Spinning away

Oh, poot! I can't believe I haven't posted for almost a month.... It's not like I haven't been doing anything; life has been crazy-busy. Hmm, maybe that's the problem.... I have been both knitting and spinning; in my protracted absence I have both started and finished a sweater (the same one!) and finished two socks (but not of the same pair). Photos to follow. I've also been making good friends with my new Ashford, and made a start on the six (SIX!!) monstrous chunks of Lorna's Laces roving that I bought in a fit of avarice at least six months ago. I have two in each of three colourways, and can be seen in their bags right here:

Clockwise from top left: Georgetown, Desert Flower and Lakeview (I think)

So far, I have spun up and plied a skein of roughly sockweight yarn in the 'Desert Flower' colourway. I have to say that I'm not enjoying spinning it nearly as much as my previous project (did I blog that?? Must look up...), which truly drafted effortlessly and was wonderful-squishy-soft to handle. I don't know if it's because this has been stored for a while, in somewhat cramped conditions, but the fibre seems rather... compacted. Not felted - not quite - but it grabs itself more than I'd really like, and drafts in fits and starts. Also, there are little 'neppy' fragments occasionally; these I am sure are my fault, as I think they have been caused by friction on the top at some point. I'm hoping I get used to it - or get a better idea for dealing with it - because spinning six bags of this stuff isn't particularly inspiring right now. That said, I *am* enjoying it; I'm learning, learning, learning all the time (about fibre prep and my new wheel and spinning in general), and I'm producing yarn that I'm mostly pleased with. This skein is Navajo-plied to keep the colours mostly together; I think it would look too 'muddy' if I allowed them to mingle randomly, although I love the 'barber's pole' sections where the colour sections join.

a quick shot of the plied yarn on the bobbin

skeined up; about 140m of sock-weight three ply

The Desert Flower colourway is available in their own Shepherd Sock yarn, too, and looks like this in the skein: I adore the colours, but really don't want to knit socks that looks like this: I'm hoping that because I've been splitting and pre-drafting the roving kinda randomly, that any pooling that does occur will not be as regular. But now, I need to decide what to do with this. I think I would like to knit a pair of socks in the yarn spun from this roving, but this was my first foray with the Ashford, and some of the earlier joins in the singles were very poor indeed. Once plied, they're probably structurally OK (can you feel the confidence??), but it has left ugly 'tufts' on the yarn that I wouldn't want in a sock. So I need to decide whether to do something totally random with this, as a single skein, and to spin up more yarn for socks; or to use this skein and just do one more...? I suppose I could try sampling this yarn to see what a sock would look like, and then spin two more skeins... Any ideas for what to do with 140m of colourfully variegated sock weight yarn?