Bright Sunset

A couple of weeks ago, one of my sweet friends stopped by for an afternoon visit. She also brought me a bit of a belated birthday gift:

Gloriously bright and wonderful, no?

I love rolags, and these were fun, so I began spinning them immediately.

Most of the batts, braids, and groups of rolags I see are sold in 4-ounce increments. Of course, I can buy two-at-a-time for 8-ounces and often do, but some of these hand dyed fibers are in limited quantities with only one available.

In referring to this chart, fingering weight yarn is between 1,800 and 2,400 yards per pound (or 453.5 grams).

Thus, 4-ounces (113.375) grams should yield between 450 and 600 yards.

Experience dictates 450 to 600 yards should be plenty for a pair of socks or a shawl.

However, I am still new to this spinning thing and do not have a great deal of confidence in my ability to consistently produce fingering weight yarn (or yarn of any size, for that matter).

Plus, I am paranoid of not having enough yarn for a project, even though I have yet to have a specific project in mind when I begin spinning.

As this was a gift, there was no obtaining more of it, really. The dyer was Free Range Fiber Studio. I checked her site. There is no more.

So, I dove into what stash of fiber I have accumulated in the last eight weeks (since I began spinning), and came up with this (Blue Foot Market Merino Top in Sunset):

Honestly, I was not sure they would work well together.

At least, I was not certain until I began plying them last night.

OH!

However, I continued to hold any excitement, until I skeined it. Here it is pre-soak:

WOW!

Care to guess how many yards?

.

.

.

.

.

For 7.9 ounces (a little of the Sunset was left on one bobbin) or 224 grams, there was 1,137 yards!

Whoa.

Now my first attempt at fingering yielded 793 yards out of 6 ounces (170 grams) of yarn, which translates into 2,114.9 yards per pound.  

This was only my second attempt at fingering, and equates to 2,304 yards per pound, which means it is slightly finer that the first. 

As mentioned above, fingering weight yarn is between 1,800 and 2,400 yards per pound (or 453.5 grams).

Here it is soaked, dried, and shining brightly!

And, no, I have no idea what I will do with it. A part of me thinks it would be nice to present it to the original gifter for her birthday...