Close to my Heart

Some spinning content

Well, I would have shown you eventually anyway (was waiting to be home during daylight hours to photograph) but by popular request (okay, just 2 readers) here's what's on my wheel at the moment:

 

All that's left to finish spinning is the little ball shown. Just noticing that it looks bigger in this picture than it does in real life.

I'm hoping to finish spinning tonight and then ply tomorrow.  Will be glad to have it done and move onto spinning something much thicker for some quick gratification.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, this is Corriedale pencil roving in the "Shadow on the Wall" colourway from Crown Mountain Farms.

Hmmmmm....

So, I started with this lovely bump from my favourite fiber pusher, Crown Mountain Farms:

I simply split the bump in two horizontally, spun them up the same, and then navajo plied.  So why did they turn out so differently?

I'm happy with how each of them turned out, but a little dissappointed that I probably can't use them in the same project now.  Or perhaps they would coordinate enough to use for something of the shawly wrappy variety?

Hot Rocks

Copperpot is one of my favourite Etsy sellers, her batts are truly gorgeous.  I was part of her fiber club over the winter, and recently signed up for another round.  I love spinning her batts a lot.  The last batt that I pulled out of the stash was this beautiful merino, "Hot Rocks."

 

Note that the colour is a little more brown than it appears in this and the other pictures, even though they were all taken outdoors.  Oh well!  Either way I love it!

Spinning away during the last work week, I ended up with this very full bobbin of singles

 

Which I then Navajo plyed

 

 

I think this might be the favourite of my handspun yet!  There's about 250 yards, sport weight, and I'm thinking this will be a cowl or shawlette.  Soon too, can't wait to knit with it!

In another news, I've started a quest to lose weight and improve my fitness.  I've started a blog to chronicle this adventure, you can read about it here.

I finally got it!

I have Navajo plied before, but with somewhat limited success.  I never felt that my yarn looked QUITE like what others looked like.  Then somewhere along the way I came across this You tube video, and realizd that wasn't quite how I was doing it either.  My loops were much smaller, and the result was really more little chains then anything.  After watching this video several times, I set out to try Navajo plying once again, and was much more successful this time.  As an added bonus, it is so much fun! 

Here's my results, using pencil roving from Louet:

 

It's about 440 yards of sport weight yarn, and I think screams baby. 

I already am in the process of spinning up more singles to Navajo ply that I'm hoping will be for something of the shawl or wrap variety.

Since discovering thre ply and learning how to properly Navajo ply, I feel like I have fallen back in love with spinning, much to the neglect of both my knitting and my new loom.  Really must work on those neglected lace projects soon though, if not only because I want to cast on for new ones!

Three

Is my new favourite number.  As in 3 ply.  I don't want to do anything else now with the singles I'm spinning up, 3 ply is just so nice and round.  And while I find regular 2 plying to be rather boring and tedious, 3 ply is just so much fun!  Doesn't hurt either that the fiber I started out with was this gorgeous superwash merino from Crown Mountain Farms.

This stuff is so awesome to spin with, no pre-drafting or preparation necessary, and it spins like butter!  If I could only chose one fiber to spin with, this would probably be it.

Here's what I ended up with.  Please indulge me as I share a few pictures with you, as I'm quite pleased with the final result:

 

 

It plumped up quite a bit after washing, so although I haven't actually measured the wraps, my guess is that it would be sport to light worsted weight.  I was hoping to knit socks with it, but it's a bit thick for my taste.  Any suggestions?  There are about 540 yards.

Vacation beginning

My first few days of vacation were quite relaxing.  I finished a pair of plain vanilla socks, a birthday gift for a sister in law:

 

And I've also done some spinning.  I finished spinning up the third bobbin of singles:

 

And got it all plied up:

 

I still have the other half of the 8 ounces from Crown Mountain Farms to spin and ply, so the official pics to come once all is spun and washed.

Three ply

I finally have done my first three ply, and now I'm wondering why on earth it took me so long to finally try this!  I had imagined it would be way more difficult to do than two ply, when it really wasn't at all.  Plying has never been my favourite part of spinning, so I was very pleased to discover that triple plying was actually very enjoyable, it was a lot of fun to watch three singles come together to make yarn.

I started with this batt, from The Ranch, an Etsy store that does not appear to be in existence any longer. 

The singles looked like this:

And eventually, all plied together and the twist set:

How about a close-up?

Three ply yarn is indeed more round than two ply, and I think makes a very lovely yarn.  I am happy with how it turned out, and have already begun spinning the singles for my next three ply.  This first attempt worked out to be 16 wraps per inch, which is sport weight.  I have about 288 yards.  Any suggestions as to what I should make with this?  I'm really looking forward to knitting with it.

Much Better

Following in the heels of the yarn I showed you in the last post that I felt overspun, I made extra effort for that not to happen with my next handspun attempt.  While at a local needle arts show last month, I had the opportunity to chat with and observe Vyvian, the very talented spinner that I took the beginning wheel spinning class from last April.  A recent episode of the Yarnspinne's Tale's podcast that was devoted exclusively to plying also proved to be very helpful, and I'm much happier with my latest plying experience.  I made a conscious effort to not ply quite as tightly while also taking the time to look at my plied yarn from time to time to ensure that it was balanced.

So, I started with this lovely batt from Copperpot Woolies in the Citronella Cooler colourway, an offering in a recent monthly batt club.

I weighed the batt on my postal scale to divide evenly into two.  I spun half the yarn in strips and the other half right from the batt.  I enjoyed spinning this batt very much. 

In the end, I think I ended up with some very pretty yarn.  

There are about 410 yards, fingering to sport  weight.  The fiber content is merino, tussah and bamboo.   I'll probably make a small shawl out of this yarn, at the moment I'm seriously contemplating Ishbel.

For my next spinning project I'm going to attempt my first 3 ply, wish me luck!

An adventure in plying

Lately I've been experimenting with plying.  It seems to me that everyone else's handspun looks way better than mine, and I felt that it was partially due to the plying.  I decided that my yarn was too loosely plied, so I tried to ply tighter.  Now I'm not a big fan of plying, I love to see the final result, but find the process itself tedious and boring.  Plying tighter meant that the process took forever.  I started with this gorgeous superwash merino from Crown Mountain Farms.

This stuff is awesome to work with, it is soft and requires no pre drafting or splitting, I spun right from the roving itself.  I ended up with this:

(Colour more accurate in second photograph)

In the end it was plied too tightly.  Oh well, live and learn.  Yesterday I finished plying some other handspun.  I learned a couple things prior to plying it, and it turned out much better.  I will share as soon as I set the twist and have a chance to photograph.

Bad Blogger, No Cookie

Long time, no post.  It's been a busy week and I just haven't been motivated to post.  Thought I'd get to it this morning with a very quick entry showing some yarn I spun up for a swap partner over on the High Fiber Diet Podcast Ravelry Board.

I started with this pretty corriedale roving from Yummy Yarns:

I purposely decided to spin it up a bit thicker than usual, and ended up with singles looking like this:

And the resulting 2 ply yarn:

The colour palette is completely up my partner's alley, and I hope that she, a non spinner will enjoy knitting with this yarn.