Color in Spinning

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I've been working on a baby blanket for my sister's baby since last autumn, and in May my sister Julia gave birth to a little girl. The blanket is domino-knitted from my Navajo-plied handspun yarn. The thing is that while this blanket is lovely, soft, squashy, and warm-it definitely is boyish. I was certain (as was my sister) that she was going to have her third boy with this pregnancy. So when this little girl surprised us all, Julia had to decide on a name (Lindsay Lorraine), and I decided I wanted to make something a little more girly for Lindsay (of course, I'm still going to give her the blanket once I finish it). So, I started thinking about spinning a pastel pink yarn. Looking through my stash, I had lots of white wool and lots of wildly dyed wools-but I wanted something in between. I poked around a bit more, then I decided to look through my collection of books for inspiration. I pulled down Color in Spinning and was flipping all the great photos for blending color on combs and hackles, and it occurred to me that I could simply blend the white with a bit of the wildly dyed pink wools I had for a pastel pink with a nice handspun quality.

So I pulled out my hackle (mini combs would work for this, too-I just couldn't find mine-has anyone seen them? I had them just the other day) and laid down a few layers of white wool, then added a layer of pink, and then another layer of white, then pulled it off the hackle into a nice little nest of combed top, and spun a sample on my wheel to see if I could get what I had in mind. I Andean-plied the small bit of singles, skeined it on a sample-size niddy noddy, then washed in warm water with a bit of wool wash and thwacked it, and let it dry. I knitted up a small swatch with a lacy pattern-I'm thinking a little cap for this winter would be just the thing Lindsay will need. The yarn is soft and squishy, with just enough pink.

Isn't it great to be a spinner-able to imagine the yarns you want and make them?

Okay-now all I have to do is re-create the yarn with enough yardage to make the cap. Oh, and finish the blanket before the weather turns cold.

--Amy