glowing ginger (and a little contest!)

Falklands wool, hand dyed by Hello Yarn, in the Ginger colorway. This yarn is 92 grams, 255 yards, and 14 wpi. The colors are more beautiful than I can capture with a camera. If I had a choice, everything I knit would contain at least one of the shades in this yarn. The dye job is amazing. Here's another view:



I spun the yarn using the fractal method, which I guess was discussed in a recent issue of a spinning magazine, which I do not own. But I heard enough people discussing it on Ravelry that I got the basic idea. You split your roving in half lengthwise (or fail to split it evenly in half, as I did), and spin one bobbin straight from half of the roving. For the other bobbin, you split the second half of your roving into thinner strips, so the color repeats end up being shorter once it is spun up. When you ply the singles together, you are combining one very long repeat of the colors in the roving with a series of shorter repeats of the same sequence, resulting in a somewhat subdued entropy of color combinations. I'm not sure that I'll really feel the full effect of the technique until the yarn is knit up, but what I think it means for me now is that there are places where the colors of the plies contrast, and places where they match, and that I find that very pretty.

You can see a couple of close-up photos here and here. I think it's hard to see in my photos, but in the yarn I can see exactly where Adrian got the name Ginger for the colorway. Especially since I cooked with ginger root this weekend. (mmm... samosas!) There are parts of the yarn that are a glowing light coppery/golden brown color, almost exactly the same shade as the outside of ginger root. I think those were my favorite parts.

This was my first time working with Falklands wool, and I really enjoyed it. It was a bit tough to draft, after having just worked with merino, but extremely easy to spin. It has a solid softness to it. It reminds me a bit of Cascade Eco Wool. I'm not sure I'd say that the final yarn feels like Eco Wool, but just that both Eco Wool and my Falklands roving have that same sort of softness that doesn't feel delicate or too fine, but which has a kind of backbone to it, if that makes sense.

Thanks to my uneven splitting of the roving, I have 25 grams leftover. (Yes, I realize that I should have used the thicker piece for the first ply, just stripping off a thin section to use for the second ply, evening out the weights. I was not thinking at all...) I've balled that up, and will keep it for plying up in case I need a bit extra yarn for whatever project I choose. I'm thinking a hat of some sort, because this yarn deserves to get shown off, and a head is a good place to show things off!


As for the contest... the sock pattern is almost done! What was holding me back was lack of a name. I couldn't do the final formatting until I had a title page (because I'm stubborn), and I couldn't have a title page until I had a name (because I'm stubborn). I finally thought of the perfect name for the socks. Here's a little reminder of what the socks look like:



Their name is Francie. This is one of those things that may be completely obvious, or so obscure that nobody will get it. I honestly don't know which.

I have decided to set Friday, February 29 as the publishing date for this pattern. Leap day for a sock pattern = perfection! (Plus, setting a solid goal for myself, in public, will get me to finish that formatting.) The first person to guess why these socks are named Francie will receive a free copy of the pattern. (Or a free copy of one of my hat patterns, if you aren't into socks.) Please don't use Google to try to find the answer -- you either know it somewhere in the deep recesses of your mind, or you don't. You can guess by leaving a comment or emailing me at the address in the sidebar.

If nobody guesses before the pattern is published, I suppose I'll choose my favorite wrong answer. Or maybe choose a random number. I have no idea. I'm betting someone will get it, though!

Good luck, and see you on Friday.