Spinning

So, I've been making yarn. Between that new obsession and my involvement with Renaissance castles, I have no idea where the week went.
I've fallen hard for the entire yarn-making process and can't wait to learn more about it all.
Here's what I did.
I used Lynne Vogel's hotpour method to dye some of the whatever roving that came with my beginner's spindle. It wasn't the best of qualities, I don't think, but that actually worked in my favour, because I wasn't too terrified of messing up something precious.

Then I split the dyed roving lengthwise, and each strip into four thinner strips, trying to keep the colours in order as I spun. I ended up with this:

While my singles were decidedly uneven and raaather chunky, I managed to make two reasonably consistent balls. Before plying them, I actually thought about it (a novel concept for me, because I'm more of a "let's try and see" kinda gal.) I wanted to ply the singles with the same succession of colours, thinking that the unevenness of my spinning would have produced colour sections of different lengths. So plying would mix up the colours of the two singles in some places, but since the individual colours were fairly "long", I hoped for an overlap in other places. This is an enormous amount of planning for me - I was actually trying to predict my result.
So I plied.
My plying is not a bit better than my spinning :o), and I produced some of the chunkiest yarn in my possession, but would you believe it? The whole result-predicting thing actually worked out. I was very proud of this, probably much more than the yarn quality merited :o). But chunky and uneven as it may be, by golly, I made yarn!
And I knit with it, too.
In these pictures, the colours are most like the original. I am very pleased with my first spinning experiment. All I wanted was an idea how the whole thing works, and I was surprised that I managed to make real yarn - if that makes any sense.
I can't wait to practice some more - in fact, I've got some undyed merino soaking in the sink as we speak. 100 g of German merino roving for my next experiment: making enough yarn to actually knit something with it. I need a tea cozy :o).