Category: Spin Page 68 of 69

I did my first successful navajo ply today … as in, it didn’t turn out as a big knotted mess. The first skein today was over twisted (cat toy now). The second skein was with handpainted roving. Wow. What a difference that makes to the finished yarn.

I didn’t try to stop the colorways exactly at the end of a loop, but let the color “bleed” into each other. This resulted in a blended color transition instead of sharp color changes. This worked because the roving had soft color changes.

Questions for the masses:

– Do you make clean color breaks when navajo plying? How do you do that? Do you treadle very slowly, stop and align the yarn “just so”? Or do you just let it happen?

– What do you do when the single breaks? How do you restart the crochet loops? This was driving me nuts. Perhaps I didn’t have enough twist in my single, but it kept breaking/pulling apart. Do you need to have more twist than you would normally put in?

Anyway, I’ll need to practice some more before I can knit with any of these finished skeins. Now that I can see what the end result in handpainted rovings, I can go back to beast for practice.

Ever had one of those days? A voice in my head kept screaming at me all day … “must spin silk … must have silk … NOW!” It was getting quite noisy in my office with all that screaming. It made it darn difficult to work. I left the office as soon as it was deemed appropriate, dug out some silk I had in my stash, a drop spindle, and aaahhh, the voices stopped. I can hear the cat beating up on the dog again (EliSpot missed Waldo while he was at the groomer today.)

Here’s a Christmas beanie that I made last year. I wore it today, and remembered why I didn’t wear it last year … my head is too big or hair is too smooth/slick for it to stay on. I do like the fake rolled edge though. I think I’ll have to make another one, a little bigger this time.

The sweater vest is almost done. I pieced the shoulder seams last night and knitted the neck ribbing. I just need to seam the sides and knit the sleeve ribbings tonight, now that the silk spinning demands have been somewhat satisfied.

By Jove, I think I’ve done it! The elusive long draw! I have some wool/mohair rolags that I carded a while ago. I thought I’d take it for a spin today, with the intent of using the single to practice my Navajo plying technique.

It’s the first time that I spun with rolags. I’ve also spun commercial rovings. One thing led to another, I did it! The long draw. I am so excited.

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough twist in most of it to be able to ply it (it keeps falling apart).

I was able to 2-ply a very small bit of it at the end because I finally changed to a higher ratio for spinning the single. That worked much better. It added the requisite spin to hold the fiber together.

And yum! It is sooo soft. There is so much more loft than spinning using the inchworm technique. I know a lot of it is because of the mohair content, but yum-mee!

I don’t know if I can do this with commerical rovings or if I would have to spin from the fold (another technique that I haven’t tried).

This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for experimentation. I know it not places where no spinner has gone before, but they are new to me.

On knitting … I’ve started shaping the shoulders of the front of the vest. I was planning on finishing it today and block it tomorrow, but I got carried away with the spinning. I’ll knit tonight while we watch LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring.

I saw The Two Towers yesterday. Wow! The imagery was pure magic! I also saw it at the right theater. We saw The Fellowship last year at a cineplex, small flat screen with okay sound. This time, I went to the Cinerama with a curved screen and state of the art sound system. I have to tell you, Paul Allen did a great job restoring that theater. You actually feel like you are in the middle of the battle, about to be trampled by the orcs.

Got some knitting done on Martin’s surprise present while waiting in line and for the movie to start.