code or anything on the tag, so I’m not certain of the name for this. It could be Red Fox, or it could be Sugar Plum. (I think the braids I bought in Mahone Bay are Mahogany and Ireland or Hemlock, but who knows? The colours are just pretty.)

This is only half the bump; I’ll spin up the other ounce today, and then chain-ply them to preserve the colour changes. I’m alternating which end I spin of the stripped roving, because the brown is comparatively short as compared to the purple ombre, so I’m putting brown ends together to make a longer brown stretch in the single.

(For future reference: I split the roving into two equal one-ounce halves, then split each half lengthwise into about eight or ten strips. Each strip was predrafted, and spun on the middle ratio with a semi-woollen longish draw, brake band completely off.)

ETA: And now having spun up half of the second half I’m seeing a problem. On the next braid of Fleece Artist I’m going to split the whole thing down the middle lengthwise and not break it into halves, because the first ounce shown above is now covered by the second ounce, which is a different set of colours (the burgundy/deep violet), and when I ply it the first half of the skein will be the burgundy/plum, and the second half the gold/lavender. The pooling will be kind of yucky in a knitted object. Not well planned on my part. Live and learn.