I so love to spin!

I've had a bit of a stressful week... I'm totally bogged down with accounting and tracking down an error that is more than a year old that has things out of balance. And being a libra, it drives me crazy to have my life out of balance! Add to that the fact that I have wayyy too many wip's going on at a time, I was needing to finish something BADLY!

So, imagine my glee when I got some more fiber in the mail this past week. It was some of Spunky Eclectics Pomegranite dyed on a brown shetland. And that's all I could think of doing in the little bit of time I had on Friday evening. I was too tired to deal with numbers, too bored to work on my knit jacket, too anxious to work the chart of my Ishmel... but never too tired, bored, anxious, lazy, crazy to spin. It calms me... it makes everything right with the world... it is my yoga!

I spent maybe 4 hours spinning and plying this into the lovely 2-ply, 352 yds of sportweight yarn. It wasn't a dream spin. I found I had to stop and start often to remove felted wads, lots of guard hairs and some vm. It probably took me 1/3 longer than it would have without all that gunk in there. But the colors are lovely and it was fun to watch as the spots of color became more. Here is the final product, which will probably become a manly man's scarf.

Also, I spent this past week testing colors and finalizing the February Colorway of the Month. Here it is, "First Sunburst". The initial inspiration came from the theme "Grace" and lots of input from you all. I really love the way the yellow/gold/reds pop out of the darker base, like when the sun is just bursting through the darkness on the horizon on a cloudy morning.

I kept admiring it today and came home to test drive some of this to show you all how it makes up... (not that I was wanting any of it for myself, you understand!).
Here are two samples... the bottom one was spun long draw and then 2 plied from a center-pull ball, to a very light, airy worsted yarn. I knit up the sample on size 9 needles. The top one was spun as a fine lace-weight using a forward worsted draw, and then navaho plied to keep the colors clear. That was knit on size 5 needles for a light shawl/scarf or cardi. Both are soft and nicely drapey.

See how dramatic the sunrise sections are against the darker contrast? I love that!

Tomorrow, I'm back at finishing the projects, I hope, as my goal is to get my accounting back to good and have my stress level return to my normal zen level!