Eggplant Novelty and Strawberry Crush handspun

Here is the purple-green Eggplant novelty yarn.  (The color of the far one is truer to the actual shade of purple.)  It's almost 8 oz, and approximately 158 yards.

(As you can see in the front skein, some of my plying was less than perfect, but I love it anyway!)

There was also green that was carded into the purple (the roving was purchased at Paradise Fibers with both colors already streaked together), but it almost looks orange in every picture that I take of this stuff.  Kind of frustrating.  Ah well.


I spun green Angelica on it's own as laceweight singles, then plied them with the very very firmly spun bulky Eggplant singles.  A the end of every draw as I was plying, I ran the green sparkly stuff back up and down to make a sort of extra-wrap/knot. 

I decided it would be easiest to ply in this way if the singles were coming from either side of me, so I put together a tensioned DIY Lazy Kate (using this link). 


Super-cheap (everything can be bought at your favorite/evil big-box store) but effective, and it can be used for either bobbins or a cop slid straight off of a drop spindle.

Here is the green sparkle ready to ply:


And here is the purple singles:

(Spun extra firm so that it wouldn't just unspin with all of the extra twist needed for this kind of yarn.)

This is what my plying set-up looked like.


This yarn will probably be end up as a skinny, short version of a Crossover Scarf  (Ravelry link here) or something similar to show off the yarn structure.

My pink/red batts are spun, plied, wet finished and the new yarn dried in the sun this morning.


The red is, of course, from the batch of Romney/Falkland Cross locks that I dyed a few weeks ago, and the pink is some Punta that I bought from Paradise Fibers and then dyed with Strawberry Kool Aid (one package to about 1oz of combed top).  Carded in is a good handful of red mix sparkly Angelica for extra fun.


I haven't weighed the skeins, but it's about 138 yds of bulky two-ply.

The slubs and neps in the wool encouraged thick/thin spinning, so I went with the way of the wool and didn't fight it at all.

I was doubting myself with the combination of colors (especially since the vibrancy of the tomato red was a dye accident), but I'm really happy with it now that it's all done.  I look forward to knitting with this!

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