Spring is coming...

No, really, I'm certain spring is on its way. We had two days in the 60s, and even though it's back down into the 20s here, it just looks like early spring. See?

From my back window

The Vine Maple is done! Here it is as singles on my lazy kate:

And then as a plied and set yarn, hanging to dry:

Somehow I managed to not take any pictures of the intervening process! (Possibly this is because I was watching Ghost Hunters to pass the time plying and setting, and totally forgot that I had wanted pics...). Essentially, once the yarn is plied I wind it off the bobbin into skeins on a niddy-noddy, then use some waste yarn (white crochet cotton in this case) to tie it loosely. The skeins go into a warm bath with a little dish detergent, sit for 20 minutes or so, then I pull them out and change the water. In this case the water was bright orange with excess dye so I did another bath with soap. After 20 minutes the water was again orange, but less so. The next bath used a good solid glug of vinegar instead of soap, and the water was very lightly tinted orange after about half an hour. Finally, I let the the yarn sit in a bath with a few drops of Eucalan for about half an hour - I would have gone longer if I could have spared the sink that long - and there was no noticeable tint to the water. After each bath, I squeezed out the excess water and gave the skein a few snaps to help keep the strands in order. When it was all done, I hung them to dry from some over-the-door coat hooks in my hallway, with a towel underneath for the inevitable dripping.

All told, there's almost exactly 500yds here: my conservative counts on the skeins are 272yds and 228yds, respectively. It's just about exactly the right wpi, and it's soft and sturdy. I'm very pleased with how it turned out!

I've already moved on to my next spinning project: yak down! I managed to score 8oz of light brown yak down from Paradise Fibers' bargain bin for $24 back in September (if that seems like a lot, consider that purchasing 1oz of yak down from Bijou Basin will set you back $24 all by its lonesome, so this is like getting 7oz free, or saving $168). I'm spinning it up at what will, I hope, be a 2-ply fingering weight, for some as-yet-undecided decadent knitting project in the future. With 8oz I could probably even make a sweater if so inclined, so I'm keeping my options open. Whatever it is, it will be lacy, because yak down is warm and soft.

I couldn't capture the color to save my life - it's actually brown, sort of cafe-au-lait color.

Yak down is a little intense to spin. I already favor the short-draw draft, which is good, because this flat out requires it. Rule-of-thumb for drafting is that you don't let the drafting triangle get longer than half the fiber length. Well, here's a pic of a bit of this yak fluff - there's really not much there to work with!

Stretched out, though, that fluff's well over an inch long - it's really quite elastic.

Drafting triangle? What drafting triangle??

Fresh out of the bag, a formless mass of yakky goodness.

It comes as a sort of soft, airy mass - no direction or anything, just handfuls of softness. It's a little frustrating to spin at times, when it suddenly stops drafting smoothly, or it breaks in the spun yarn (it's done that several times to me), or you're trying to figure out how to hold this tribble without felting it... and the cat wants to attack it or sleep on it, I can't tell which.

"Actually, I haven't decided myself..."

But all in all, I'm actually having a good time. Did I mention it's soft??