Monday, May 19, 2008

Weekend Spinning

Over the weekend I was supposed to garden...
Plant, garden, garden, plant. Instead, I played outside without doing any work - and spun a little bit. (Co-workers did come to take some well-propagating zebra grass on Saturday. That counts a little, right?)

So, here's some Crown Mountain Farm BFL roving that you've seen before in Stonehenge.

The singles were spun up - 4 oz. per bobbin last week.

After plying, I washed the skein and placed it in the shower for drying. (Yes, I had to move it to shower last night.)

The 8 oz. spun up into about 475 yards of light fingering weight yarn. What do you think about knitting Laminaria with it?
I had a small amount that didn't fit on the large skein. It dried pretty quickly, and I was able to take an accurate color shot:

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The Twisted Fiber Art shop opened up two weeks ago, and I purchased a wee bit of roving from them. One was a skein of Guardian-colorway- in 'lively' - superwash merino. (Cathy gets the enabler badge for starting my wee addiction to this fiber line.) My hank of Guardian had dark purple instead of black - which I loved.I used the fractal 2-ply method for spinning the braid. This creates long striping barberpole yarn. Here's a quick how-to I learned on Ravelry:

1. Split the roving in half. 2. Split one half lengthwise in multiple strips. (here, I had 10.) 3. Spin the first half with looong color repeats. 4. Spin the second half -the short repeats- on a separate bobbin. 5. Ply together.

You can get a sense of how the yarn stripes when it's on the bobbin.Off the bobbin and on the stretcher (niddy noddy, although I like to type 'knitty noddy'), it just looks like barberpoling handspun. Ze stripes have disappeared!
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When I spin, the wheel is right next to a window and the couch. Both dogs like to either wistfully look outside, or seemingly glare at me for spending time with fiber instead of them. Here's a little proof with Paco pics:











6 comments:

Knitted Gems said...

Your yarn looks so beautiful!

I love how you altered the colors when plying. One day soon, I will try to spin something other than undyed wool. Grin. I just want to get a bit more practice under my belt.

Guinifer said...

Pretty yarn and very sweet little faces on the boys.

bockstark.knits said...

gorgeous handspun! stonehenge is one on my list to do!

Elemmaciltur said...

Purdy....I like the second one. Not sure about Stonehenge.

Diane said...

I don't know how you can spin without guilt .... those soulful eyes looking at you.

Your yarn is beautiful.

Monika said...

Love both yarns. I like the shawl you are thinking about making too.