December’s Tiger Club started with a lovely fiber I had acquired as a special buy, a blend that contained a good amount of naturally dark brown wool, with ribbons of natural white. It can be a bit of a challenge to decide how to dye it, the brown can take dye, but needs to be quite intense to show, but I preferred to work with it and have bits of color peek out. This picture stood out to me with the colors peeking out in the background bokeh effect. I took the colors from the photograph and added a blue from this second image I had considered to round things out.
The fiber (30% Blue Faced Leicester, 30% Polwarth Wool, 40% UK Alpaca) was wet and layered in my dyepots, with the colors applied randomly to each layer in keeping with the bokeh effect. Here’s how that turned out:
You’ll find this a pretty versatile fiber, it will be quite happy to be spun worsted or woolen, or any version of semi that suits your preferred spinning style and/or end project idea. If you want to keep the marl fairly consistent, I would suggest spinning from the fold to keep the slippery fibers together with the grabbier Polwarth. I do have a couple extra braids of this, ask if you are interested.
Our yarn was a new one, Champagne, a blend of 25% Bio-Nylon, 25% UK Alpaca, 50% SW BFL. While it does have sock yarn specs, it might be lacking a bit in structure to make socks that will spring back after wear. Knit along with a springier wool or perhaps wooly nylon/lycra for more elasticity, or use this for something where more drape is wanted like a cowl, shawlette, etc. The yarn was a nice cream color, so in keeping with the fiber I added a chocolate brown to the color palette, and drizzled them all randomly on the yarn. This resulted in even more colors than I applied through mixing on the yarn itself. This drizzle technique should change up the patterning pretty well, but if you want to be sure to mix things up, you could alternate knitting from both ends of the skein. I do have some extra skeins, do ask!
There are spots open in all clubs currently, and especially if you are interested in Fiber Club I suggest you sign up in January, as I’ll be basing how much I purchase for the next several months of Club from my January subscription levels.
I’m looking at a good foot of snow accumulated on our railing and thinking about getting a round of shoveling done before any wind picks up. Hope you are all safe and warm and have things to look forward to in 2024!
