Hello all. It’s been a while that I’ve not blogged. Too long that I haven’t blogged really. I had a full time job and then suddenly I had no time to write let alone finish miscellaneous to do list. Now that I had some “unfortunate” free time let me tell you about my spinning experience.
During my desk job, I hadn’t been spinning on my wheels just because all I did was sit 8 – 10 hours / day. After going home, I didn’t feel to sit another 1 hour or so spinning. So what I did was I brought my drop spindles to work for work breaks and lunch breaks. Surprisingly I liked drop spindle for work breaks better than knitting because drop spindle spinning made some all over body movement thus move blood around to brain thus made me more awake.
Drop spindle spinning definitely wins in terms of production. I was able to spin lace weight 2 ply in a matter of 3 months when before it took me 7 months to spin single and then ply with a wheel. And believe it or not, drop spindle spinning gave me more understanding in terms of twist. Apparently I tend to spin more twist with a wheel. With drop spindle I can feel the twist and I found out that I like my single to be slightly on the under twist side because as a knitter knitting with rope-feel yarn makes the hands ache. Ooo don’t think nothing good comes out of hard twisted yarn. My handspun socks that were so over twisted have less pilling and felt so fit to my feet. But when I was knitting those socks, curses came out of my mouth.
Anyway. It’s about that time of the year again. Shepherd Harvest!! I bought 2.5lb of mysterious fiber back in Shepherd Harvest 2009 for $27.50. The vendor had no clue what fiber it was but claimed it was wool. Being as a new spinner and all of course $27.50 for a sweater is a freaking cheap entertainment. But if I could go back, I’d probably not buy this. Why? Well it wasn’t exactly nicely prepared fiber. I had to picked out lots of VM during spinning. The fiber is very very bouncy and had lots of twigs. So I’d not knit this as next-to-skin kind of sweater. Hoping more like a jacket or a cardigan. Well see.
Started spinning in Dec 2009
wheel: Mach 1 with 1:5 ratio
Done spinning single April 2011
planning to be 3ply yarn.
washed sample yarn gave an aran weight yarn.
I’m hoping to get about 1000yd out of this fiber after plying. ya…. maybe
