Spinning Class

I'm glad I waited a week to write about the classes I took. If I'd have written about the spinning class I took at the time it would've been an unreadable mess because I was really on information overload.

My reasons for taking the Steek class can be summed up in 3 words - learn to steek. My reasons for taking the spinning class were less succinct. I'd heard that Judith Mackenzie McCuin was a great teacher and my spinning plainly sucks so I could use a great teacher. As a bonus, the class was called Sock Exotica and combining interesting and fibers with socks sounded cool as well. In other words, I signed up for the class on a whim.



What a class! We spend the day spinning all kinds of fiber while JMM talked to us about the origins of the fibers, the best way to spin them, and all kinds of fiber related subjects. A few took notes but most of us just listened intently. She is a font of knowledge.

From time to time she'd borrow one of our wheels to demonstrate one thing or another and while she did many of us would take pictures of her hands.

I should stop here and mention that I spent most of the day adjusting. First because, at her suggestion, I took my lace flyer out for the very first time. What a difference that made to my spinning! Second, I fought against my long draw instinct all day long. We were told that sock yarn and most of the fibers we were using should be spun worsted and I hadn't spun worsted in a very long time. The end result was some very interesting spinning.

So, when JMM asked to use my wheel - and my spinning - to demonstrate plying, t got a little interesting. That's my wheel she's using in the photo above. Every now and again she'd hit a wonky bit. By the third time it happened I was rolling. There is nothing quite like having your wonky bits exposed so publicly.



This fuzzy shot shows the plied yarn. Even with the occasional wonkiness it's really lovely stuff. It could be better but it could also be much worse like this stuff that I spun or finished right before class.



In the end, I had a great time in class and I think that my technique is improved. I also enjoyed class with Judith thoroughly. Her knowledge is encyclopedic. She even impressed DQ when we ran into her on Saturday and she told her about living in Forks and working on the Quileute reservation. I really hope that I have the opportunity to take class with Judith again.

You could say that I'm inspired to spin once again.

Spinning Again

As if to make up for the previous weekend that I spent being sick, this past weekend was a whirlwind of activity. I caught up on my laundry, did the shopping, attended another of Stinkette's games (she pitched!) and volunteered at the fall fair with DQ who needed public service hours. All that and so much more. By Sunday afternoon it was nice to have a little quiet time and I spent it out on the deck enjoying the gorgeous weather.

I knit on a few projects, read a book, and gave a little long overdue attention to my spinning. Bother the girls and Bruce had commented recently on how sad an neglected my wheels had been of late.

About a week ago I pulled out my Sonata and started spinning again and I quickly realized that it just felt off. I tried changing the chair I was sitting in and I adjusted everything that could be adjusted. Somewhere along the line we decided that the nameless Sonata seemed uncooperative and difficult. Stubborn maybe. For some strange reason it reminded me of Nellie Oleson and we began to refer to her as Nellie.

After a lot of consideration it occurred to me that the treadle was the source of the problem. It was oddly bouncy and it was ruining the spinning experience. It seemed like the treadle connectors might be a bit long - the treadles were nearly hitting the floor. So I loosened the appropriate screw, shortened the distance between the footman and the treadle and poof - it's all good now.

I haven't trimmed the excess connector yet because I wanted to be certain that the fix was working. After spending at least an hour spinning on the deck on Sunday I feel fairly certain that it's safe to trim the excess now.

So what was I spinning - MamaE's C-eyeber Fiber in a nameless color that screams fall. Those reds and oranges are so hard to capture but believe me - this stuff sings out in the sunlight.

Spinning Again

It's a very good day in this knitty neighborhood. I've gotten calls from hubbo telling me that he's really enjoying the debut of his new scarf and my grandfather telling me that he's wearing his new socks and they fit great. Of course I have no pictures of either of these things in use. Bah!

What I can show you is proof that my wheels are once again seeing a bit of action. Hooray!

First is a yarn that I'm calling Golden Tiger because that's what it reminded me of as I was plying it the other day. The yellow-orange ply is merino/silk from Cloverleaf Farm that I bought at MDS&W last year. It was such gorgeous stuff that looked golden and coppery and just wowed me. I love it so much that I left some of it as singles (seen below). I think it may just stay like that forever because I just adore it.

The darker ply in the Golden Tiger yarn is a natural colored wool that I can't identify. I think that it's one of the purchases I made last year in Ottawa. Australian or African something or other. I really wish I knew what it was because it's nice and soft and it spun well for me.

The only problem I have with this yarn is that the yardage is pretty short - 124 yards of the plyed stuff. It could be and accent on something or it could stay as is. When I'm spinning the yarn itself is the product and it pleases my just as is most of the time.

Most of my bobbins were full so I'm still in plying mode. Charlotte and I are working on the Creatively Dyed fiber I spun a while back and it's going to take a little while because I spun it much thinner so there will be quite a bit of yardage. Yay!

I really can't wait for more warm weekends because with 2 wheels, a drum carder, and a decent sized fiber stash - I could have some wonderful fun. I'd rather use the drum carder outside where the mess won't bother me as much and, as a plus, I can do my thing while watching stinkette and Hubbo play with the new basketball hoop. Bring on the spring!

New Wheel and NYC

Here it is, my new wheel. I didn't mean to tease but the wheel was at home and I was not. Anyway, she's a Kromski Sonata (nameless as yet) in the walnut finish. I'm usually a light wood girl but something about the walnut spoke to me. This was a gift from Hubbo who promised he'd get me a new wheel when he found a job. Lucky for me that his first paycheck coincided so nicely with Hanukkah.



The fiber that I chose to break in the new wheel is Mama-E's and it's really sweet. It's a reddish orange and I think it's going to be great when its done. So nice that the inaugural spin on the wheel will be a good one. Yay!

So, what was I up to over the weekend? Here's a little peek.

We saw some holiday windows all decked out. Jake, Daria, Sam and Lindsey with Manhattan in her arms.


We ate some very good deli at the Stage Deli. Yum. Don't you love the shot of the back of my brother's head and the way my B-I-L Matt successfully hid behind him?


We ran right into a Hanukkah parade. Who knew there was such a thing?


We saw the NYC skyline shrouded in fog and it was very cool.

Hello Pretty

Can't talk. I'm busy getting acquainted.

Spin-spiration

Stinkerbelle had a stomache bug last week that kept me home for 2 days. It was a bummer on many levels - not the least of which is that it caused me to miss my office party. Not cool at all but, for the first day at least, I was consumed with comforting my girl.

Day two was different because Stinkette was on the mend, talking a blue streak (lately she never, ever, shuts up) and being restless and crabby. Super fun! We read together, watched a few shows, did a little homework and hung out but finally I was able to send her off to nap and grabbed a little me time. Charlotte was calling my name.

I started with a little bit of fiber that my nephew chose last May when I dragged my sister and her kids along with the girls to a yarn store in Canada. My girls are largely immune and unimpressed by yarn stores aven in other countries but my nephew was kind of fascinated by the raw fiber and the idea that I could spin it into yarn.

I happily encouraged him to pick out a little something that I could spin for him. He chose an mostly black top with a little bit of blue and red in it. I think that it's merino wool with a bit of silk. I spun it first and then I chose some solid black to ply with it. I have an idea of what I'll make with it. I'm thinking that this could become the accent on a hat. I'm documenting the process for my nephew. I can't wait to finish it and see his reaction.

After that I dove into a braid that I got from Creatively Dyed. Based upon the rave review given to this fiber by Steph of Loop, I had high expectations for this stuff. It didn't disappoint at all. This stuff spins like butter. This braid is seacell and wool and it was so much fun to spin that I couldn't walk away from it and by the end of the weekend I had 2 very full bobbins.

I have two more braids from Creatively Dyed and I can't wait to spin them but I'm trying to pace myself. The best thing about a successful spin is that it inspires you to spin more. Right now I'm filling my last bobbin and soon it'll be plying time.

Spinning It Out

I've been knitting and crocheting up a storm lately. I just finished kippah number 60 which means that I have finished 75% of them. I still have a way to go but I can't help feeling like the end is in sight. So exciting!

I've finished a pair if fingerless gloves for DQ and a sweet little Ami for Stinkerbelle and I don't have pictures of either of them yet. Ditto for the newest cowl I started or the restart of a certain sweater. All that will have to wait for next week.

Although I can't share any knitting today I do have fiber content. I'm spinning again. I fell hard off the 10 Minutes a Day wagon but I'm getting back to it little by little. One really good reason to start spinning regularly is the fiber stash that has accumulated. It's exploded in my house and that stash seriously needs to be tamed.

I just finished spinning a bobbin of fiber that I got at MDS&W earlier this year. It's a 50/50 blend of silk and Merino from Cloverleaf Farm. I just couldn't resist the shine. It's hard to photograph but, to me, it looks kind of metallic in person. That's what drew me to it in the first place. I pulled something out of the stash to spin up and ply with it but there is much in the stash that's calling my name right now. Who knows what I'll spin next?

By the way, I put yesterday's post together really fast and I neglected to mention that all of the sculptures we saw in that exhibit were made of Legos. That was the draw since Stinkerbelle is a Lego junky. Sadly she was a little underwhelmed. I think she was hoping that the exhibit would be more like Legoland. Not quite.

Yarn Families

I have a confession to make. I fell off the 10 Minutes a Day wagon about 2 weeks ago. I have a really good excuse though - I broke a toe on my right foot. I did it in classic style falling down the stairs at my house when my feet slid out from under me. Not my best moment.

Because my last foot injury wasn't that long ago I didn't waste my time going to the ER. I looked at my ugly, swollen, purple, toe and banged up foot, knew the diagnosis, and figured that I could tape two toes together as easily as anyone else could. I stayed off my feet as best I could and enjoyed a great excuse to wear my Crocs to work. The only downside was that I really couldn't spin comfortably. Thankfully I finished some stuff right before it and I'll share it with you today.

This is the last skein in a series of yarns that I'm calling my BFL Family. You can see the rest of the family members below and on the right. The fiber is 100% Blue Faced Leicester that I dyed with Cushings dyes and spun over the course of about a year. I used blue, pink, and violet. The violet broke when I dyed that fiber and that created a super effect on that batch of fiber but the real color play came from the plying. I started by plying blue with blue, then blue with violet, violet with violet and so on. That's why it's a family - everything is related.

When I started this project I envisioned it ultimately becoming a shawl and thought that Hanami would be cool. I thought that using a series of related yarns that gradually moved from dark to light would be a nice match for the asymmetry of that pattern. I've changed my mind now and I think that something simpler would let the yarn speak for itself. Perhaps a simple feather and fan pattern or an EZ Pi shawl. That could be super cool and just as simple as I want. Any suggestions?

I feel like this yarn was a real accomplishment. With each effort the spinning becomes more consistent and the results more predictable. There is one factor that still screws me up each and every time - uneven amounts of fiber on my bobbins. One always has more than the other and I have to figure out what to do with the leftovers. Sometimes though, this can be a lucky thing.

Look at this pretty stuff. This is the remainder of the pink BFL plyed with some of the leftover shiny green singles. This could be the start of another yarn family because there is atill some of the shiny green stuff left on the bobbin. I'll wait to see what other leftovers I come up with and keep plying this against leftovers until I run out. I see a scarf that has bands of each version of the shiny green - plied against itself, plied against the pink, plied against everything. How cool would that be? Suddenly I'm looking forward to leftovers. Imagine that! Thankfully my toe is feeling much better so I may be back at my wheel again really soon.

Shiny, Happy, Yarn

The pink yarn is all plied up but it still needs a bit of finishing before I can share it with you. Thankfully I do have some finished yarn to show.



This is one of 2 Spontaneous Spinning Batts that I bought from Loop earlier this year. This one is 3.7 oz. of Alpaca, wool, bamboo, mohair, tussah silk, recycled sari silk, silk noils, and angelina and the combination of fibers was a real challenge for me. I'd never spun anything so slippery before and I often found as I spun it up that I would get in a groove and then I'd hit a different part of the fiber and it would throw me off a bit.



What I loved about this batt was the lustre of the bamboo and silk. I think that they are gorgeous and I'd definitely spin them again and again. What I didn't love was the angelina. There was much more of it in this batt and I removed quite a bit but I still felt that there was too much. It really doesn't have a good hand and I think that any amount of it that I can feel is too much. When you can get such a lovely shins from silk and bamboo I see no reason to use the angelina. That's just me.



Another thing that I love about this yarn is the color. I am definitely a green person in general but I really loved the softness of the shades in this batt.

It should be no surprise that the next fiber to be spun up will include a bit of silky stuff. I am definitely on a silk kick.

Ply Till You Can't Ply Anymore

I love blogland. Sometimes you need another pair of eyes to help you see what's in front of you and thanks to the comments yesterday I realized that the Sour Grapes handspun will be perfect for one of the cowl patterns I have on my to-do list. I don't have any cowls but they seem like such a practical alternative to scarves and I've wanted one for a while.

I was feeling so good that I went home last night, put up a load of laundry and sat down to ply the last 2 bobbins from my recent spinning frenzy. At first I was feeling really good because this stuff is really even and it's coming out exactly as I had hoped it would. I was looking for something nice and thin and this looks like a pretty consistent sport to fingering to my eye.

I plied and plied and plied and then I looked down at the bobbins and saw that I'd hardly made a dent at all. So I kept at it and after a bit over an hour this is what the bobbins looked like. Clearly there is quite a bit of plying still ahead of me. It has never ever taken me this long to ply my yarn before and I'm very curious to see what the yardage will be. Certainly it'll be a lot - 400-500 yards maybe.

I finally had to admit that this was not a job for one sitting and give up for the night. I settled in to watch Hell's Kitchen but instead of working on a kippah, one of the 3 pairs of socks, the lace shawl or any of the other projects on the needles, I cast on for something new. I am both fickle and horribly afflicted with startitis.

This is the start of the Round or Pinwheel Baby Blanket and it will be a gift for one of the four babies that are expected in my family over the next few months. That's quite a lot of baby knitting and for most of them the sex won't be revealed until they arrive so it's a lot of unisex baby knitting.


The yarn is Katia Mexico and it was part of the haul I brought home from my recent trip to Canada. I don't think that I ever mentioned it but even though the trip was brief I managed to find the time to stop at Knit-Knackers in Ottawa. I also got a bunch of spinning fiber, a few balls of bamboo/merino and a bag of Debbie Bliss Cotton DK. All of the yarn was on sale and there were bulk discounts too.

Balanced At Last

I didn't spin at all last night. I was too busy fondling my new yarn. This stuff is soft.

I wish that I could write the kind of posts where I'd tell you all about how I created a particular skein of yarn but I can't because usually I just spin it up according to what feels good and hope that it doesn't look like a mess when I'm finished. I've taken classes and read magazines and I think that my spinnning has improved but it's a slow process because my skull is just a bit on the thick side and things take a while to sink in and all the number stuff - that never makes a dent. Recently I've seen a lot of discussion about wet finishing and how a little bit of abuse during the finishing process can be a good thing. Much of the discussion has been technical but the bit about using both hot and cold baths and a bit of agitation caught my attention so I tried it withth is skein and the result is a soft, squishy, and very pleasing yarn.



This fiber is a color called Sour Grapes from Spunky Eclectic which I spun over the past 2 weeks using a modified long draw. Since I learned the long draw last December it's become very comfortable. While I was spinning the singles I could swear that it all looked really nice and even but looking at the finished yarn I'm not so sure. I suspect that the finishing may have affected it a bit.

Over the weekend I got out 2 big buckets, had DH fill one with hot water and the other with cold and I went to town. First I dunked the skein in the hot bath. I let it soak and I agitated it for a few minutes before pulling it out and putting it in the cold bath. I repeated this 3 or 4 times before removing it, beating it and hanging it to dry without a weight.



Hanging the skein and not needing a weight was a kick because that's never happened before. In the past, my plying has been really tight and far from balanced and they yarn has been pleasing. I really love the neat and tidy look of a tightly plied yarn but the kinkiness I could do without.

So now I have a 200 yard skein of beautiful soft yarn in search of a purpose. A hat maybe?

All Filled Up

Look at this. When I decided to follow Carole and commit myself to spinning 10 minutes a day, the pink bobbin was full and I had just begun the purple one but they had been sitting for a really long time. It was kind of pathetic.

Since I pulled my wheel out of the corner and dedicated myself to spinning more, I've finished the purple, spun the entire Loop batt (green), and I'm nearly finished spinning some roving in a color called Sour Grapes from Spunky Eclectic. The last of my 6 bobbins is on the wheel right now, partially filled with more of the Sour Grapes so as soon as I finish that I'll start plying this all up. I just can't wait to see how it all turns out.

I took this picture in a hurry last night so it's blurry and crappy and generally lame but, if the picture was better you'd see that the sppinning has been much better lately. I still have my moments where Charlotte gets ahead of me and much cursing ensues but they happen much less often. Mostly, I just sit and spin for way longer than ten minutes while hearing about what my girls did in camp or watching tv. The biggest problem I have now is deciding what to spin next. Another Loop batt? My Sheep to Shoe kit? Merino tencel? Should I finally try the Cormo? Decisions, decisions. I could just take out the drum carder and make up a batt of my own. Hmmmmm....

Aim For Ten

Is this not the most boring bobbin of singles ever?

Inspired by spinners I love, I started spinning 10 minutes a day on Monday and it's been great. There was purple BFL already in progress so I started by finishing it off. There's actually quite a bit of variation in the color but this bobbin was the last in a very large project and I'm just happy that it's finished. I'll ply it with a bobbin of pink BFL soon and then I can really go to town knitting it all up.

As a reward for finishing the BFL, I allowed myself to pick something fun to spin from my stash last night. What caught my eyes was a Spontaneous Spinning Batt (3.7 oz. of Alpaca, wool, bamboo, mohair, tussah silk, recycled sari silk, silk noils, and angelina) that I bought from Loop a few months ago at the Homespun Yarn Party. I bought 2 of them but the other one is a deep purpley red which was too close to the boring purple so I pulled out this pretty, soft, green one. Isn't it yummy?


This stuff is fabulous! It's beautiful and soft and just delicious. I've never spun anything like it before. Being a new spinner, most of my experience is with very simple, unblended, fiber - Corriedale, BFL, Targhee, Finn, Romney - I've tried each of them straight up. Compared to that, this batt, with it's crazy mix of fibers, is super exotic and a kick to spin.

I had heard that Loop batts were fun to spin and they are. The colors are marvelous and the feel is nice and smooth and sooooooo soft. (It also loves to cling to stuff) It took me a little while to get a feel for the fiber because it was so foreign to me. The beginning of this bobbin is a little rough but by the time I stopped last night my spinning was looking much better.

I have one small issue with it. Angelina. The glittery stuff is vey pretty to look at but I really don't like spinning it. It doesn't feel nice and it gets in the way of my spinning enjoyment. If you look at the stuff spun up on my bobbin there are spots that look golden - that's not angelina, it's one of the other components in this batt and it's fabulous. My point is that if I can get that kind of sparkle without angelina then I will. That said, I did buy a little bit of angelina to play with on my drum carder and I'm sure I'll use it but very sparingly.

Drowning Dragonflies

Gosh, I am such a bad swapper. I showed you my wee tiny sock yesterday but I never told you who made it. My sock was made by Stacy (no blog) who is in Duluth, MN. She sent such a nice note with the sock too.

Perhaps my bad behavior can be forgiven if I share a finished object. I'm calling these my Drowning Dragonflies socks. These represent a milestone in my spinning because this is the first time that I got fiber with something very specific in mind and executed it. The fiber was called Dragonfly but there is something undeniably marine about the colors. It really doesn't matter what you call the color - it just screams Stinkerbelle. She loves blues but particularly the aqua shades so when I saw this top at Maryland Sheep and Wool last year I knew it was perfect for my Stinky girl.

I bought this with socks in mind even though my spinning at that point was still very rough. I had no reason to expect to be able to spin anything even remotely consistent for quite a while but I really wanted to. Before I started knitting with it, I thought the yarn was very unimpressive. It seemed very uneven but as I knit with it I realized that it's better than I thought.

Very often when we spin, that process is enough of a purpose in itself. For example, the batts I bought at the Homespun Yarn Party are destined to be nothing more than skeins of beautiful yarn. That's fine but I think that knitting with our handspun yarn can be an important part of the learning process. In the past, knitting with my handspun has alerted me to flaws that I wasn't aware of. This time, as I created these socks, I realized that I wasn't as bad as I thought I was and that was such a great feeling. This yarn was soft and very stretchy and knitting with it was really enjoyable.

Because I was knitting handspun of questionable weight, I started a simple toe-up sock with the magic cast on and followed the yarn. What evolved was a 48 stitch sock with a short row heel and a subtly patterned leg with the following pattern which I just made up on the fly:

1-4 *Sl1, P3* (repeat around leg)
5 K all stitches
6-9 *P1, Sl1, P2* (repeat around leg)
10 K all stitches
11-14 *Sl1, K3* (repeat around leg)
15 K all stitches
16-19 *K1, Sl1, K2* (repeat around leg)
20 K all stitches
Repeat 1-20 again and finish with a 2x2 rib.

I'm sure that's not terribly original but it worked and made a satisfying sock that showed off the yarn well. The only small problem I had was that a thinner section of the yarn woulnd up on one of the heels but that's easily remedied with a little reinforcing. The most important thing about these socks is that Stinkette loves them and so do I.

Dragonfly Yarn

These next few days will be interesting. Hubbo is leaving on his annual golf trip this afternoon so I'll be single parenting. I'm referring to this 2 week period as the lifestyles of the lame and unemployed. By coincidence, he was invited to 2 sporting events (basketball & hockey) last week by friends with season tickets and this week is the golf trip. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

I'm not really as resentful as I probably sound. I actually encouraged him not to bow out of the trip. I look at it like this. Some time soon, hubbo will find a new job and he'll be busy trying to make a good impression on his new employers and have much less vacation time to play with than I will. There will be many wonderful, fibery events this fall and when I give him the list of stuff I'd like to attend he'll cheerfully tell me to go have fun. See - it all works out in the end.

Speaking of stuff working out. How do you like this? This is the Bonkers top that I spun last week. It's 4 oz of superwash merino in a color they call Dragonfly. It turned out to be about 299 yds after I spun it all up. Plenty of yardage for a pair of socks for Stinkerbelle.

I thought that it was more even before I gave it a good soak and hung it to dry. I still think that it's more even than earlier efforts and it's finer too. In any case, it's not bad considering that it's been quite a while since Charlotte and I have spent quality time together. I enjoyed this spinning very much although, after all of the BFL, this merino just isn't as pleasing to spin. Next I'll finish spinning the BFL from my color family project. I can't wait.

Spinning Again

From a Spinning Room in yesterday's post to actual spinning today. Shocking eh?

I bought this Bonkers top at Maryland Sheep & Wool last year. The color is called Dragonfly and what you see in these pictures isn't even close. It's really a much brighter aqua with some eggplant and a few greenish tones here and there. I couldn't get better pictures because someone borrowed the SD card for my new baby so I had to use my little Canon. Oh how spoiled I've become since I started playing with my new toy.

Charlotte has sat, dormant, for ages it seems despite that fact that I signed up for NaSpiMoMo. When Margene talked about NaSpiMoMo Redux I decided that I couldn't let another month go by without spinning. Last weekend I finally did a stash dive and came up with this fiber that I bought with the intention of making socks for Stinkerbelle. These are totally her colors so I'll spin it this month and knit it up for her next month.

I'm pretty rusty but each time I sit down with Charlotte it gets a little better. Part of the difficulty is that I'm trying to use a modified long draw which I learned in my class in December. It's working well but I've broken the fiber quite a few times. DQ was sitting in the room with me reading a book and after the first few times the fiber broke, she stopped looking up when she heard me cursing. It's not too bad though and I think it's fairly even. So far so good.

Speaking of DQ - the book that she was engrossed in last night was Pride and Prejudice. Last weekend we watched the first 2 parts of the Masterpiece production and my girl was hooked. She went from "What's so great about Mr. Darcy?" to "Mr. Darcy is so hot!". The scene where he comes out of the lake nearly made her swoon. Anyway, she was so frustrated when she realized that this was being shown in 3 parts that she ran off to find my copy of P & P and began reading it immediately. She just has to know what happens and she is determined to read the whole book before we watch the conclusion on Sunday night.

Two Ply, 5 Ply - Oh My

After wrong turns and other assorted traffic woes Stinkerbelle and I finally arrived at Springwater last night and we were so glad that we did. Stinky had a "play date" with Linda (an instructor there) who has been teaching her how to weave. They warped up her little loom a few times and wove wonderful things.
Every now and then Stinky would pop in to see what we were doing in spinning class. We were laughing and talking and enjoying ourselves immensely as we did more work on the long draw before moving on to plying.

Here is a shot of my bobbin early in the evening. On the left side are singles I spun using a long draw. On the right are singles spun using my old comfortable short draw. The whit in the middle is Teesdale that was spun from the fold. I took this picture to capture the visual difference that the spinning method made. The long draw stuff is so much looser and softer. Sylvia says that the softness is always found in yarn spun long draw. The short draw stuff is crisper and more defined. I cannot wait to play with the long draw more.
As promised we did some work with plying last night. We started with a 2 ply and I learned how to produce a balanced yarn rather than the wickedly overspun stuff I usually do. It's funny to think that such a simple adjustment as feeding the yarn in faster would make such a huge difference. I still like the stuff I made before with it's tight, crisp appearance but after creating lovely rounded 3-ply yarn I saw the possibilities with that too. Oh the possibilities. I just want to stay home and spin endlessly.
We worked with chained singles last night too and I'm still kind of hopeless with it. Two nights of spinning class just wasn't enough. I don't have any local spinning buddies so, without classes, I learn from books and online sources. No matter how good the books are there is just nothing like having someone who really knows what they're doing there to demonstrate and correct your technique. Sylivia is a fabulous and patient teacher.
I really wish that you could all take classes at Springwater. If only they weren't closing... but wait... there's hope. I'm sure that locals have heard by now that there is a pledge drive going on to keep Springwater going. The goal is $100,000 and an anonymous donor has comitted to the last 10k. The good news is that, as of last night, the pledges have reached 80k so there's only a gap of about 10k. Yay!
I really hope that they are successful and find a way to continue. I would welcome the opportunity to take more classes there. There is just so much to learn. Stinkerbelle agrees. Last night as we left she told Linda that if she does another needle felting class she should call her. Stinky has been bitten hard by the needle felting bug. The next generation needs Springwater too.

Ping Pong Karma

I have a knitting friend who's seen my stash and finds it amusing. This friend goes with me to knitty events where I buy unreasonable amounts of yarn while she get a skein - maybe two. I laugh but secretly I wait for the day she falls hard for some yarn so that I can laugh a little.

The other day she called and told me that she'd made a few purchases lately. Yarn and books and patterns. She may even outgrow the bin that currently holds her little stash. I smiled. I laughed. I was really amused.

I should've known better. Karma's a bitch. Tuesday morning I surfed some of my favorite online shops and found fun stuff there. Lot's of fun stuff. Usually, reason takes over and stops me from getting in trouble. Not Tuesday. My hand slipped. That's my excuse. Shhh... don't tell hubbo but somehow I clicked pay in one, two, three of my favorite stores. In my defense I should say that most of what I bought is for holiday gifts. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Look what I did last night. I spun up the batt I made in class a few weeks ago. It was so much fun to spin it. I'd never spun from a batt before and it was easier that I thought it would be. I haven't measured it but it doesn't matter because I don't think I'll use it for anything other than sitting and looking pretty anyway. As I spun it all I could think of was all the fiber combinations I can come up with. I just can't wait to get a drum carder.

Color for Spinners

Thanks for all of the wonderful birthday wishes.

My birthday had a bit of a rocky start. I started off slow opening gifts and giggling with my girls about how old I'm getting. Hubbo went to take them to Hebrew School and as I settled down with the newspaper to ponder breakfast it occurred to me to check the flyer to confirm the class time. Oooops! Class was supposed to start at 10 and here it was 9:30 with me still in pj's on the couch thinking about breakfast. Not good!

I rushed out of the house, grabbing coffee along the way. As I drove to Alexandria I noticed that my gas tank was enpty. Ack! Thankfully, after this things improved quite a bit.

We spent the first part of class hand blending specified proportions of white and black fiber to make greys for color cards. About a million years ago I was an art major so this was kind of familiar but it was really informative to see how the fiber behaved.

In the greys the results were pretty much what you'd expect but as we moved into blending the primary colors to get our green, orange and purple it was far more interesting. You could really see the way the different components in the dyes used on the fiber brought each other out. For example, the yellow we used had much more red in it so it didn't blend into a nice green but, when you put it together with the red fiber it created a lovely orange. The red was reacting with the red tones in the yellow fiber.

The hand blending was nifty but things got so much more interesting in the afternoon part of class when we got to "play" more. We used the hand cards and then got a demonstration on using hackles. All very cool stuff.

Finally we got to the drum carders. Ahhhh... drum carders. I may need one of these - fast! I may even be doing a fair amount of online research into them right now. Any preferences?

We started out with the basics of using the drum carders and how to load the fiber on and quickly progressed to creating stripes. The possibilities abound!

I started out by selecting a bit of red, a bunch of blue and a whole lot of white. It started out as you see it above but I kept feeding through the drum carder and little by little it got prettier and prettier. It's magical to watch the was the fiber blends. Just when I thought it couldn't get much better, our wonderful instructor, Sylvia, brought out the sparkly stuff in multiple colors and showed us the different effects it can produce. It was wild and so much fun. We did a lot of ooohing and ahhhing.

There were so many great options to choose from but I selected a pretty soft looking one that blended in a lot and just added a hint of sparkle. What do you think? It reminds me of my beloved lilies. Does it make anyone else think of impressionist paintings or is that just me?

I never thought I'd want to add the sparkly stuff to my fiber but this is really pretty. I can't wait to spin it up.

Back in the Saddle...

As planned I got back to spinning. After so much time away I was a little apprehensive about how successful I'd be. I anticipated a few false starts and frustration but I was pleasantly surprised. What you see here is the continuation of the yarn I was spinning for my Hanami stole. When I started tonight, this bobbin was already partially full but I added quite a bit and I'm happy with it. It looks like it's a good match to the stuff I spun earlier this summer and it's fairly consistent. I am so relieved!

This is the other project that I started last weekend. It's a kit that I got at Stitches East. It's called A-line Dress for a Little Princess and, yes, I do have a particular princess in mind.

This was a total impulse buy. Felicia and I were walking past the booth (I forget the vendor) and they had a bunch of these cute little dresses hanging up and they were irresistable. The yarn in the kit I bought is cotton and fun fur but I don't know any more than that (no details or ball bands in the kit). I've gotta say that this is the first time I've bought a knit kit and it's been a mixed experience. As I mentioned, there are no details given about the yarn. I'm sure it's cotton and the fun fur looks familiar but I wish I had a few hints about what it is.
My wish for a little info on the yarn is a minor complaint compared to my issues with the pattern itself. It's a little, ummm.... vague. For example, I had to cast on twice because the instructions for the first row tell you to knit 1, add 1, knit #, add 1 etc. My usual method for adding stitches is to kfb except where it says something like add or, in the case of my Dragon socks, make 1. In those cases you would pick up the bar between stitches and create a new one. Right? Wrong! For this little number you are supposed to interpret the add as a kfb as I found out when I reached the end of the first round and found 8 extra stitches. Would it kill them to be a little more explicit. It's actually quicker and takes less keyboard strokes to write "kfb" than "add 1". I'm just sayin'. Even a note to tell us how to interpret the "add" would be nice.

By the way, I haven't been much odf a cheerleader lately for Sock Madness but, believe it or not, the patterns for SM2 are due one week from today. I can't believe that we're already approaching November 1. I guess that's what happens when you loose a month or so to the soap opera that has become your life. Thankfully, the Dragon socks seem to have gotten my sock mojo going again for I'm (kind of) ready to dive into the test knitting.