Wednesdays are for spinning

Once again it’s time for a weekly spinning catch up.  Due to the glorious sunshine we have been having we have spent most of our time enjoying the weather with friends and family so I haven’t really done much of anything.  However the forecast for this weekend looks incredibly dreary and wet so hopefully I should have some time to create something worth blogging about.  This week I have mainly concentrated on two projects, the first of which is the sparkly BFL which is now ¾ spun.

 The plying ball is now looking nice and big and I’ve just started work on the last little bit.  You can't quite see but  I have put quite a substantial stop on the top of the spindle, the whorl of this particular spindle is particularly slippery and even with a one strand stop the leader still slips once the cop grows a bit.  I’m hoping that using three strands will do the trick.  I’m thinking I may have to get Stu to cut a notch in it once I’m done with this batch, I was hoping to avoid it but I think it will make things a lot easier.

My second project is a new one, which is exciting!  I got a new spindle, another Enid Ashcroft from this eBay store.

 Of course I had to start a project on it immediately, just to check it spins nicely so I dived into my little fibre stash and decided to try the little batts I got from KarmicDelight on Etsy recently.  I’d yet to try spinning a batt so I felt quite intrepid.

 All in all it’s going quite well, I’ve spun the first batt and have just started the second.  I plan to spin each of the pink batts separately and then ply them all together to make a 3-ply and then follow suit with the purple batts.  Because the batts are a total mixture of fibres and I guess because I’m not used to batts, my spinning is less consistent than it has been.  This is actually really good for me as I slowly learn to embrace the slub!  I’m hoping that this will become a slightly textured yarn with a bit of personality – at this rate I think I should actually find out quite soon – watch this space.  Oh, and the little Easter egg?  I was looking for little balls to wind plying balls around but all I could find was eggs, they do the same job though.

Exciting!

Even though I have been spinning since New Year, I haven't yet made a proper complete yarn to speak of.  Although I did spin a small sample and ply it (blogged here), that one doesn't really count.  As I've bought and made more spindles I've been starting more and more projects and ended up with loads of spindles full of singles, but no finished objects.  Given that this is the way I manage my knitting projects as well, this really shouldn't come as a surprise to me and I probably shouldn't try to fight it.  However, I have actually finished two matching singles and started to ply it last night.

I think I was so enchanted by the sparkles that I was spinning in with this that I just got on with and it will now be my first finished yarn, despite being the fourth one I started.  It's probably only about 20 grams of yarn, so just a little skein, but I already love it, my first born yarn!

A new spindle arrived yesterday, bought from this seller on eBay.  I like it a lot, it's pretty and spins nicely  for a long time.  The fibre I'm spinning on it is the lovely bright merino I got from Shunklies recently.  I've split it in half and I'm going to spin 50g as is, all the colours mixing together and for the second 50g I'm going to try and split the colours up a little and try and preserve some of the bright colourfulness of the top.  And maybe I might sneak some sparkles in there too - for motivation you understand!

Yarn - I made it, I did.

My first yarn

A couple of weeks work and I have finally completed my first spindle full of yarn, hurrah and a big pat on the back for myself.  Quite frankly I was beginning to be a little sick of the sight of bottle green so I pulled out all of the stops to finish it off.  The plan is now to spin up and equal amount of a lighter shade of green and then ply them together and achieve a hitherto unimagined greeny effect.  Sounds unpleasant?  I am fully prepared for just that outcome.  But first this yarn needed to come off the spindle.  I've spent a lot of time reading up on what to do next, many different people have many different preferences and I decided my best bet was to wind it all off on to my ball winder.

 Voila.  The obvious problem with this is that all of the really ropey yarn that I was making before the process became more natural is now on the outside of the ball with my slightly more consistent stuff lurking unseen inside somewhere.  Would rewinding the ball to hide the dodgy bits be too conceited do you think?  Or actually a good idea so that I have a good representation of the thickness of yarn I am going for on the second single?  All of that aside I would like to introduce my new spindle which I made last night.

The ones I made the other day have sadly been put aside because we couldn't get a hook in without splitting the chopsticks.  I've kept the whorls in case they fit on some replacement chopsticks, but for the moment I will have to make do with this one made from a dowel and a fimo whorl.  It's not terribly professional looking and is probably not very well balanced, but it seems to spin and I look forward to taking it for a spin (arf!) later.  I've got two more similar lengths of dowels to use, so hopefully this spindle will have a couple more friends before the weekend is out.

2011

Christmas and New Year have come and gone, for the most part pleasantly and I'm looking forward to a year ahead full of creating and inspiration.  The holiday period boded well for this, lots of projects finished and much progress made on new projects.  More on these soon (i.e. when I'm at home and can access my photos!), but today I'm all about my new project.....spinning!  I know I promised myself I wouldn't think about it or even learn anything about it, but I couldn't help myself.  Once I started hand dying the idea of knitting something from fibre I dyed and spun myself just seemed right.  Like something I could really call my own.  So for now here is a nice little pic of what has been exclusively occupying my mind for the last few days, not bad if I do say so myself.