I’ve been all over the map on my spinning this week. I started out at the DKC Frolic where I was still working on my Louet Northern Lights pencil roving. I got a bit more comfortable roaming around with a spindle, given that I’m still a newbie who’s had no formal instruction. I did manage to finish spinning the singles on Saturday night. On Sunday morning at breakfast I began turning my singles into a happy 3 ply yarn. It’s amazing to me how subtle the colour changes ended up looking. It’s almost tweedy. Louise keeps indicating that she’d like to have it, but it’s mine!
Stats: 180 yards in 57 g, colour Burning Bush, I believe. No, I don’t know what I’m going to make with it, although the idea of fingerless gloves was discussed with Anna & Hasmi at the Frolic.
On Monday I couldn’t resist the idea of starting to play with the cotton that I’d bought in Toronto. Um, yes, that cotton has a mighty short staple length. It’s a good thing I was sitting in the big chair where the spindle just drops on me when I have a problem. I persevered long enough to make 22 yards of 2 ply from about 7g. I’ll try this again, but I won’t say that it was tons of fun, it was just something that I had to try.
On Tuesday the bag containing a Pigeonroof braid from someone’s Ravelry destash (South African Fine wool in Drift) jumped off the the closet shelf and made me spin it. It took 3 days, and I made a few initial decisions that set me up for a final yarn. I divided it into 4 roughly even pieces, since it seemed to me that there were quite a few different colours in it and I wanted a mix throughout.
Then I split each quarter into 8 pieces (unplanned, it just worked out well that way). I put each collection of yarn worms into its own bag. Then I spun 4 “bobbins” (toilet paper rolls) full, changing the order to mix it up (e.g., bobbin 1 was 12341234, bobbin 2 was 23412341, something like that). I turned it into a giant plying ball. I made my first 4 ply yarn!
I ended up with about 135 yards in about 100g, with a wpi of about 12. I think that mixing up the colours worked well & gave me the look I was going for, which is great because I’m pretty much going on instinct!
After that, I managed to spin up the other half of one of my Cobalt Cupcake Fiber Company batts. After the Pigeonroof it was no effort at all to spin that skinny shiny blue stuff. Perhaps I should get back to work on that. I’m thinking that it’ll be a very long skein of 2 ply lace weight when all 6 oz of it grow up to be yarn.
You are so good! They are all just wonderful.
When I was spindling something challenging, I would spindle over a laundry basket with some towels in it. That way, if the spindle fell, it would have a softer landing than if it hit hardwood flooring.