Spinning All the Day Long

If you've been following on IG, you know I've was bit by the spinning bug. Or maybe more like an obsession.

And not the type of obsession where you do it for 30 minutes to an hour each night. No, more like once I pick it up, I can't put it down. I think last Sunday, I started after lunch and essentially didn't stop until well past bedtime. (Once I was close, I just had to finish the ball.) So maybe more like an addiction.

What I am working on is some fiber I started a year or two ago-Malabrigo Nube (colour Azules).

I had two singles already spun from some.

I had some plan for spinning a three-ply yarn, but it just wasn't coming together. (I had never found the third colour to use.) Anyway, I decided to just carry on and make two-ply yarn from the singles.

So that's what I did with my redneck "bobbins" and "lazy kate".

In not too long (you know it was finished the same day it was started!), I had this two-ply yarn:

Spinning singles is fun and all, but plying is super fun. It's fast, requires a lot less work, and you get to see the final yarn! (It's also really fun to watch the interplay of the colours on the two singles coming together.)

I didn't measure but something in the process made me note that I think it's about 250 yds. It's a little too loosely plied and there is a chance I may hit it again and fix that.

Once that was done, I turned my attention to the sister yarn in colour Lavanda.

I had half of it already spun.

I ended up splitting the second half of the fiber into two hanks because it was too much for my spindle to do all at once, and at the end I had three hanks of singles:

They measured 252m (275yd), 184m (201yd) and 124m (135yd).

I think you can see the colour difference between the middle (larger) hank and the ones on the outside. I believe I split the original roving in half lengthwise, which normally would make the two halves match, but apparently one side had more colour than the other! (Or something about how I spun them - two years apart - changed how the colour played out.)

I set about plying them together (combining the two different colour tones) and ended up with these two squishy hanks:

They looked like a matched pair (which is good) and I think I got a much better twist on the two-ply this time. (This is what encourages me to take a second run at the Azules.)

The yardage of these two hanks is 162m and 116m, 278m (304yd) total.

Maybe because I was still stuck on the three-ply yarn, but I kept thinking that I needed a third partner for these two yarns. Maybe if I were in stores more often, I would have purchased more (roving was hard to resist even when I wasn't spinning) but then I remembered this yarn:

It's the same fiber as above in the colour Archangel.

I spun it back in 2014. It was definitely a beginner project. I still really like the colours and I like the yarn, but I just don't knit with bulky yarns that much. And certainly not inconsistent almost thick and thin bulky yarns. I like them, (they're really pretty), but I've realized I don't really like to work with them.

This would have made an interesting cowl (I think there was enough yardage) but I didn't need another short bulky cowl. So it sat in a box until this week, when I pulled it out, untwisted the plies and then respun the singles to match the other two yarns:

Or I'm working on it anyway. I have the first half done and a good start on the second half. Then I'll ply them together and then I'll be ready to find a project for these yarns.

I saw this shawl pattern recently:

Briochealicious by Andrea Mowry

It uses three colours with a constant colour running through. (the striped sections are brioche stitch). It looks lovely to me but I'm not sure it's the exact thing I want. (And I'm not sure I have enough yardage.) But I'm thinking something along these lines. (Because I don't need another short bulky cowl, but I don't have enough big-ass shawls, right?!)

I went through my stash recently (looking for that Archangel yarn, now that I think about it) and I found a good amount of a light "natural"-coloured wool/silk mix that may do. Once I get this last yarn finished, I see some swatching in my future. I'm looking forward to finding out how these yarns will knit up.

Second Chances

When I'm knitting, I know I can always take it out. Undo it and start over afresh. (Except with mohair or angora--those are just better to get right the first time.)

I thought spinning was different.

I told you before that I was spinning some grey fibres and was hoping to use one of them with some red cashmere for a pattern. I started spinning some Jacob fibre and it just seemed to want to be thicker than I could use. So I put it aside and spun some Blue Faced Leicester. That was spinning a nice thin thread that I thought would really work.

But it was white and I couldn't let go of the idea of using grey.

I don't remember if I watched the Craftsy class on plying yarn before or after this, but in the class she made the point that you can always go back and respin something to add more twist (or unspin it some if it's too twisted). At some point when I was spinning white fibre and wishing for grey, I tried the grey again and was able to get a much thinner result. So I spun the rest of the grey, but didn't finish the yarn with a soak or a blocking.

What I did do was wind it into a ball and then redid the spinning process. Yes, I had to untwist 3-5 inch sections, draft them and then retwist them, but I have to say it went faster than working from a raw fibre and I was getting the result I wanted.

On the left (above) you can see some of the original yarn and on the right is the newly respun yarn. It made a big difference! I have no idea if this is "allowed" in spinning, but I took the chance that if there are no knitting police and no quilting police (and many people have assured me of this), then there are no spinning police about to bust down my door and take me a way in handcuffs. (At least, they haven't yet.)

In the first spinning I had 75 yards of a yarn the maybe averaged 12 WPI (wraps per inch, a measure of thickness). After the second spinning I had 130 yards of a yarn between 16 and 18 WPI.

I soaked it last night, gave it a couple of good snaps while still damp, hung it to dry and rolled it up this evening:

 I was time to swatch again.

Although it's still not perfect (you can see how the sides bulge out where the grey is), it is much better than my last swatch and I think it is good enough. The grey is used in smaller amounts (no more than four rows at a time) and in places where a bulge won't really harm (sleeve cuffs and cowl collar). The pattern calls for grey stripes at the bottom hem too, but I had already decided to omit it there.

I did most of the respinning in one go on Sunday and didn't realize I was using the same spot on my thumb to pull on the fibre to draft it. By the time I noticed, the whole pad of my thumb tingled and felt numb. Once I was aware of it, I used different areas of my fingers, but my thumb is taking a while to heal. Unfortunately, it's the same area on my thumb that I use to hold a knitting needle so I've had to limit my knitting time this week. Today was pretty good, but it's Wednesday and my thumb still tingles when I push on it! Live and learn.