Knitting and Spinning and Plying - Oh My!

I feel like I have fibre ADD. This week I finished 1 project, started 3 projects, worked on another project and learned how to chain ply (formerly called Navajo plying). I'm OBSESSED!

Today at our spinning class at Gemini Fibres, we spun up this lovely hand-painted Blue-Faced Leicester roving. It had fuschia and  light pink, some gold and little bits of olive green. It was soft and fluffy and felt great to spin.

I loved how the single looked on my bobbin. The pink and gold make a nice orange.

I did a terrible job of chain plying but it was because I don't have a tensioned lazy Kate. I also need to do a better job of spinning the singles. 

Here's the little skein I made. The 25 cent piece (breast cancer quarter from 2006) shows how indeed small this lovely soft skein is. I still have to ply the spindle above so I hope to get better at it. Basically chain plying is a way to create 3 ply yarn from one spool.

This is as far as I got on my i-cord gloves last night. I'm using 6ply sock yarn - sport weight. It makes knitting the fingers WAY easier.

Last February, I knit a tam with this yarn using a Regia pattern. It's the one on the cover of this book. I did finish the hat - I guess I just forgot to take photos of the finished item.

I've spent a lot of time trying to decide what pattern to use with the qiviut ('qiviuk' in the USA) yarn that I bought at Rhinebeck. I finally decided on Kernel from Knitty.

It has a nice border (I did 1 less repeat) and I'm doing one less repeat on the main pattern. I bought two balls of this yarn for a total of 400m (436 yd). I'll see how long I make it with one ball and if it's too short, I'll use the second ball. I also have two balls of 100% cashmere yarn that I also purchased at Rhinebeck from the nice people at Windy Valley Muskox from Alaska. I'm using 3.5mm needles. I could probably have gone up to 3.75mm or even 4mm to make it really open and lacy but I'm going to leave it as is and just give it a good blocking when I'm done. I have someone in mind to give it to but they've not been terribly knit-worthy so the jury is still out on that one.