Berries

My new yarn is not nearly as dark as berries but it stills reminds me of blackberries and blueberries and the colours they stain your hands. Or Mal's face. I'm really into berries right now~ specifically blueberries (I'm sneaking them into smoothies), and I was really, really, really into this yarn.
I finished spinning the singles on Wednesday night with my new drop spindle. That drop spindle, let me tell you, was totally worth the sale line-up just to get in TBF, and absolutely worth the line-up to get to the till, even if it was the only thing I bought. One of the yarnies had to go to the back to get the drop spindles because they weren't out since they weren't on sale. My precious drop spindle was the only thing I bought! It's funny because I can't figure out if I'm proud that I didn't buy anything else or if the fact that I went into a store full of sales and came out with something that wasn't on sale kinda defeats the pride...

anyhoo, love the spindle. We spent a lot of time together and started plying on Thursday, finished this morning. Plying is when you take the singles and spin those together to get a sturdier yarn and to help disperse the energy of the singles (if that is your objective~ I one day want to knit with the singles). The plying was difficult as I had spun the yarn pretty poorly at some parts, really well at other parts, and I also spun them in different directions which made plying tricky. I also had spun these singles on two different drop spindles, a low whirl turkish spindle (r.i.p 2009-2009) and my new top whirl regular spindle. This is interesting yarn.

I'm totally enamored with it.

Now, the only thing, is I have a totally insane skein. I think I plyed it with SUPER twist or I plyed it the opposite way it was suppose to go. I don't know. All I know is plying it was fine, winding it onto the niddy noddy was fine, but the moment I took it off the niddy noddy this happened...
It freaked the frak out! Like... wtf?!?!?! So anyhoo, I put them all in lukewarm water and hoped that would calm it down. All the yarn looked like goopy goopy pretty brains. Mmmm... brains.


BRAINS!!!!

Alas it was no good for my insane skein. It came out just as insane and it tangled a little in the water so I very slowly and delicatically wound it into a ball (I hate touching wet wool, I always think it was snap)...
and with an elaborate system that involved packaging tape loooped it tightly around a chair. I'll unwind it in a few days and see if it helped. I'm kinda doubtful. This yarn is intense. If it is still insane I'll figure something out to do with it. It is totally fun but I need as much yardage as I can get out this stuff!
Here is the rest hanging out. As you can see for the first two skeins I forgot I owned a niddy noddy and wound them around my elbow. Things got easier after that.
The roving by the way is from Hummingbird Fibre Arts and I got it at Gibsons. It's blue face leiceter blended with 20% tussah silk.

And on to the new stuff!