Try, Try Again

This time of year when the flowering trees are in bloom is so beautiful. Wouldn't it be nice if they could stay this way all the time.

Another type of bloom arrived this week. It's the initial offering of Tactile's fiber club. I know, after being dissatisfied nearly every month with the fiber club (which shall remain nameless) last year, I vowed never to join another one. But, I seriously loved all the colors at Tactile's booth at Madrona so figured chances were good I'd like their club fibers, too. Turned out I was right.
It's a nice set up. You get a solid in the natural dye of the month (this month being Weld) and then a handpaint using it and additional natural dyes (this month it's Weld, Indigo, and quebracho red). Also, you can choose between wool or luxury fibers. I choose the latter and this month it was Angora/Merino. Mmmm.

Also, the fiber comes with a couple of info sheets--one about the dye material and the other on the fiber content. Nice, very nice.
There was enough white space on them to put a little snippet of the fiber and some samples I made spinning each separately and then what they looked like plied together. You know how I love keeping records for stuff like this, so this set up is perfect.

Because I really wanted to get to spinning this right away, I didn't wait to think up some clever way to use both colors but decided to do the obvious and spin them very fine and ply them together.
Here is the handpaint spun on the Reeves measuring in at 72 WPI. The spinning of the solid is nearly finished so look for pics of the plied yarn next week.

This week the mailman also brought a copy of this lovely book. It's an English translation of a long OOP German book featuring lace by Herbert Niebling.
His stuff is so fun to knit. Plus, I seem to learn something about constructing lace in every piece.

The cloth on the left is one of my favorites in this book.
Hmmm, it might be very pretty in pink. What do you think?