So, a while ago, I was talking to my friend A, who is a brilliant artistic person who does lovely handmade ceramics. She also knits, and I mentioned in a sort of casual, offhand way that if she ever wanted to make me a mug, I’d totally trade her for some handspun.

She delivered on the mug a couple of months ago, and it is 100% my new favourite thing. So, for the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to get down to the business of making some really, really good handspun for her.

This is one of my few finished yarns for which I actually have photos of the unspun fiber – I used Tanis Fiber Arts’ in Ultraviolet. It’s from her Etsy shop, as (I believe) she no longer carries spinning fiber in her regular colourways.

Is it not the prettiest? My favourite part is, obviously, that it’s blue.

With this fiber, I basically just sat down and spun, from one end to the other. This fiber was incredibly smooth, and didn’t require much predrafting at all. I’ve never worked with superwash merino, and I’m wondering if that’s it? It just didn’t seem as “sticky” as regular wool usually does.

I was going for a finished product somewhere in the worsted weight family, so I tried to do singles that were on the fatter side.

I chain-plied the singles, then gave them a bath in hot water to set the twist.

Overall, I feel pretty good about this yarn. It turned out fairly close to worsted-weight, once it’d been washed – I’d feel comfortable knitting it on 4mm needles or so, which is pretty close to what I wanted.

I also love the colours, quite a lot. They all work really nicely together, and because I spun from end to end, there are some nice long repeats of different shades of blue and violet. I sort of wish I could keep this for myself!