In which my art batt wants to be a lace-weight yarn

One of the tricks to spinning yarn is just letting the fiber do what it wants to do. It has a destiny. You can't MAKE something be what it's not meant to be. Sometimes I look at a beautiful braid of roving or fiber batt, and in my head I envision a specific type of yarn. It usually doesn't work out that way. The moment I start spinning, I realize that it's not meant to be.

Case in point. I was going through one of my fiber bins the other day, and found a magical surprise. 

Can it be? Is it so? Yes, a Hobbledehoy art batt that was hidden away in the bottom of a bin. I remembered that I had started spinning from it a few years ago, but for whatever reason I set it aside and eventually totally forgot about it. This was one of Liz's mystery batts. I remember I had the choice of fire or ice, and I chose the ice color ways. There are light blues, ice whites, light purples and every color in the "cold" range. 

As I started spinning, I realized there were also several different kinds of wool fiber hidden away. I can't identify them all by feel, but there's definitely merino, something fairly harsh, maybe some alpaca, and definitely some bamboo or tencel. Could be silk...I'm not sure. There's a whole range of interesting textures, and then topped off are a ton of cotton neps and some angelina sparkle. I spun a few feet and realized....Wow! This would make a spectacular lace yarn. 

I tore off a 3 inch strip, and then divided that strip into 3 equal parts. Then I drafted each chunk into a light and airy roving. 

I've been spinning each ball of drafted fiber pretty thinly. (Didn't I just say in a post a day or two ago that I wasn't going to spin that thinly again....?) When I come into contact with a cotton nep that it TOO chunky or crazy, I remove it and put it in a bowl. You can barely see the bowl in the picture. I'll save those for later batt-making use. I'm keeping as much angelina as possible, and picking out all of the wool from any cotton bits too big for this project. Some chunks of texture are actually silk, so I'm drafting those individual chunks of texture and spinning them in with the singles. Here is what I have so far. 

I was going for an art yarn. Really, I was. It just didn't work out that way. I'll n-ply the single and have a small skein in the end. The batt started out at 75 grams, but with the cotton removal, I'll end up with less weight. Oh well.