Spinning News

Eek, this post is a few days old as it managed to escape posting for a while. but I hope still relevant to most of you. Just don’t be surprised in a few days when it seems like I’ve made a huge amount of progress. I’m not that quick.

I’ve been meaning to write a post about spinning for some time now, and although I wasn’t able to take spinning with me this weekend, I’ve still been spinning. This is a good thing.

I still have to spend some time with a niddy nody and my BFL, but I’ve been avoiding it. In part because winding 7 skeins doesn’t sound like fun, but also, this is undyed white fiber and I’d kind of like to have a sense of what I’m going to do with it before I skein it up. I guess the most likely thing is to run a big dye pot for an afternoon and see if I can get all of the yarn to be variations on a single color. I don’t really want hand painted yarn or anything, but kettle dyed something might be fun.

My current spinning project is this blue hand-dyed roving that I’m making 3-ply from. I’m spinning up the singles for the last ply. and I think it’s going to be pretty cool. I hope to be done with this yarn by tomorrow afternoon. I’m really close. There’s about 8 ounces of fiber here, and it’s merino, but I think there’s something “off” with the fiber quality. It’s really soft, and the dye job is pretty good, but it’s like the fiber is too dry. I think I’m going to put some baby oil or hair conditioner in the rinse bath of the yarn and see if that helps make the yarn a bit more sturdy and less dry seeming.

Since my return to spinning, I’ve tried to think very carefully about what I’m spinning and what that yarn is going to end up being. Even if it’s stuff I’m not going to keep, I think one of the things that makes spinning more effective is spinning yarn for a project rather than just spinning a pretty roving because it’s pretty. Having said that, I’m pretty clueless as to what this yarn is going to become. Socks and a hat? For Sale on Etsy or some such? I might keep it around as stash. We shall see.

My next spinning project is sitting on the other side of my office: 2 lbs. of grey shetland, that I want to spin 3ply DK weight yarn from, I think with the intention of making a pretty traditional cabled gansey. I’d probably knit it tightly, but not tightly. In any case, I’m getting ahead of myself¹ the fiber is really nice. I got it from Copper Moose and the service (and price!) were really great, and I’m looking forward to getting into this spinning. Natural grey fibers are so much fun.

I think after that, I’m going to try for some darkly colored BFL, which is a bit harder to find, but I think might be akin to nirvana.

I haven’t gotten around to making the hybrid double drive, or the extra drive bands. These things happen, of course.

Onward and Upward!