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.

I'm going to jump right in.

First off, this green and brown fiber started out being something that I planned to spin up and let hide in the bottom of a tote of crafty business since something about this mint chocolate chip ice cream concoction was hideous to me.  This picture even makes it look like it's a little nicer than it was, but oh how it made me cringe.  

It had spent YEARS in my fiber collection, gathering dust and loneliness because I couldn't stomach the thought of spending time and effort on spinning it up, even if that meant it would become a lesser grossness.  

Why did I make this part of what I packed all the way up to Oregon with me?  I think some strange part of my brain that I have yet to understand knew that there was something greater lurking beneath the surface of this thing.  

The part of my brain that thought it was worth bringing home was right.  It turned into one of the most beautiful greens I've ever seen in my life, and I proceeded to dash a bit of pepper on my words as I ate them, promptly followed up with a slice of bittersweet humble pie for dessert.

This next fiber, however, had my heart from the beginning.  It's my favourite colour of grey and the caliber of softness made it so that it was all that I could do to keep myself from curling up and sleeping on it (not that it's actually big enough for that, but I can dream).

The fact that this one spun up beautifully didn't surprise me in the slightest.  

That's when my brain started scheming.  This all started out as me spinning up various bundles of fiber that had been sitting and gathering dust, but when I laid the finished skeins next to some other white yarn I had made, I realised they were destined to become one glorious scarf, where they could live happily together.

So I greedily took some of the fiber I had initially been planning on dyeing, spun it up, and stacked it with the other two so they could become well acquainted while I decided what to do with them.

I decided on a nice and simple seed stitch.  I had never done seed stitch before, oddly enough, and thought this would be an excellent time to start.  The hand-spun yarn became quite bubbly looking with the pattern, and still managed to feel soft and cozy.  

This was one of many travel projects I had while visiting my family for the holidays.  

It grew longer and longer as I chipped away at it while watching movies, waiting in line while running errands, and whenever I got a spare second, like I do.

At this point though, I had used up the last of my white yarn for the stripes, and was hopelessly stranded without those poor little balls of yarn that lay in wait at home.  I had no way to continue without the white so I folded up all the progress I had made, stuck it in the bottom of my backpack, and promised this poor project that one day it would be reunited with the other balls of yarn and I would finish what I started.

Lucky for us (mostly me), I eventually made it all the way back home, and finished what I started.  The scarf measures a perfect 100 inches (or 8 ft and 4 inches), which is exactly right for being able to wrap the scarf around twice while still having enough length to let it drape down.  

All of the white stripes decided to hide in this next picture, but I wanted to show off the scarf in a place where it was well loved and appreciated, as I just so happened to finish it right in time for a bit of snow to grace the land around me.  

Photo credit to my talented partner.

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.