Saturday spinning update

Happy New Year!

While my knitting has hit a bit of a lull with the holidays, I’ve still been doing a fair bit of spinning. I finally finished spinning up my 180g of Blue Faced Leicester top (from Louet) and here it is in a few small balls:

I did a plying test with a few yards and I’m quite happy with the results. Now I just need to ply it, wash it, and design something to knit with it. That should take a few days or weeks! I’ve got a few ideas but I’m not sure how it’ll work out. I figure I’ll end up with around 600 yards of 2 ply yarn in the end, probably heavy lace to light fingering. It won’t be terribly consistent, but I’m ok with that for beginner yarn.

I’m even more excited about something I’ve done this week. I spun “50 grams” of Fleece Artist Merino sliver. When it started, it looked like this:

I split it into 4 and spun it, although it was almost felted and a bit of a pain to draft. It was worth it in the end. I spun it quite thin (for me). I decided to keep the subtle colour variation together, so I chain plied it. The result is about 190 yards for 71 grams. I think Fleece Artist was a bit generous on the weight side with this. I’m thrilled with this yarn. It’s soft, the colours are wonderful, and I plan on knitting it up into something as soon as I can figure out how to best do it justice. See?

Yay me! And I was so transfixed by this project that I spun & plied it in under 48 hours.

I’m really enjoying the meditative aspect of spinning. I feel a real connection to the past. I think about how much work it must have taken to create fiber and fabric starting with a spindle. I have vague memories of seeing spindle whorls in museums and not really having any clue what they were or how they were used. Now it all makes sense!