Part of my 2017 spinning fun is to spin fibers and dyers that are new to me or that I haven't spun for a long time. My first spin for this year is from Abundant Earth Fiber. I was introduced to them at Madrona this year. I picked up two 50gm rovings in the Deep Water and Forage colorways. The fiber is a blend of medium-fine breeds such as East Fresian, Dorset and Lacaune all raised in Washington state near Abundant Earth Fiber.

The colors are tweedy blends, the two colorways I chose have similar highlights and Deep Water uses Forage and secondary color and Forage uses Deep Water as a secondary color. The color are gorgeous and rich and I couldn't just spin them by themselves.

Since I had a very limited amount of fiber I did some tiny samples. The fiber was easy to spin, open and fluffy with just little amounts of VM. I spun it with a woolen draft. I did two quick samples of a 2-ply yarn. One marled, one ply of each color and one with the two drafted together and then plied. The marl is on the left and the drafted together is on the right. The drafted together mixes the colors up more.

Of course I couldn't pick from those two, so I ended up doing something different. I divided the remaining fiber equally and made a 2-ply. One ply is the two colors drafted together and one ply is one color at a time following each other. Then I plied them together. I love it! It's kind of marled and kind of gradient and very subtle. The end of the yarn with Forage as the plain color is on the left and the end of the yarn with Deep Water as the plain color is on the right.

The airy prep made this an effortless spin and the fantastic colors made me wish I had bought more. Yes, I was restrained for once. I have about 108 yards of 12 WPI yarn. I think a cowl is in order!