From fiber to FO

This started with a roving I bought in this shop almost two years ago, not long after I started spinning. I always loved it, but always though I need to increase my spinning skills... From time to time I took it out from my fiber stash, kept thinking about the possibilities, then put it back again. I knew I wanted to keep the colors and the color graduation toogether, but navajo plying on the spindle a bit tedious.

Until very recently, when with the arrival of Katica (my wheel), everything I need, the speed, the possibility of putting more than an ounce on the bobbing, navajo ply, all was within my reach. Also in the time, I figured out just what I wanted to knit with it.

The original fiber is a mix of coopworth wool and llama. To be honest, its not the softest stuff I ever handled (in that category nothing can beat my yak/silk mix), but it is ver sturdy. Which I needed, because I wanted to spin this THIN. As thin as I can, because the fiber was not all that much (about 80 gramms), and if I wanted a three ply out of it, that would be enough I needed it thin.

Then at the last moment realizing that the color changes are almost perfectly symmetric, and to make sure I had enough I decided doing two ply.Which, keeping the color sentence requred to reroll one of the bobbins and tweak the lengths a bit. But when I rolled it into a ball, I could see I got what I wanted.

From the 80 gramms I ended up with 530 meters of two plied yarn.

For the pattern... originally I was not as enchanted with the Citrone as most seemed to be. But when I was looking for something that would show off the yarn and the colors it turned out to be the perfect one.

Wanting to use up every bit of yarn, I did one extra repeats, but had to cast off with fewer ruffle rows.

Before blocking it did looked a bit like catbarf (specially of a cat who got drunk on kool aid).

But as we all know, a throughout blocking can do wonders.

The final shawl is lovely even if I say so myself...As I said, because of the fibers, it is not as soft, but I would rather call it crispy (instead of scratchy). And if my shetland shawl is anything to go by, it will soften up with use/time.