Rockin' the three-day weekend

I had Friday off for "Spring Break Day"--why it rocks to work for a university--so I got to spend a whole lot of time with yarn this weekend. To my amazement, I actually finished two things!
First is a shawl I've been working on since Novemberish. I impulse-purchased the yarn on major sale, and as I started working on it, it reminded me of a lady at church, so it's for her. Hopefully I'll manage to give it to her before it becomes too hot to wear it.



I also finished the rainbow-striped baby afghan, so now starting a new baby blanket doesn't seem so daunting. I'm going to try to sell the pattern for this one, so just a preview photo for now. I'm really happy with how it turned out.


For anyone following the saga of this blanket, it did make it in the first skein of every color except purple, which had to go into the second skein for several rows. It was also very close for pink, blue, and green, just barely making it in the first skein. It's a good thing I bought two skeins of each color--I would have been freaking out, especially about the purple. Not having the same dye lot would have either looked terrible or necessitated major frogging and/or changes to the design. Anyway, there is plenty left for another blanket as long as the design goes light on the purple. I've already got an idea brewing for that yarn, but it's not what I'm going to work on next.

I also made it to Little Barn, and here's where we see the first signs that the fiber addiction may prove worse than the yarn one. Even though I have plenty of fiber left over from the class materials last weekend plus the extra I bought, I totally fell in love with a packet of mystery fiber in the bargain bin. It's a beautiful rust-ish burgundy color with a few little red sparklies carded in, and I had to have it. I also bought eight more ounces of plain natural wool for practice--wouldn't want to run out! (If this were alcohol, I would have just exhibited one of the major signs of addiction.)
Anyway, I had in my mind a yarn that was a blend of the burgundy and the natural wool, kind of smoothly transitioning between various proportions of the two, but as I started spinning, I quickly realized I would have to card them together to achieve that, and I don't have any cards. What I got instead was sort of a tweed look, which was interesting so I decided to go with it. I ended up making one ply the tweed thing and the other all burgundy, so the finished yarn would be more like what I had in mind.





I would still prefer a bit less contrast between the natural and the burgundy, but I like the results. (I did look at some naturally brown/tan wool in the store, but none of it seemed to go well with the burgundy.) Also, I'm getting the twist and the thickness more even than my first attempts, but the yarn is still lively. In some places it almost looks braided because of the way the two-colored ply interacts with the all-burgundy ply. If I made a whole lot more of it, it would be a wild hat.