Inspiration Saturday: A fancy finish

The finish line is coming up fast for the Tour de Fleece, and I've come to accept that I will not be clutching skeins of finished yarn as I cross it.  It is the destiny of this yarn to miss every deadline which can be set for it.  And thankfully, that's okay.  While the Tour ends Sunday, I'm still allowed to spin come Monday, and all of the days after that.

Something else I didn't expect when I started was having more than four cops, but in fact I began a fifth this afternoon while sitting in my first spin-in at The Knitting Nest.  It's the third or fourth month that they've held this social spinners gathering, and despite intending to go all of those other months, this was the first time it worked out well for me to join in.  I'm hoping to come by more for spinning and knitting on Thursdays perhaps, because it's always fun to be around other crafty people and see what they are working on.  And sometimes it's nice to get confirmation that what you yourself are doing is coming along well.  It does continue to grow my desire for a spinning wheel, however.

Anyway, because I needed to start a new and final cop, I decided to try out a technique to make it look a little prettier while on the spindle.  When I first started spinning, wrapping neatly wasn't as important as just successfully creating the cop.  But seeing some of the gorgeously geometric-looking cops in the forums made me want to get a little fancy.

And thankfully, it only looks fancy.  Getting that look is really quite simple, though it does take a little more care than just a simple 'over 2, under 1'.  There are a number of tutorials online, but the one that lit the bulb in my brain was the post from Simply Notable.  Lots of pretty pictures with arrows.  I find that sometimes well-written instruction with pictures is more helpful than a video, where you can't always pick out the details that make it click for you.  Something for me to keep in mind during my day job of technical documentation, I guess.

Here are my results so far:

As always, Jeri Brock's spindle looks wonderful.  But I love the way this neater wrapping shows off the shifting colors.  It goes from a very dark purple into an almost pink fuschia, with everything in between, plus some near-white lilac.

So, there you have it.  Hopefully the next time you see this yarn it will actually be yarn.  Alicia hasn't posted an inspiring post yet today, but she did write about the magic of plying earlier this week.  I'll be casting that spell soon, I hope.