I finished up a lot of spinning last week. On Friday, I finished off Night Sky, and it was about time. I started that one back in December, when I thought I’d want more sock yarn for my trip to New York for Christmas. I am totally in love with the resulting yarn.

Perfect fingering weight, and it's blue!

I am getting damn good at this spinning sock yarn. And I should be, since I don’t often spin much else.

Sweater yarn, on the other hand…. not so great. I’ve been working on a big bag of wool for about 15 months now, since I purchased it at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool in 2008. The plan was to spin for an October Frost sweater [rav link], and I definitely purchased more than enough wool to do it. Unfortunately, despite trying really hard for a 2-ply worsted/aran yarn, I ended up with several skeins of super bulky. Is there something bigger than super bulky? They might even be that. So, I cast the project aside for a couple of months, vowing to come back to it.

And I did, back last spring and summer. I picked it up again, deciding to try a navajo ply. I thought I’d be able to get the yarn done faster that way because I could spin up a bunch of bobbins, and then just continually ply. Of course, I didn’t expect the singles to wind onto bobbins much more tightly and efficiently than the plied yarn, so that caused a few problems. And then I burnt myself out on the Tour de Fleece, and I ended up taking a long break from the yarn. Still, the yarn looked great, and though I was worried about making yardage for the October Frost, I was still optimistic. There were several ounces left in the bag of wool, and I thought it was still possible there would be enough.

I picked up spinning those last few ounces of wool last weekend. I powered through all of it on Saturday because I just wanted the bag and all the skeins off the floor of my office (and thus do away with one of the BEST CAT BEDS EVAR!!11). Unfortunately, after spending so much time spinning fine yarns, I had a really hard time getting singles that would work for an aran weight. I plied the singles up on this passed Friday afternoon, and to my dismay, I ended up with something on the lighter end of worsted. It may even be more like DK in far too many places, and I think I have to discard these skeins. Well, exclude them from this project, at least. I cry.

So, definitely do not have enough yardage for the October Frost. I’m not entirely sure what the actual yardage is yet, but I think at last yardage count, I had approximately 700 yards, well well under the 1600 I was aiming for.

I guess that means I’ll just have to buy another big bag of wool and try again. Eventually.