Rockpool Candy - Dark Forest - Handspun

Last December my mother sent me an early Christmas treat in the post - a Dark Forest Rockpool Candy batt.

Naturally enough - being me and being terrified of ruining it - I squirrelled it away in my budding fibre stash with the intention that I would pull it back out when my spinning skills were good enough to tackle it.

Following a brief discussion on Ravelry with the Doyenne of UK Fibre Activists and Sculptresses herself, on how to dampen the libido of domestic mice and keep them from 'getting jiggy' with mice from the wrong side of the floorboards, I confessed that I had one of her batts tucked away.

When I let slip mentioned that I was keeping it until my skills were a bit better, I got just the encouragement that I needed to pluck it back out of my stash and have a go - so I did!

Here is my bobbin showing 50g of fibre spun as a single:

As the batt was made up of a mix of different fibre types with silk fabric 'sprinkles', it made it really interesting to work with - just in terms of how it felt and behaved while being spun. I tried to spin the yarn fairly thinly and as evenly as I could, going with the flow as slubs and fabric sprinkles popped up - I have no idea whether this was the right approach or not!

I am really pleased with the result and here is the final skein, washed and dried to set its twist:

I think that this colour is truer to the yarn than the colour on the bobbins above. It is a two ply yarn with nice, subtle variations in colour and texture. I think, but I am not sure, that the skein is approximately 65m of something akin to aran or a light chunky weight? As you can tell, I am not quite there on the whole precise science yardage and weight part of spinning quite yet!

PS, I finished the Autumn in Spring batch of handspun too and I think that I have about 340m (371 yards) of yarn across 3 skeins. Two of the three skeins seem quite close in weight, I think that they are about 38-39m per oz but the third is about 48m per oz. So I think that I need to split them across two different projects!