Fun with Judith

Count me among the hundreds of spinners who regularly say "If Judith MacKenzie McCuin is teaching a class, sign me up!" It doesn't matter if I've taken it before, the class title sounds uninteresting, or if I need to hire a babysitter to manage it, I'll be there. As one student said in her Plying class last fall, "If Judith was teaching Advanced Toilet Bowl Maintenance, I'd take the class."

She is, imho, the best spinning teacher in the country. Period. I learn something every time I take one of her classes. And I've been lucky enough to manage it four times now.

This past weekend, Carolina Homespun hosted Judith for her Spinning for Socks class. Now, I'm a dedicated sock knitter -- I always have a pair on the needles at any given time -- they're easy, brainless, and much more interesting than year-old magazines in the dentist's waiting room. For this knitting equivalent of chewing gum, I'm perfectly happy to use any sort of sock yarn -- self-striping is fun, and generally pretty satisfying. And, it's one of the few yarns I'll allow myself to buy, since I've been trying to refrain from buying any yarns that I could potentially spin myself (that keeps the stash from expanding too quickly).

I hadn't really considered spinning sock yarns, but now I'm thinking of giving it a try. The skein above is a marled yarn -- a techinque I've learned from Judith a couple of times before. It does produce a nice, relatively consistent multicolor yarn. This skein is made from four colors of Ashland Bay's merino top. The problem is that it isn't superwash, and I can't really see myself handwashing a pair of socks. And that's not even considering what would happen if DH decides to do the laundry in my absence.

But in a couple of weeks, our knitting guild is having its annual dye day, and I'm thinking about hauling out the couple of bags of white merino superwash I've got buried in my stash and attempting a multicolor roving. I'll let you know how it works out.