I think it’s ok to say I have color on the brain right now. I’ve been working on playing, practicing , and sampling color blending on combs and cards.

This particular day I had a blue that I wanted to lift to lighter with white.

I layered the fiber on my comb, just eyeballing it to about 50% blue, 50% white.

I layered the fiber to get the colors to blend quicker and more heathered. If I had put in on in stripes the colors would have been more flecked, unless I did more passes.

You know me, the shortest distance between fiber and sample is my sweet spot, unless I’m wandering the neighborhood like Billy in Family Circus. You can see the layers in my comb waste.

I didn’t want to spin from the combs, mostly because I’ve had a bout of insomnia (yay, menopause) and I’ve been tired-clumsy. I know I would poke myself somehow while spinning. So I decided to make top by pulling the fiber slowly through a diz.

I turned my spinning corner(s) over and couldn’t find my diz. I usually use purpose-made diz or a vintage button with big holes to diz. I couldn’t find either.*

I looked in our house toolbag and all of the washers I found were rusty or grimy. A washers makes a great diz too.

What else did I have that has holes in it? What did I just buy to put in my knitting tool kit (because it was so cute) that every knitter uses and has at least one in their project bag? A needle gauge!

This one is from my local, Spun, and is made by Katrinkles. Any needle gauge will work, just make sure it’s smooth inside those holes.

I chose a 5.5 mm needle size to diz through and it worked perfectly. I even liked having a bigger surface to hold on to as I pulled my fiber through. Now I’m torn where to put my new needle gauge, in my spinning kit or my knitting kit.

*the mystery of the missing diz and button was solved when I put my combs away in the their storage bag. Yup, both were sitting at the bottom of the bag. I swear I looked there.