Not very long ago, Wendy spun up the most beautiful orange roving. You can see it in all its splendor here.
If you swing by my blog, with any regularity, you know that I'm not terribly drawn to warm colors, as a general rule. Blues, greens, and purples dominate over all other colors. It's not that I don't love a wide variety of colors, its just that, given a choice, I stay in my color comfort zone and stick to shades I know look good on me and that I love looking at. But this orange had me smitten. So I headed on over to Nistock Farms, where Wendy had gotten her roving, and I got myself 8 delicious ounces of Autumn Spice.
It arrived last night and I didn't even shed my heels and suit before I was spinning away. We reached the front door at 6pm, by 7:30, I had spun, plied, washed and set to dry 26 yards of handspun.
Since these pictures were taken around 3:30 AM (I'm having me a little bout of insomnia, thanks for asking) there is no proper lighting. I think, all things considered, the pictures are fairly representative of the color overall, but they don't really capture some of the beautiful subtleties of the shade. It's mostly a lovely pumpkin color, with shades of a soft pink, some grey and yellow. The overall effect is amazing.
The wool is definitely not as soft as, say, a merino or alpaca, but I love it and it spins surprisingly easily on my little 0.9 oz spindle.
In addition to the 8ozs of Autumn Spice, I also got myself 4oz of the Fudge Brownie shade you'll find on the same page. I haven't even begun to spin that.
To all of you spinners out there, I'm starting to find myself overflowing with roving. I have absolutely no issues with this. I am wondering, though, what is the best way to store the stuff to avoid any problems with it as it waits for my little spindles to spin it up? It's relatively warm and dry here in LA, though I live within a very short distance of the ocean.
I LOVE your Autumn spice. The color is so rich and beautiful.
Storing roving. I live in Texas and it's pretty dry here, too. I use ziplock bags, making sure to squeeze all of the air out. Just for good meaure, I store the bag in a plastic tote that contains a couple of cedar balls and some lavendar. My roving is a little squished when I pull it out but that's easy enough to fluff up.
It's beautiful--that's a gorgeous shade of orange!
Sounds like things are getting dangerous over there. I still manage to delude myself into believing that the flow of roving is something that I can control. Please say this is not the fate that awaits me!
Your Autumn Spice is lovely. There's something addictive about that roving!
Roving storage: Since roving is a cleaned fiber, it's not quite as attractive to wool-eating insects as unwashed fleece is. It's still good to keep it in sealed containers. If you have room in the freezer, that's actually a good place to store anything that's liable to become infested by insects -- this includes knitted/woven/crocheted garments. Otherwise, sealed ziplock bags (assuming the fiber is TOTALLY dry before storing) or Rubbermaid bins work.
(Can you tell I worry lots more about my stuff getting eaten than I do about anything else?)