Wednesday, July 07, 2010

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. (Bertrand Russell)

It is day 5 of the Tour de Fleece, and I am totally obsessed with spinning. I've managed to get in a little bit of knitting (mainly because it's easier to sneak knitting time in at work than it is to try to spin at work), but the biggest emphasis has been on spinning.

I think I mentioned that I started a drop spindle of BFL since all of my bobbins were full. I'm having a great time with it, but now I've added fancy drop spindles to my Wish List. I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to get 1 1/2 ounces onto the spindle, and then how I'm going to ply that much. I had a gift card to Barnes & Noble, so I treated myself to a copy of Respect the Spindle by Abby Franquemont. I'm hoping that the book will give me some answers.

My drive band came Tuesday, so I was able to ply a skein of the Auntie's Yarn. It came out so wonderfully soft and squishy, I hate to give it away. (But Auntie is going to love this yarn, so it's okay.) It ended up as a worsted weight (14 wpi) with 243 yards.


This evening I brought my wheel to knit night, and started spinning the Shetland Top from Crown Mountain. I didn't split the roving before I went, which was a mistake. A couple of the girls helped me split the 8 ounce rope of roving into thirds, which took several attempts. We had that roving stretched all the way across the coffee shop trying to figure out the math!

My goal is to spin this as thin as I can (which turned out to be 40 wpi), and then to three ply it. I would have liked to get the singles to match, but I quickly gave up on that idea. It's definitely going to be a wild barber pole plying. I think it will still look really nice. And with the singles at 40 wpi, the final yarn should be nice fingering weight. And with 8 ounces to spin, I should have enough yardage to knit a pretty shawl or maybe even a shrug.

1 comment:

Paula L said...

i'm glad you're enjoying the spindle, remind me and i'll loan you my bottom whorl boat for plying, it holds a lot more fiber than the toy wheel top whorl.

and Abby's book is the best, it's my reference guide =D