My Year of Spinning

Cheers to 2012! Among other very meaningful milestones in my life, it was also a great year of spinning for me.
 
I've been doing more spinning lately than knitting, and since a picture paints a thousand words, I'll just save some typing time and post my latest and favorite hand-spun yarns.
 

 

 
Above is 4 oz of Dawning Dreams hand-painted superwash merino. I spun it into a traditional 3-ply yielding about 300 yards of light worsted weight yarn.
 

 
Above is 4 oz of Greenwood Fiberworks hand-painted polwarth I received from a swap partner. I spun it into a traditional 2-ply yeilding about 420 yards of heaving fingering weight yarn.
 

 
Above is 9 oz of Yarn Hollow hand-painted superwash merino. It's a traditional 2-ply, about 500 yards of thick & thin ranging from sport to aran weight yarn.
 
Most of the time, I don't plan any color combination in spinning and just randomly split skeins and plied, letting the colors just fall where they may. I prefer spinning freely rather than methodically, that way, I just relax and enjoy, and am always surprised and pleased with the outcome.
 
However, for the red skein, I tried fractal plying, which is essentially splitting a multi-colored roving so that one ply has long color repeats and the other ply has much shorter repeats. I split my roving lengthwise in half, spun that half on one bobbin, and they split the second half lengthwise again into four strips and spun those onto another bobbin. I actually tried doing that in the beginning with the green-yellow-lavender yarn, but then I lost track of which bobbin held what, so it became more random in the end.
 
In the process I learned to always label every bobbin & skein with details of spinning methods. Not only did I loose track of my fractal method, but I also lost track of which whorl ratio I used, which is very easy to forget when weeks or months span between one bobbin to the next.
 
As for next year, I look forward to spinning a mountain of alpaca and silk that my fiance gifted me this Christmas. Three pounds of glistening white bombyx silk AND two pounds of unprocessed white alpaca. So 2013 will be a year of learning fiber prep, too!
 

 

I got hooked on spinning, and though I love spindling, it's just not fast enough sometimes.  I purchased a spinning wheel back in April. That's why I've been quiet around here. Well, with that and also wrapping up my bachelor of science degree and landing a new job as a high school science teacher. Here's my Kromski Sonata in walnut, along with the jumbo and fast flyers and the arched lazy kate, plus some natural brown merino, all from CopperMoose.com.

The Sonata is a portable wheel with a backpack so I've been able to haul it to a local spinning group I meet with once a month.  Three of us have the same wheel!



Here are the first yarns I spun.  The first three are from brown & cream tone mill end rovings from TheSheepShedStudio.com. The last one is my first try at woolen style spinning of the brown merino. I've spun many more yarns and acquired a lot more fiber since, and I'll post photos and details a little later.

Monet Shawl from Handmade Spindles

I ventured into simple spindle making with a few household supplies and tools.   Here's the result of my lightweight chopstick and washer spindles.   Since they're nearly identical, I plied directly off these to make a lovely colorful yarn which I knit into a little neck shawl.





 

The Second Batch of Spindled Yarn

Last November I purchased a few pounds of mill end roving from TheSheepShedStudio.com which I spun last winter.  The wool is a lot sturdier and with a longer staple length than the merino I first tried, but still soft enough to wear. I love how black & white striped roving spins into a lovely dark gray. Though it looks like a cabled yarn, it's a 2-ply. The barber pole effect in the single gives the plied yarn the cabled look. This yarn is a bulky, which I'll probably knit into a hat someday.

The First Spindled Yarns

I've been enjoying making yarn on a spindle. This is the result of my first attempts of single and 2-ply yarns of a silky heathered merino, spun last year in November. Each batch looks different from the last, because I was getting better and more consistent.

I knit a hat from some of this first batch.

My Very First Yarn

Ok, I found it. I found the first yarn I ever spindled, back in fall 2006. Then I never spun again. It just seemed like a whole lot of work for very little yarn. And then when comparing prices :-O it was more expensive to buy the materials than to buy commercial yarn. (I’m still trying to figure that one out.) This is like 20-ish yards of superbulky thick-n-thin yarn from commercial wool top that my spinning friend Kelley gave me and tried to teach a couple of us how to spin using CD-spindles.

You should’ve seen me trying to ply this. My friend was gone, and I had no idea what I was doing. So I unrolled the singles and laid them out, zigzag across my bed. Then I picked up the two ends and plied back onto the CD spindle. Then it sat on that spindle for 5 years before I finally unrolled it and took this photo.

Part of me wants to just keep it skeined as a memento. On the other hand, I have the urge to un-ply it, un-spin it, and then spin it again to pull out the thick slubs. What would y’all do - keep it or modify it?

Learning to Spin in 2006
 

My First Spindle

I said I would never spin yarn. Not that I don't like it, but I just don't have much room for more craft supplies, nor do I need any more yarn. But try walking into the Yarn Barn of Kansas and NOT get tempted by their wares. My first intent was to buy a small ball of luxury yarn. Instead, I came home with a Schacht 2.2 oz Hi-Lo Whorl and 8 oz. of Merino Mulicolor Top. After a few awkward batches, I finally got the hang of it, and can spin a fairly even and thin yarn to be plied into a thicker yarn.