Spinning Round-Up - March

It's been just over a month since I last posted.  This is because, knitting and crochet-wise, there's been very little to talk about, other than a hat.  Everything I'm making at the moment is very slow going and then there was a pair of socks that I started twice before admitting defeat - the yarn just didn't want to be socks.

Spinning though, that's been a different story.  I'm finding using my spindles so easy and convenient to pick up when I have a few minutes and even when watching television, listening to a podcast, or watching a videocast.  So.....

Finished Spins:

The fluff that I was spinning on my Turkish 3D-printed spindle is finished.  This was the fibre from a bag of lap waste from World of Wool that I suspected was the leftovers from a custom blend someone had ordered.  The first single that I spun was from - I think - the finished blend.  The second single, the colours were the same, but less blended.  The blend seems to consist of rust flax, silvery-grey flax, teal, black, grey and blue merino.  I needed a bit more fibre to make up the weight of the second single, so found a couple of bits of grey which had also been in a lap waste bag.  I pulled apart the colours of the second single, which gave a more stripey effect and then, once I'd done both, I plyed them together.  Towards the end, as the weight on the spindle got heavier and the 'turtle' ball got bigger, it was a bit heavy-going and I wondered if I should have aimed for two smaller skeins instead, but I managed.

Finished Skein

Underside of the 'turtle'

Close up

The skein is 81g in weight and 277.5m in length.  I'm planning on crocheting it into a smallish bag to use when I take Jess out for her walks, especially in the summer when I don't need to wear a coat, but need something to hold dog-walking essentials - bags, keys, phone, hand-sanitizer.

The other skein of yarn I finished spinning is the 3ply yarn using some merino I dyed using food colouring.

Two singles were spun from the dyed fibre and from the fibre I'd bought from World of Wool, I decided to use some yellow (I think it's called corn) Shetland for the third single and then I plyed them together:

89g, 376m.  I'm really pleased with the way this came out and will knit a pair of socks from it.

I was going to ply the yarn on my wheel, but thought I might be able to get the whole skein on my spindle, which I just about managed.  Again, because of the weight, the last 15g or so was hard going, so I'm not sure I'd do that again.  As you can see from the photo below, the spindle was pretty full!

Now, each third of fibre I spun was approx 36g, but I ended up with an 89g skein.  I'm not sure, but suspect, that either I spun the Shetland a tiny bit thicker than the merino, or maybe it's a property of the different sheep breed, but I had leftovers of the self-dyed merino, so I plyed those two strands together and ended up with this 18g, 123m mini-skein (waste not, want not!!).

 It's very pretty, with subtle colour changes, but I've absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with it!  Maybe I need to spin something else to a similar weight and use it for a striping scarf/shawl.  I don't know!  Ooh - a thought just popped into my head.  I could spin more of the yellow Shetland to a similar weight and stripe the two yarns together.

Spins in Progress:

My Big Spin for the year is a sweater spin.  I've got 700g of fibre in total and am (slowly) making it into batts.  I've got a sheet of paper with what I'm doing so I don't forget and am making 35g batts, each of which has 15g black Bluefaced Leicester, 10g black tussah silk, 5g black merino (I think it's merino - it didn't have a label) that has a bit of dark brown in it and 5g Black Welsh (which is actually a very dark brown).  The reason I added the dark brown bits is to break up the dyed black fibres, to give a bit of texture, otherwise it might look a bit flat.  I have a sweater in mind for this, which I'll share once I'm further into this project.

Excuse the carpet; Jess is moulting at the moment

My 3D-printed Turkish spindle is currently idle, but I've started something new on my wooden top-whorl spindle.  I bought a 100g bump of space-dyed fibre from World of Wool, just to try it out.  The colours are bright, but it's dyed in short lengths, which makes spinning each colour cleanly quite difficult.  The 'bump' is also not as wide as braids from independent dyers usually are, so my original plan on spinning this have changed a bit (more on that when it's finished) but this is progress so far.  One third has been spun and wound off the spindle into a ball (I use my ball-winder otherwise it takes ages by hand - a good half-hour):

and I've started the second third (I've split the second bit into thirds, lengthwise down the fibre):

Hopefully you can see how short the colour repeats are

That's it! 

I was going to show you the start of a pair of socks I've started using one of my handspun skeins, but I think this post is long enough already.

It's a brighter day here today than it was yesterday, DD1 is away at a music workshop until late this afternoon (DD2 and I will be going to pick her up as it's at a private school in a village 30 miles away) and I've promised DD2 we'll bake a cake today.  In fact, we're going to make the pineapple & nut bread that Thistlebear showed off on her blog a few days ago, except I'll be using gluten-free flour and dairy-free spread.  I'll snap a photo once it's made and compare hers and mine!