A Bit of Warmth for the Winter

At the last Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival I had immense amounts of fun just wandering around the booths and indulging in beautiful creations sold by talented people, but I also went there with a goal.  To find undyed fiber from a long time friend of mine, and enough of it that I could make my partner a sweater and not have to worry about running out.  

This is three pounds of fiber for that very purpose.  

The spinning and plying took me a good while, especially considering that I've been changing things up and spinning thinner than I did a year ago.  And no, I'm not putting the fiber on a diet, I just like working with a smaller gauge because I like to punish myself and make all of my projects take longer.  I like a challenge.

At the end of it all I ended up with 2,857 yards, which is perfect.  If I run out of yarn for his sweater with that much, I wasn't supposed to have enough yarn in the first place.  I'm so destructively hopeful about this yardage that I'm even hoping I will have enough leftover to either make myself a sweater too, or a matching pair of socks for the original sweater.  We'll see.  

I used the colour Scarlet from Jacquard's acid dyes, and promptly fell in love.  

Not just for the usual reasons either.  This time there was an added perk, but first I need to explain that I am a red snob.  Red is often done dishearteningly bad.  The worst culprits are lipsticks- they almost always have pink undertones or are simply puny and incapable of making anyone feel any emotion other than "eh".  Reds should make you feel something.  Red is powerful and fierce, in the best of ways, and to let it be a dull sizzle of evocation is criminal.  

If you're a snob like me, Scarlet won't let you down.  The photo below does it a disservice by making it look a shade or two on the pink side, but it's not pink at all.  It's red the way red should be.  Bold and strong.  

It will make for a perfect sweater (or hopefully two).  

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.