Fiber Friday: The first Porpoise-dyed from Yarn School

It is still Friday, right? I'm really falling behind here - this yarn has been spun up and done for almost two months, but I'm only getting around to blogging about it now. Pathetic!

Superwash merino, handdyed by yours truly, with Jacquard acid dyes in black, brown, brilliant blue and pumpkin orange I believe.
Spun/plied at 10:1 on ST Lendrum
Stats: ~185 yds, 14 wpi, 4 oz. This is some seriously dense yarn. I was planning on giving this to someone for a Christmas present, but I'm not sure how big her feet are - this is not going to be enough for a pair of socks. Sigh. Which means the other 4 oz I was going to save for myself will have to be spun up for her as well. Too bad...I guess I can always dye more.

I was really surprised by how this yarn turned out. Given the large white stretches in the top, I was expecting it to be a lot lighter.

It's a lot more uniform in color then I thought it would be. The 2-ply barberpole, in this instance, had similar enough tonal values that the whole skein ended up somewhere in the middle of the range instead of going from one extreme to the other.

This is only the second superwash fiber I've worked with - the first was superwash Corriedale, and I'm a lot happier with this one. I think I overspun the singles for the Corrie - the finished yarn felt somewhat wirey - but this merino basically spun itself. Literally. I sat in front of the wheel and just let the fiber run out into the single with hardly any effort. The 4 oz took two nights to spin (+/- 3 hrs), which is fast for me. Plying was another evening. So if I have to give up the other four ounces, at least I know it won't take forever to get through*!

* As soon as my new tension knob arrives - there was a small Lendrum-child collision this morning apparently (I think I was in the shower) that did not end up well for the Lendrum. Very sad, but given the amount of Christmas knitting left to be done, probably just as well.