A New Sweater

I cast on a new sweater on Sunday with the yarn I have been spinning, and I am slowly making my way through it.

There are 6 colors of yarn here, three from a pack that was graciously gifted to me by a friend, one natural grey sheepy's fleece, one natural white sheepy's fleece, and the green is hand-dyed with marigold. I am excited to see how it develops. The plan is to use all of the colors in a Icelandic-inspired yoke.
First I have lots of plain body to knit, and that should be a nice calming activity while I am still processing the election.
What's on your needles?

You Spin Me Right 'Round, Baby, Right 'Round

Spinning has been very therapeutic for me over this election season. 

I think I have spun about 800 yards or so. It's been about 100 yards per day. 

This week, since the weather has been dramatically warmer than usual, I put out a call for marigolds and my mom and a few friends offered me their remaining blossoms. 

These have all been dyed with marigolds. The first dye batch had some nasturtiums in it and I wonder if that's why the yarn came out so very bright green. I love it! 

I let that batch cool and then heated it up again and I got the darker gold below. The largest yellow skein, second from the top, was a new batch of dye. I really liked that one too. In fact, when I finished dyeing the yarn I had so much dye left that I threw in a couple of shirts of mine and dyed them.

I have another skein in the pot right now that I was promised would come out pink (avocado skins), but the yarn isn't taking the dye very well and it's just kinda brown. 

I will see how that shapes up after a few more hours to soak up the color

I have tried dyeing spun yarn and also combed top. The top was surprisingly easy to dye and then process. The only skein above that was dyed after spinning is the second from the top, as I look at it.
The spinning is still pretty inconsistent, but I am pleased overall.

I have great plans for a sweater with all of this right here: the green is the first skein I dyed that didn't make it into the other photo, the teal, blue and darker gray are a bfl/silk blend from a generous friend, the browns are alpaca I snagged at a fiber festival Saturday before last and the light gray is from my farmer friend.
Now I need to pick a pattern.
Maybe this one with a white body? or something like this or I could just make another Grettir.
The main problem is that the fleeces aren't all quite the same color, and I don't have any more of this white. But I could do a border on the hem and cuffs in one of the colors and I think I would almost have enough.

Next Steps

I don't have any words about the political situation. It's too painful. 

This is how I have been coping with the stress of this election.

The other day I found a tutorial to make wool combs. The real things are over $100 and this seemed like a good way to dip my toes in.

I took my cleaned fleece into the house and separated it into locks,

combed it out,

there was a lot of it,

Then I started spinning and I kept spinning and spinning until it was all gone

(singles and plied yarn)

I ended up with about 500 yards of worsted-ish weight yarn from my first half-fleece. The remainder was little fluffs and chunks, which I think could be carded or used for doll stuffing.
I will post about my weekend adventure in a minute, this post has been sitting in my blogger for a week or so, so I thought I would finish it up.