Not spinning but plying

There's something incredibly satisfying when at the end of three bobbins-worth of fine spinning you get to set them up on the lazy kate and treadle away, watching the bobbin quickly fill up with your lovely new yarn.

I never know quite how it's going to turn out until that moment, and usually there's still a fair amount of insecurity; I know I loved the fibre but will I like the finished yarn in the same way, or will it all be muddy and bland, not the crazy joyful bundle of colours in the braid.

Happily, this time I started with a braid that looked aglow, and finished with yarn that is pure summer:

A crazy vibrant orange that I'll only ever get away with as socks, that mixes copper, gold, saffron, chartreuse and hot fuchsia pink in a valiant bid to be the loudest sock yarn in the stash.

It is perhaps a measure of how much I enjoy this finished yarn, that I couldn't stop taking photos of it

And even when I could, I couldn't decide which ones I liked the best so I plumped for putting most of them up onto flickr.

The fibre was a 4oz Falkland braid from Spindlefrog and had no colour name, so I name it 'Sunshine'. 

It's the colour of orange ice-lollies from the freezer after school, the Soltan bottle slightly faded around the edges from one too many trips to the beach, the sun-umbrella on the patio, the sea viewed through a cool pint balanced on the wall outside the pub, and the snapdragons and pansies in my front flower bed (revived after a good few rainstorms this week), with just a hint of the glint off my grandmother's hostess trolley as she wheeled it across the top lawn laden with the tea tray and glasses of lemonade, and the brass sundial that now stands in that same garden, a testament to four people who between them and over many years have built that house and love that garden.

I've got 362 yards (plus 40 yards of navajo ply from the leftovers on the bobbins), and it's going to make a fabulous pair of socks.