Category: Spin Page 65 of 69

I’ve been spinning away on this brown merino x roving on and off for the past month, and this is all I have to show for it. Don’t get me wrong. I love the wool, but I’ve been spinning away at it at night, when I’m tired, and I’ve been under a lot of stress with family stuff lately. So, I just wasn’t paying as much attention to the spinning as I should have.

What’s wrong? Well, the wpi count for the end of the bobbin is approximately 56 wpi. And the yarn at the start of the bobbin is, eh-hem, 24 wpi. Over twice the thickness. Sigh. The good news is that I think it was only that thick in the first 10 yards or so. The remaining 1000 yards (?) should be fairly consistent.

I planned on making a 3 ply yarn with this (and that will even out in the finished yarn even more), so I have another 2 bobbins to go before I can start plying. And I have a beautiful red merino x that I wanted to spin up in a 3 ply also to do some colorwork with. I think it would make a beautiful sweater for my sweetie, who has gone above and beyond the call to help my family through our current crisis, while still trying to deal with his own father.

After all that dark colored spinning, I jumped back in with these colorful kettle dyed merino x rovings in worsted weight. Do you realize that I don’t have a single pair of socks made with my own handspun? I know. What a mind blowing revelation. I will need to remedy that.

I can justify casting these on since I finished a pair of footies for Martin and ripped that other sweater out. That’s one new project for knocking 2 WIPs out of the way. That’s fair, isn’t it?

Sigh. It was tough coming back from vacation. This was our home away from home for 9 glorious days: Sailing Vessel Pink Panther LS chartered from Sunsails, out of Tortolla, British Virgin Islands. Wish I was still back there: sun, tropical breezes, beautiful sailing weather, sandy beaches, wonderful snorkeling, and lobster BBQ on the beach…

Okay, enough of wishful thinking and back to spinning, as the entry title suggests.

Thank you, Amy for your pictorial of how you prep and spin your thick and spin. Believe it or not, I do split my rovings and pre-draft. But, that’s about all we did in common, and where I go wrong (in terms of making thick and thin yarn).

While I was pre-drafting this beautiful hand-painted roving from Paradise Fibers, I realized that, while I’ve always split and predrafted the roving, I don’t always make them into consistent sizes. So, you say, shouldn’t you still get thick and thin? Wouldn’t the thick and thin spots be more exaggerated? If one were to take my statement at face value, that would be so. But, I get the fiber into such a state that it can be drafted again easily, while spinning. Yes, I continue to draft while I spin, so that I get a nice even yarn.

So, following Amy’s advice, I tried really, really hard not to draft again while spinning the pre-drafted roving. But, I keep catching myself drafting more. But I like the results so far.

It’s more DK weight than worsted, but it’s a good first attempt.

I had a little problem with this wool because it’s superwash merino. I don’t know what possessed me to buy this, except that I possibly thought that it was the wool/silk blend that I also bought a bump of. The superwash should have made it good sock yarn, but I thought that merino was too soft and wouldn’t wear well for socks. I was also hesitant to turn it into thick and thin singles because I was worried that it would pill or, worse, fall apart, because the superwash wouldn’t allow the wool to lock together when softly spun.

Oh, well, that’s what experimentation is all about, right? I have about 10 oz of this. I should be able to make something out of this yarn. I really love the colors in this colorway.