While I wait for today’s new project to land in my inbox (I have work lined up for the next three weeks, it is very comforting), I can show you the lovely, squooshy BFL yarn I just finished.

Last spring I dyed some fibre for a swap. I got some humbug Blue-Faced Leicester from Espaces Interstertiel, our local spinning and weaving studio, to use as a base. Humbug BFL is a blend of brown and natural BFL fibre, and it looks like the stripes on a humbug candy. I dyed the first half in greens, and wondered if it was too dark, if the natural variegation of the fibre was lost. So I dyed the second half with a lighter moss green and some russet dabs:

And then I ended up sending my swap partner the all-green braid anyway, because I was worried that the green and red together in this braid would end up a muddy brown. (Spinning colour is fascinating. You’re never entirely sure what will happen: will the colour intensify? soften? blend to make something cool? blend to make something not so cool?). That meant this one, which I called ‘Apple Orchard,’ went into my own stash. I pulled it out a couple of weeks ago, split it into three, spun it up kind of semi-woollen (supported longdraw from the end of a worsted prep), then plied it into a lovely three-ply.

There was a bit of brown created where the red and green spun together, but the biggest change was the russet spun into a sort of pinkish shade that looked worse on the bobbin than it did in the finished yarn. Before a wash, the yarn was 16 wraps per inch and measured about 276 yards. After a wash, it poofed up to 12 wpi and shrank to about 246 yards. Yikes! I was hoping for enough yardage to knit socks (even though wool without nylon or bamboo in it will wear through quickly, so it isn’t the best choice), but not this time. It will probably end up as a shawlette, or fingerless gloves at some point.

It is very squishy. Very, very squishy. That’s where all the yardage went — thirty yards turned into poof and squoosh. I love handspun BFL.