This is Ashley holding the little ram lamb. I always like to have a couple of early babies because Spring comes when the babies do, and sometimes I need to hurry Spring along. It works too! The day this guy was born, the fog started clearing out and snow started thawing, at least enough that the dogs found plenty of mud to roll in. We even saw a robin.

Here are just some of the goodies from the Fibre Outlaws First Annual Winter Retreat. Now I have two full spinning baskets (that's only ready to spin stuff - I have a whole shed full of raw fleeces too). I dyed that rainbow roving myself. It was much easier than I expected - just coil the roving in a single layer in a big pan, add water to cover (careful not to pour water directly on the roving, which could cause it to felt), sprinkle on powdered acid dye (red, yellow, and blue each on 1/3 of the circle), add some vinegar, simmer until the dye is taken up, and rinse.

What to do with that rainbow roving? There were two strips, so I split them each into 8 pieces, spinning a strip of one and then the other and being careful to keep them the same direction - blue - yellow - red. If I made a two-ply yarn there would be some chance of having some of the colors match up, but probably most of it wouldn't so the yarn would have a barber-pole effect. I Navajo-plied it instead, so I have only small areas with barber-pole effect and more areas with one solid color. This yarn wants to be socks - it's just too loud to be much of anything else!

What is Navajo Ply? One bobbin of yarn is plied on itself to make a three-ply yarn. The structure is just like single crochet - you make a loop and keep pulling new loops through the last one, while plying. It's a great way to have some control over color placement in multi-colored yarn.