More amateurish spinning

So I have been doing a bit more spinning recently, two hanks of undyed merino (and will probably do a bit more) that I want to dye up together so I can actually make more than a baby hat with it, and some of the alpaca (have also got photos of my first attempts at carding, which was time consuming but could be pretty good exercise for the pecks I think:-), which was an absolute bugger to spin (but the felt I tried instead is lovely and soft). Having said that baby hats are the order of the day at the moment so I decided yesterday to spin a bit of colourful stuff to make another. I am finding that a little bit of roving seems to go an awful long way. I initially bought 500g of the undyed, about 200g of mixed greens and yellow and 250g of mixed reds (from various ebay sources) and having used various bits for both felting and spinning it hardly seems to have reduced the stash at all.

I picked out this yellow and then simply pulled off a length of the red to match:

And then drafted it together in batches (I also tend to tease this out gently as I go to even out the thickness.)
It took me about an hour and some, and when I hanked it up it came to nearly 60m (the little table is quite nicely about 1m round so I count it as I wind it up.) i am really pleased with how it has come out. I am getting better at getting an even thickness
I set the twist, squeeze it out and then leave to dry overnight in the hot cupboard. I am wanting to get it knitted today but have promised M I will make a start on her hoodie (which has been in the pipeline for a month now since I am recycling a lovely cotton/angora yarn from a charity shop find). What I really enjoy about the spinning is the process of transformation, from fluff into yarn ... and then of course from yarn into something wearable, or useful. Felting is the same, taking something insubstantial and turning it into something solid.
This photo shows (from top to bottom) the undyed merino, the alpaca and the two tone red and yellow.