Imagine my surprise when I Googled “marled” and the first few links were all about the soil mixture called marl! I finally found the definition at the bottom of this page.

Amusingly enough, if you Google “marled”, all the images that come up are actually for marled yarn.

For those of you who don’t want to follow links, a marled yarn is a yarn where the individual plies are different colors and/or fiber content, creating textural interest in the final yarn. This is different than a heathered yarn, where different colors of fiber are blended together before being spun.

Now, the source of this project came from the fact that I have small amounts of different fibers, but usually not enough to make large projects. I had four ounces here, eight ounces there, and often in similar colors, but I didn’t want to just make everything striped just because I didn’t have enough to make a sweater or a large shawl.

So, I picked a project, the Danish Tie-Shawl (Ravelry link) from the Spring 2008 issue of Spin-Off. Then I picked the fibers out of my stash.

I had a batch of Calico Dream from Fae Ridge Farm, which is a wonderful mix of fine and long wools and mohair in several purples, a touch of pink, and several greys. Using that as a base, I further searched my stash for purples that would go with the variegated Calico Dream, and I found a dusky grey-purple from Enchanted Knoll, which is the Storms colorway, and a Targhee-Rambouillet roving in a full-on purple from Katrina’s Wool World. Finally, I wanted something that would be soft, puffy, and would tone down the overwhelmingly purpleness of the other colors I was using. For that, I used a milk-chocolate brown Romeldale lamb’s fleece and carded it up into rolags.

As you can see in this picture, I have Calico Dream on the left, the brown Romeldale in the middle, and Storms on the right, in the middle of plying.

The result, as you can see here, is a gorgeous marled yarn with a subtle striping.

I’ve since finished this yarn, and a second batch that used the purple Targhee-Rambouillet as the third ply. They both turned out to be about a heavy-worsted to aran weight, and are next-to-skin soft, in my opinion. In my next spinning/knitting post, I’ll show you the progress that I’ve been making with the Danish Tie-Shawl and both of the finished yarns (if I haven’t used them all up by then).

Thing 1:
Here’s what I want:

My Thing. (If you’re reading Fluent Self, this makes more sense.)

Hello, my Thing. I know you’re out there. I know you want to meet me as much as I want to meet you. I know you’re creative, and you just might be a bit OCD-ish, but that just means that we’re meant to be. I can’t tell if you’re writing or programming or game designing, or anything else in the world, but I know I want to find you.

Ways this could work:

You could just show up in a blinding flash of realization.

You could sneak up on me when I’m doing something related to you and I could recognize you.

You could sidle up to me when I’m doing something else and I could find you.

My commitment:

I want to find you, but I’m scared of you. I’m afraid that if I find you, I’ll be stuck with you and I’ll feel stuck, which isn’t what I want at all. So I commit to meeting with my fear and talking to it and see if I can get the stuck out. After that, I hope I can commit to doing my Thing and not being scared (at least, not all the time).

Thing 2:
Here’s what I want:

A job. I would like one that allows me to pay off $1,000 a month on personal debt, keeps me busy and happy, but not too busy, interests me, and ideally, has to do with my Thing, or leads me to find my Thing.

I would also like to not have to interview for the job, since interviews hardly tell any of my prospective employers anything good about me (I don’t interview well; I get too nervous). I’m alright with making a personal connection and finding out about the job in a casual way, and my employer or manager getting to know me in a similar way.

Ways this could work:

I could find the perfect job on the online job boards, and apply.

A network contact could find it and remember me.

It could fall in my lap in some other way that isn’t occurring to me right now.

My commitment:

I will work and learn quickly. I be so awesome that I’ll remind you, my job, of the Manchurian Candidate and how everyone only had good things to say about Raymond Shaw (without the brainwashing, promise). I will be happy to have you, especially if you don’t drown me in minutia like being at my desk at 8:30 am, sharp, and corporate rules. The more I impress and help my managers and teammates, the more I’ll be committed to doing my best.

Well, there they are.

Hopefully this will make things clearer for me, and maybe the search for these things will become easier. And maybe, just maybe, someone will read this and be able to help me out with one or both of my personal ads.

It is made to go along with the Noro Striped Scarf.

So I present to you: Noro Ribbed Hat

It’s my first pattern and I’ve just uploaded it to Ravelry. I hope people like it!