Truly Scrumptious

Here's my revised artwork - much more like I was wanting, fewer colours and more emphasis on the chocolate.

I've been working on the above piece of art, in the end I did get much closer to the richness and silky depth of browns that I was hoping for in the first. I've also restricted the other colours to ones that I'm actually going to use in the finished yarn. 

Enough to say that the tub isn't
nearly as full now.

In addition to the dyed merino tops I added some of the following things into the mix - dyed Wensleydale locks, they're very soft and curly, and I also added a sprinkling of wrappers from a helpful tub of candies... chocolates, something that came as an idea towards the end of the sample process. It seemed a fun and interesting idea at the time, the idea of actually putting in the sweet wrappers and they did stay in the ply better than I thought they would -- however, I don't really like the effect; they look good when seen from the outside, with the bright labels, but the foil insides don't look so good. I'm resolved to only add in bright, jewel-like, cellophane wrappers on the finished article. 

The fleece of the Wensleydale
sheep - seen on the sheep. My
locks have been dyed.

The shades of brown work really well and I don't hate the sample that I've made, but it's not right yet - the cable-plying did take away some of the bulk, the volume, that I was wanting so it's back to the drawing board on that one - I'm not considering adding plump bobbles of brown to an already chunky yarn and see what that ends up looking like. The next sample might not be done in the shades for this yarn, as it's a technique test, rather than a colour one this time around. Anyway, here's the sample of the yarn so far. I might need to go buy another box of chocolates, the ones that have the cellophane wrappers...

Cadbury's wrapper there, the green and orange/peach looking curls
are the Wensleydale locks.