Further MDSW Haul

I went into this year’s trip to Sheep and Wool with very little planning. I had some things I knew I wanted — spinning fibers, to include some silk — and beyond that I figured I would let serendipity reign.

I’ve already  showed you one set of silk caps that I got from Robin Russo, who also showed me how to draft them out and chatted with me about how they’re spun; the yellow “practice” cap she gifted me I already spun into a cobweb-weight yarn, which I washed and balled up and cast on yesterday for a lacy scarf. If it works, I’ll show it to you.

But I also got silk caps from The Good Shepherd, purely because the colors were so stunning I was unable to walk away:

I haven’t decided yet how I want to spin these — I got three caps of this dyelot, and they’re all fairly fat caps. The yellow cap I spun for practice was much lighter, and that yielded a little over 200 yards of cobweb weight, so I may try plying this with something for a laceweight or dk yarn, and make some kind of adornment from that. I know with those colors that I want it to be something that is worn purely because it’s pretty — not because it has any specific purpose.

I also picked up a serious haul from Cloverleaf Farms. The autumnal/harvest colored merino/silk blend I got from them last year has remained one of my most favorite handspun yarns to date, so I got one braid of the merino/silk, and two of the straight merino:

That’s the blend on the top, and the two wool braids on the lower part of the photo. These, combined with the handspun I have from last year’s Cloverleaf Farm haul, I think will become the hexagon portion of Norah Gaughan’s Hex Coat from Knitting Nature:

Photo from Norah’s Flickr via Ravelry, and looks to have been scanned in from the book. The suggested yarn is Reynolds Lite Lopi, and I have an entire fleece from a Navajo Churro lamb in a warm brown that I think will become the body of this sweater, and thus I hope this garment will become my first item ever made entirely from my own  handspun yarn.

I have more to show you, so come see me again soon.