A peek into the world of that most rabid of all polygons... the triangle. Are you ready to be excited, charmed, and impressed? If so, you're probably in the wrong place. Please enjoy, anyway, though.
The past few days have been quite eventful for me as far as spinning goes! First, I started plying my rambouillet yarn. It looks great!
So far, it's come out to 580 yards of fingering weight 2 ply yarn. It's smooshy and soft and I'm very much looking forward to dyeing it. I'm going to save that mini skein, which is about 25 yards, and knit a square of my sock yarn blanket before and after adding dye. That's the plan, at least.
I have been spindling up a storm, as well! I have a few pictures here and there, but I haven't been posting them. Woops!
This is the 1 oz amount I spun up on the spindle and have now wound off and started the last ounce of the braid. Woo!
It's kind of awesome, because Dax helped and held the spindle while I wound the yarn off of it. It was very sweet and and helpful of him.
Anyway, it looks like my TdF progress is going very, very well and I'm interested in seeing how this targhee turns out once it's plied. It's not as uniform and even as my wheelspun yarn, but I really haven't had too much practice with the spindle. As it is, I'm just thrilled to be on the show. :)
I have finished working with half the fiber for both of my major projects and wound everything up into balls to be used for plying once the other half is finished! Yay!
The targhee looks good. The two amounts I spun up on the spindle are not equal, but I'm hoping I'll be able to join them up during plying since yardage is not going to be the same between the two of them, anyway. I wish I had bothered to get a picture of the cop on the spindle before taking it off to wind, but I was so excited I didn't think of it.
The rambouillet is my pride and joy. During the winding process, I realized exactly how consistent it was and was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it has nepps and it's a bit bumpy, but the overall consistency is pretty even, so yay! Also it looks like it'll ply up into a lace weight yarn... considering this is 4 oz already, I am actually rather upset about this because this is only the first half of the fiber. I have 4 oz left. No one in their right mind needs 8 oz of laceweight yarn. Anyway, I may end up plying this on itself and leaving it at that. I'm also excited about the prospect of dyeing this because it's my first time really spinning an undyed white yarn.
The little bit at the top is what I worked on with the tahkli. It got full pretty fast, but I think I was just not winding the cop on evenly enough. I will continue to mess with it here and there and report the results, but it's not a priority right now.
Wow, I can't believe it's been thirteen days already! I have gotten quite a bit of spinning done today, I think. My main task was to get my fiber all portioned out and really get a good look at how much I've done as the tour is now more than halfway over. I'm about where I expected to be, halfway or so. I'm hoping to hit the halfway mark in my fiber for both of my main projects tomorrow.
I spent the entire day with my two good friends and their daughter and I had the opportunity to spindle a teensy bit while we were at an indoor playground. It was a fun place and I'm looking forward to going again sometime.
Anyway, a picture!
I love the red of this fiber. Andrea at Natural Obsessions does such a great job! I also spun a bit on the wheel, but not enough to take a picture of, really. It doesn't look too terribly different. Anyway, I'm going to have some free time tomorrow so I'm looking forward to getting quite a bit done. It's the second bit of the tour, now, I have to get a move on and push toward my goals!
Well, I bet the first question is about Day 11. Yesterday was a day of rest and I didn't spin a damn thing. It was well-deserved and it felt nice to just sit back and take a break and knit for a bit.
Day 10 was Monday. I had a really strangely busy day and didn't get around to spinning at all until about 6:30 while I was at game night. You see a recurring theme? Anyway, I had a lot of fun drop spindling and I'm getting pretty good at walking around while spinning, which is indeed necessary when you've been sitting debating rules and strategy for a bit and you just need to get up off your butt and move around.
Day 12 was today, Wednesday. I wasn't too horribly busy and, honestly, it was quite a rainy day and I wanted to do nothing more than sit and spin while watching random episodes of anime or Battlestar Galactica, which I did until about 5:30 and then went to dinner with a friend and then bought comic books and hung out a bit. Anyway, when I got home I was greeted by a package!
A few days ago, someone on ravelry messaged me after seeing a post I had made about wanting to try my hand with the tahkli. Turns out, she had an extra and asked me if I was interested in her sending it to me. I thanked her profusely and gave her my address and it shipped miraculously fast with some surprise unknown fiber inside, which I shamelessly began spinning before I even took a picture of the spindle. Since that's how I roll.
Anyway, a tahkli spindle is a very small spindle that can be spun sort of like a top and goes at really high speeds, so it's ideal for working with short staple fibers like cotton and, apparently, cat fur?
Anyway, this video shows some of the basics of using a tahkli and even making the puni, which is another way to prepare cotton fiber rather than just roving. It's a good video to just see the mechanics, at any rate.
Anyway, the generous, amazing, wonderful, amazeballs person of amazingness who sent me this beautiful gift has an etsy shop called Unwind Yarn Company and she has some gorgeous fiber and yarn and just... yeah. So, in return for her amazing act of kindness I am giving her a piece of my soul and a shameless shout out to my tee nincey audience that may or may not actually exist. Huzzah!
Anyway, I made some great progress today and I am looking forward to filling up my bobbin on my spinning wheel, probably tomorrow! Hopefully this is a sign of things to come and I may actually finish all 8 oz of my rambouillet roving I have!
I had a very busy day, today. Aside from work, which was good, I had a few errands to run. I went to the pet shop and bought food for the rats, cats, and my dad's parrot because he was out. Cat food and rat food are pretty reasonably priced, in my opinion, but when I got to the parrot food I was completely shocked. $22 for 4.5 lbs. Really? I was not aware that my dad's pretentious bird had a strict dietary requirement of unicorn farts and fairy eyelashes. Sheesh! I, of course, bought it and he is probably looking in my direction with murderous intent. Ingrate.
Anyway, after all of that excitement, I went and played Pathfinder at a friend's house and spun like the wind!
I wound a ball of singles and started spinning a new cop! Woo! It was fun and I really wasn't too distracted for game, to be honest. It was a lot of fun and I have game tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to bringing my spinning up to Denny's. Oh, joy.
Well, today has been fun and eventful. I continued working on the targhee that I have been spindling. The last I measured, I have spun approximately 0.6 oz. Oh, joy! The current plan is to get about an ounce per time I fill up the spindle, then ply to make two little skeins of whatever it will be. It's going great!
When I got home from work, I found a package waiting for me and... woo! Fiber! I got some gorgeous pima cotton from NO and, basically, raced over to my friend's house to use her charkha to spin a little of it and see how it went. The charkha experience was interesting, to say the very least. Once we figured out how to get the thing set up properly, everything went all right. I did start to pick it up, but honestly I'd prefer to use a support spindle like a takli rather than the charkha, I think, because the charkha just involves some really funny ways of moving. We will see. I'm hoping to have some time during TdF to play with the takli a little, so hopefully more on that later.
Please excuse the blurriness of that picture!
... and my end product looked somewhat like a joint. Ha! It was a fun little experiment, though, and I think the charkha is something I could get used to, but I'm looking forward to trying various methods to see what I like best for spinning cotton roving.
Well, I have some progress from the past two days! I didn't work too much with the rambouillet I've been working on yesterday, but today I decided to take a break and spin some of the Natural Obsessions fiber I have. So, I went up to Yarnivore and bought a new drop spindle. The particular one I bought was a Schacht Hi-Low. I like it because I really don't like top whorl spindles and it's hard to find bottom whorl sometimes. Anyway, I like it. It's a good spindle.
I spun up some sample fiber I bought at the shop and... it turned out okay, I guess.
I'm really surprised it turned out so well since I really haven't been spindling recently. Anyway, I ran home and grabbed my targhee fiber from NO and brought it back. I'm pretty pleased with the result!
I can see the benefit of spindling. It's much simpler to transport and I really find it to be very soothing. It's not that I don't love my wheel and that's not relaxing, but spindling is just different. Anyway, I think I've managed to actually overspin a bit so I'm looking forward to plying this single to see how it turns out!
Lately, I have been jumping in on the spinning bandwagon again. I'm glad. I have seen a huge amount of progress in the past few weeks. So, let's give a time line, shall we?
This yarn was spun up on 4-26-2012, the day I quit smoking. I will be honest, it seems spinning has helped me out quite a bit in quitting. This was spun up from some merino I purchased at Yarnivore and it's dyed locally by Alisha Goes Around. Her yarns were also at Yellow Rose, but I did not purchase anything of hers there because my local yarn shop carries her stuff. I also did not see any roving, which made me sad because I was very happy with what I got. Anyway, I actually purchased this wool quite some time ago when I was experimenting with spindling. I do still use a drop spindle here and there, and have determined that I am just better off with a bottom whorl drop spindle instead, but I stick with the wheel more often. Anyway, this is the yarn that I ended up spinning. It's... not very good. I did not record the yardage, which if I do recall was actually quite small (about 40), but it's an attempt at navajo plying. The best demo I have ever seen of this is this:
Anyway, this is the result:
I was honest, it does not look great! However, I had a bit of that roving left over s I decided to do something else with it the next day. I went ahead and spun it into a single and then plied it with a single of undyed Australian wool I spun from some roving I had laying around I had bought from Dharma Trading. Anyway, it came out much, much better. It's just a traditional 2-ply. It came out to about worsted weight and 120 yards. I really like it and hope to knit up Calorimetry from it. It's the perfect yardage for it.
Then, I went over to Yarnivore that weekend and could not help myself. I bought some BFL top and spun it up. In reality, the yarn is dyed varied orangey browns to greys, but it came out orange and brown so it's the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Yarn, officially. It also had some thick and thin here and there, but I think it came out better, still. 175 yards, 2-ply, worsted-ish.
The single:
Plied:
Next is the yarn I was spinning when I posted my last blog entry. I purchased the fiber from Natural Obsessions. It's Targhee wool in her denim colorway, 4 oz. It was unfortunately too much for one skein, so there is one that is 190ish yards and another that's 40ish, so probably somewhere around 230 yards total. It came out to be a mostly worsted weight yarn. I keep spinning thicker yarns, but I know that I'm getting thinner and thinner singles as I go on, so hopefully I will be doing better. This also had more thick/thin problems than I am happy with, but it's better than before. Also, this is the first yarn I wound up on my new niddy noddy I ordered from Nancy's Knit Knacks. I love it. Really.
Single:
Plied:
Now, finally... the fiber that I was gifted by Lazy Pi Farm's Jules. She is an awesome person and we compete on the Battlestar Galactica FPB group on Ravelry. Anyway, she gave me a few ounces of fiber from her farm and I was very happy to receive it. It's the shiniest yarn I have ever seen. It's breathtaking. I look at it and wonder how I did that. It's yarn I would see at the store and want. Anyway, it came out to something around sport or DK weight, 120 yards with some slight fluctuations out of that range, but the thick/thin is minor, as compared, and nowhere near as frequent as with the targhee yarn. It's also the first time I have done end-to-end plying. It's where you take your single, wind it up into a ball, then ply it from the outside and inside so it goes from one long single to a 2-ply. Anyway, it's a neat technique and it explains why it's wound up in the ball in the single picture.
Single:
Plied:
Anyway, I need to figure out what to do with all of this yarn! :) However, I have decided to jump in on Tour de Fleece this year. I'm excited about it! I will be on the rookie team if anyone is interested in joining us! :)
