Thursday 29 September 2011

Something about spinning

Prepare yourself for  a lot of orange!

I have had this fibre on the go for well over a year. It was a birthday present to myself last year and I couldn't wait for my wheel, so I started spinning it on my drop spindle.

When my wheel arrived I moved the spun yarn onto a wheel bobbin, but then decided to keep going on the spindle as I could not spin thin enough on the wheel. I plied the length that was on the bobbin, it is sat in my stash waiting for me to think what I am going to do with it.

Finally the rest has been spun using the drop spindle.


I think of spinning, and knitting, very much as learning activities, there is always something new and ways to improve. There were a couple of lesson learnt here.

Lesson one- don't take a year to spin 100g, you will forget how thick you are making it. It is thin, but unfortunately it gets thinner towards the centre.


Lesson 2- don't yank it all off the spindle and get in a horrible tangle.

I tried to slide this onto a knitting needle, but it was too tightly wound. This is also one of those tasks where having four hands would really be quite helpful.


Since I didn't want a repeat of my tangle sock yarn mess from last week I decided to wind it into a plying ball. This took a while, but less time than untangling it would have done.



I am going to navjo ply it and see what I get. Hopefully I can do that this weekend and I should have some finished yarn to show you next week.

7 comments:

  1. Ohh that colour is amazing. I've been wanting to give spinning with a drop spindle a go for a while now, your yarn looks great!

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  2. ooooh, you had me at Orange. Yes, I find that I learn something new all the time with spinning too.

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  3. I love the tips, I am learning to spin on a drop spindle. This is the perfect month to play with orange!

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  4. Its beautiful! I wish I knew how to spin! I must put that on my things to learn to do list!

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  5. It's lovely. I love spinning on a drop spindle ... I can wheel spin and Turkish and Turnip, but the drop is my favorite! You spun it very nicely ... the ball looks very uniform.

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  6. Love the color and it looks so pretty! I'm still trying to learn how to spin on my drop spindle. You're an inspiration for me to keep trying!

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  7. Beautiful colour - and your thread is so fine and even, I am very impressed

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