Mega Spin Along

I mentioned the Mega Spin Along (MegaSAL) back in April and then again a week ago and just realized that I never explained what it was. First pictures of the pretty fibers. Minus the one that has already been spun.

Clockwise from top left: Magrat of SWM, Maiden's Wish of SWM, Vetinari on SASF,
Octarine on Wensleydale, Nobby on  Finn

The MagaSAL was the brainchild of David (Southern Cross Fibres) based around Terry Pratchett's Disc World series. I remember hearing about this idea a while back in February and that is when I joined along. He got six dyers together who each created two colors based on different series. Each color was then dyed up on a variety of fibers and blends.

I managed to catch two of the updates (Southern Cross Fibres and Spunky Eclectic), one which involved me getting up at a crazy time to get some fiber. Yes, I do question my sanity at times. From Spunky I got Rincewind on BFL and Octarine on Wensleydale, which is my all time favorite long wool. Ventari on South African Superfine and Nobby on Finn are from David.

From the other four dyers there were amazing colors, but I either missed the updates due to work or the colors were just not for me. I was sad that I missed out on the nest Fiber Studio update as I was in love with both of the colors. Not wanting to seem like I was asking for a lot, I put out and 'In Search Of' post for Maiden's wish and one woman was amazing enough to sell me one of each of the Nest colors, both on super wash merino.

Somehow over the years I kept starting the Disc World books, but never got around to finishing any of the ones that I started. Now after all the talk in the forums about the books, I know what my next travel reads are going to be.

Right now I have a small sample spin on my wheel, but I think that the next fiber on the wheel will be  Magrat. Still trying to decide between chain plying to keep the colors together or spinning it as a three ply and not worrying too much about keeping the colors together. Guess we will all have to wait and see!

Busy Part 2

So the rest of the projects consisted of one knitted dragon and three more spinning projects.

This was my first attempt to ever knit any sort of stuffed creature. I'll be honest, there are probably easier projects to start with, but where would be the fun in that? This poor guy still doesn't have a name, but he is knitted in a yarn that had silver sparkles in it. 

And he has wings! And spikes along his back that stand up! The pattern was super easy to understand even for me and I think I want to knit him a friend now.

From left to right in the photo above: Prim from Two if By Hand on a merino/cashmere/nylon (MCN) blend, Outburst on a BFL/silk blend and Rustling Scales on Rambouillet. Both the MCN and the Rambouillet were firsts for me as I had never spun them before. 

After spinning and washing the yarns, they both fluffed up, but the MCN was crazy in what I like to call the fluff factor. I spun the singles for this between 54 and 80 wraps per inch which according to most spinning math would lead to a chain plied yarn between 30-40+ wraps per inch. The fluff factor on the MCN gave me plied yarn having the wpi around 20. No joke, it fluffed up a ton. And then it fluffed up even more after washing to 18ish wpi. Which is what I wanted, but it made me extremely glad that I had done a small sample spin before jumping into the project. Even with all the crazy fluff going on I still ended up with 568 yards. 

Prim

Outburst

Between the five spins I ended up with 2,525 yards of yarn after having spun 5,187 yards of singles. It was a total of 21.5 ounces as well.