Super Spinning! +

I finally plied the sw merino, and I love it :) fibre is from Felt Fusion in the sunset blvd colourway.
It looked beautiful in my fingers but started looking a little garish on the bobbin...

I need not have worried as it settled down as I wrapped it on the niddy noddy, I also realised it's fairly (though not fully) consistent, there are still over/under spun bits and thick and thin bits but I love it over all and am just super happy with it. To me if you want fully consistent hand spun, you don't realise that the fun of hand spun is that there are bits, small like this one, or large like some of my previous spins, that are thicker/thinner or over/under spun, if you want perfect yarn you might as well buy from a mill. I will admit that I'd like to increase my yardage, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop aiming for an obviously hand spun appearance and feel :)
I have to say sitting plying for that long, that late then wrapping the niddy noddy right after was a mistake lol I finished it at 10pm last night and I was wiped out, I put some pain cream on coz I'd pushed myself too far wanting to finish it and went to bed straight away.

But look at that final skein, it was worth it, I'm in spinner heaven and I got what I wanted...lots of barber polling :) I spun it in a way that I hoped it would get a lot of it and I sure did, just a few small patches were the colours line up together :)
How did I spin it...? In case any of you are new spinners and want to know what I did I'll try to explain it here. I unwrapped the braid and learned that the colour repeat happened twice down the length, I split the braid where the second repeat started so I had two the same each weighing about 50g. I split the first half (one whole colour repeat) into 4 nests and spun fairly thin singles from yellow to grey. The second half (another whole repeat) I split into 8 smaller nests and spun from grey to yellow. This meant that the colour sections for the second half should be shorter than the first half and as I spun in the opposite colour order I should get plenty of barber polling...and I did :)
The final skein is 107g of gorgeous :) I got approx 220m of a bright and beautiful 2ply :)

You may think me mad, and you'd not be entirely wrong lol but this was fun. I should have paced myself, I was aching after the plying so I should have waited till this morning to wrap the niddy noddy and calculate my yardage, but I knew that wouldn't happen coz my son would be awake, so I knew I'd not get it finished till after he went to bed tonight and I really wanted to see how my planning had turned out lol

Now to pick out the next stunning fluff form my stash to go on the wheel :) I should add spinning will continue to go a little slower while my son is home, I might get a bit more done when he goes to school :) exciting but nervous for him to be starting reception, he went to nursery three days (at the same place) last year but still a little anxious about him going full time. I'm relieved he'll be in the same class with a few staff and of course children changes but I can't help but worry. Fingers crossed for a good start, if he remembers the staff and everything it should go fairly smoothly, but he does get very attached to me when he has a lot of time off and reattached himself to me. Should be fun buying new uniforms and seeing if he realises what it means :) Yesterday was the first time I took him out walking since we got back form our holidays, he's been so ill and his energy is coming back but not fully, he takes a while to bounce back, we've only had lifts to mums for the past week and we walked to collect my parcel. He kept wanting me to pick him up, but I managed to get him home without resorting to a taxi, which I have to admit I was surprised at :) Hope you're all doing well. If you have any questions about how I spun this, if I didn't explain it well enough, please feel free to ask, I usually just spin as is, this was my first planned out spin.
Happy Crafting!