Sunday, March 18, 2012

To spin, or not to spin..... (spin post 2)

I have been slowly working on my spin 5 everyday, some days I even get blocks of 30 minutes and it has all added up. Yesterday my drop spindle was heavy and off balance so I scratched my head wondering how on earth I got this fiber off my spindle (bear in mind I didn't know how to even take a break and put the spindle down about 2 weeks ago). I tweeted the question using the #spin5 as I know their are lovely ladies with huge amounts of knowledge out there working on their #spin5 everyday but low and behold yes it was St. Patricks day so very few where about on twitter.

Next up came internet searches. Here I found some wonderful information on spinning and I have to say one of the most informative I found was the joy of hand spinning website. It has loads of information on wheels and spindles but again I did get engrossed but I still had my little problem (which I still thought was a problem). I moved on to www.spinningdaily.com and they have a wonderful ebook to download for free on spinning.

About an hour or so later, I looked at my spindle, grabbed the chair I was sitting on and started to wind my fiber around the back of my chair until the spindle was empty (yip not the sharpest pencil in the box am I) and using the 2 ends tied it to my chair. I then secured it in place using waste yarn and this is what I have now:

Yes parts of it are over spun, but hey its my first shot, I'm proud that its as even as it is. To relax the fiber, I let this soak in warm water for about fifteen minutes and placed it back on an open chair to stretch it out to dry. It's beautiful and I love the colour but now I'm not sure what to do next. I was thinking of knitting this as a single ply, then I was thinking of plying it together but its already around a worsted weight. So I pose a question to ye "What would you do next and why?"

3 comments:

  1. I say knit it up now into something small and cute. It's your first handspun! You can be perfectionist and folllow all the proper prep rules on the next one ;)

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    1. I was thinking of adding it to some cash dk (steel grey) in my stash. I have 50 grams spun and 50grams to spin, so I was thinking of knitting this http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/skipper-2 with the outside cable on the front in my homespun. Is it too adventurous?

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  2. Oh well done. I bet this was fun!

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