I’ve been a knitter for over fifty years.  Even as a child, I loved color, and the commercial yarns I gravitated towards were those with interesting colors and color interactions.  First there were the “regular” variegated acrylic yarns, such as you can find in many different color combinations.

These were reasonable in price, but tend to be bright and not very usable for anything other than afghans or children’s clothing.  They were also less than appealing in texture.  They were machine washable, though, which is a plus when knitting for kids.

Then more expensive wool yarns began to appear in the shops, with subtle and unique colorings.  I really liked them, but budgetary constraints forbade buying as much as I craved.

At some point in this odyssey of discovery, I conceived the desire to learn to spin my own yarn.  Then I discovered the joys of hand-dyeing my own handspun, and finally, found out that I could dye the roving or fleece even before spinning.  Since this breakthrough, I’ve loved to create one-of-a-kind yarns, by dyeing the fleece or roving, and then spinning and plying the yarn in various combinations.  You can see how I do this by checking out my demonstrations of rainbow dyeing and space dyeing in a crockpot to see exactly how the dyeing is done.

 Here are some examples of rainbow dyed rovings:

 
 
  And here are some space-dyed rovings:

  Those rovings make up yarns that look like this:
             

What can you make from these yarns?  Anything you'd like!

                                                                                 

These items were made from my own hand-dyed and -spun yarns:

Diagonal scarves from a Lucy Neatby pattern	Random "Rambling Rows" afghan by Cottage Creations

For more items that can be made from handspun, check out the Gallery.
See also the Tools of my Craft

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