January fibre club: At the Ballet

As a Christmas present to myself, I joined Sweet Georgia Yarns fibre club.  I've joined it before and thoroughly enjoyed the surprise and challenge each month.  Last week we got our January fibre. It's called At the Ballet. This is how Felicia Lo describes it:

At the Ballet is blush, cream and pinks, but not the younger girly kind.  It's more wisened and more graceful. 

It's 50% fine merino blended with 50% cultivated silk.  You can see the sheen from the silk in this photo that was taken with the flash on.

The colourway is cream, white and light pinks moving into deeper pink hues. A quicky sample on the drop spindle helped me decide how to spin it.  I wasn't all that interested in barber poling -- that's when one ply is the lighter section and the other ply is the darker one -- see photo below. With long stretches of each extreme, the light and the dark pinks, there would be a good chance that it would happen.

It's a lovely fibre and spins up fine with little effort -- just a heck of a lot of twist. So my colleague and I (who is also a member of the fibre club) decided to separate -- as well as we could, the light and dark sections. What you see below are the nests of light stuff and nests of the darker stuff.  The plan is to spin all the light stuff lace weight and double-ply it. Spin all the darker stuff lace weight and double-ply that.  Then knit a lace shawl with the darker yarn and use the lighter yarn for the edging.

You can see the subtle gradations of white to pinks in the singles on the spindle above. When it is double-plied the yarn will have some depth, but not the dramatic barber poling you can see in the bottom mini-skein in the photo below.

So that's our plan. This won't get in the way of finishing up the 100-mile skirt because this is being spun at work over lunch hour. At least for now.