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.

Spin, spin, spin

All advice I've read about learning to spin mentions spinning a bit every single day, so I have been.  I must say that this seems to be doing the trick and I really feel like I'm starting to get there.  The photo above probably doesn't look all that impressive, but I'm really rather proud of myself.  I was expecting my first yarn to come out really thick and thin, but this is mostly thin and a bit thinner.  It is by no means consistent yet but it is not as wildly varied as I thought it would be.  The plan for this is to spin until the bottle green runs out and then spin another strand out of a lighter green and then ply the two together and see what I end up with.

I've ordered a load more top in various different colours, as well as some to dye myself and hopefully if will arrive soon so that I can take some pictures.  Now obviously if I have all this tempting fibre on the way I'm going to need more spindles.  Much as I wish that I could be the type of person who is 'project monogamous' I'm just not, so I've been busy crafting my own spindles.

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They don't have hooks in yet so I have no idea how they spin, but they are only made from chopsticks and fimo so it won't break my heart if they turn out to be sucky.  I've also got a length of dowel to use so I can make some that are a bit meatier than these dainty little things.

Believe it or not I have actually also found some time for knitting.  The back of Stu's cardigan is done and I'm about 1/4 of the way up the right front..  I'd love to take a picture but every time I try there is magically a cat in the way.  Maybe I'll try again when they are eating or chasing the laser pointer or something.  So in lieu of a cardi pic here's a pic of the chief photo bomber herself.

Izzy cat