Finished the Blues

Finally, I am back behind the spinning wheel on a regular basis and not only 5 minutes here and there!
After 12 months of issues with my back I feel reborn:-)

The one I just finished last night is from a merino/silk batt hand carded by All the Pretty Fibers that I spun into a super soft and squishy 2-ply yarn.

 
The first yarn I worked on after the break is made of beautiful Superfine Baby Alpaca, hand dyed by Amanda.from www.MandaCrafts.co.uk.
I spun it into N-plied, sock weight yarn.

Since it has been dreadfully grey and dull here in Rotterdam for weeks, I next grabbed a very colorful club shipment from Spunky Eclectic, colorway Field of Dreams.
I split the tops lengthwise for a 2-plied yarn without mixing colors. As you can see that only worked for one of the skeins :-)

From weaving leftovers to knitting pattern

I have had this beautiful yarn sitting in my stash for more than 4 years: the blue colorway of Blue Sky Alpacas, Alpaca/Silk.It was leftover from a weaving project I did for a small show in Tacoma, WA.
The piece is called Walk on the Beach and includes shells, dried algae and drift wood from a beach on San Juan Island. These items were woven into the piece with the help of supplemental warp threads made of a stainless steel/silk thread.

I had 4 skeins of the blue yarn left over and finally found the perfect knitting project for it: a light shrug that drapes beautifully and features armholes so it doesn't slip off my shoulders.


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It can be worn with the front panels hanging down loosely or pinned across the bust with a nice shawl pin.

Since some of my friends would also like to knit this shrug, I wrote up the pattern which is currently up for testing on Ravelry in the Free Pattern Testers group. It will be published when the test knit is compelted.

Hernia is bad for spinning

After 4 months, I am finally spinning again, jipieh!
I suffered from a ruptured disk in mid December, and unfortunately sitting was and still is more painful than any other position. I was able to knit lying on the couch, and I did spin on my spindle walking around the house, but my beautiful Rose sat neglected in a corner of the living room.
But finally, the pain is bearable and being able to spin again makes up for it.

This is what I produced over the past 2 weeks:

Spun from a Merino/silk batt handcarded by All the Pretty Fibers.

 Spun from a Merino batt handcarded by Lady's Turn.

 Spun from a Shetland/Silk batt handcarded by Enchanted Knoll Farm

Spun from a Merino/Tencel/Silk batt handcarded by Enchanted Knoll Farm

Spinning disaster and spinning delight

My recent spinning adventures were a mixed bag.
Strangely enough I love the spindling results, but the yarns I spun on my wheel are a nightmare.

So first the nightmares:

4oz Falkland roving dyed by Spunky Eclectic. I  love Falkland because it is soft, spins easy, usually provides instant gratification. Well, I overspun this - which seems to be my major problem at the moment, after skeins and skeins of low twist yarns....
And I didn't only overspin but also split the roving in a way that the beautiful fall colors into a muddy mess.

4oz Merino/Bamboo roving, also dyed by Spunky Eclectic. Again I wanted to give this a little more twist than I usually do, and .... a rope. A rope in pretty colors, but a rope nonetheless.

The worst of all:
100% Pygora. You might remember that I spun Pygora twice before, one beautiful silver colored yarn and an ivory white fuzzy shiny beauty. The third lot I had was the largest, more than 4 oz, and it seemed as if this was the softest lot of the three. We will never know because - again - I overspun. You would think I would learn, no? This is the real nightmare, nothing I can do with this camel colored wire...

 

Now to the delights (thankfully there were a few, otherwise I think I would have tossed my equipment)

2 of 4 oz pure tussah silk, hand dyed by Squoosh fiberarts in colorway Fraises.

 

This is the second lot of Pygora. Absolutely gorgeous, I think. It's shiny and fuzzy and soft. The fiber was by Shaggy Bear Farmd in Oregon, sorry, I don't have a website link.

And some spindling in process that seems to turn out OK:

SW Merino/Cashmere blend on my Golding ringspindle hand dyed by Corgi Hill Farm, and

Merino/Bamboo blend, hand dyed by NewHuehandspuns, spun on my new Jenkins turkish spindle.

And I am trying to take the curse off my wheel be feeding it some beautifully soft Merino/Angora blend.  I will let you know how that goes...

My new toy - a Bosworth Charkha

Back from my trip to Seattle - which was wonderful, because I got to spend time with my friends, and awful, because my son was sick for most of the trip.

However, I have a new toy!!

I have wanted a charkha ever since reading about Gandi and his spinning. It took me a long time to decide whether to buy a more authentic Indian charkha, or the luxury version made by Jonathan Bosworth in the States. Even though I feel a little guilty I decided to get the Bosworth charkha because of it's compactness and it's beautiful craftmanship. SinceI had to come up with quite a few dollars I decided that I would wait until I earned the money with selling my handspun fiber. So last fall I was ready to order, and now I have it!
It is just as beautifully made as I had hoped.
I tried the cotton that was supplied as a fiber sample and didn't like spinning it. Then I used some Merino, and loved it!
It does take some time to get used to the mechanisms of turning the drive wheel with you right hand (Iam righthanded) and feeding/drafting the fiber with your left. Well prepared fiber helps a lot!
I have to practice a lot more to get profficient but I was surprised of fast you can get the hang of it.
It will be the perfect traveling wheel for me! I will keep you updated of my progress.

Image: Gandhi with spinning wheel (Margaret Bourke-White, LIFE)

Read the Wikipedia entry.


Off my wheel
I have finally finished spinning the singles of the crimson colored Merino/Silk blend from Corgi Hill Farms that I decided should be lace weight. I still need to ply, but the majority of the spinning is done. yeah!

On my wheel
Now I am spinning a wonderfully soft and shiny BFL/Silk blend, the February Club fiber by Squoosh Fiberarts in the colorway Samba. After all that thin lace weight spinning I decided to spin thicker singles, probably for a 2-ply DK or light worsted yarn.

On my spindle
Strangely, trying out my new charkha made me want to spindle again. So yesterday I spun up 1 spindle full of a mystery fiber, and am almost done with the 2nd.

I red a little more in Respect the Spindle by Abby Franquemont (on loan from Ballee), and found a tip that seems so logical that it makes me wonder why I haven't done it before. Instead of winding the yarn onto the spindle homogenously from top to bottom and back, it said to wind it on in a figure 8 style. Works great, is faster, and will probably be easier to wind of, too! Check out this book if you haven't yet - well worth a read!

Rhubarb Pie and Sunset

On my wheel
My main spinning wheel is a Majacraft Rose - and I love her! I also still have my first wheel, an Ashford Traditional. Unfortunately we don't have the space for two wheels so the latter has to reside in the basement, looking very sad.

I recently spun two fibers where it was particularly important to me to maintain the color progression of the hand dyed fiber in the finished yarn. Thus I chose to chain-ply these yarns, and I love the result.Both are light fingering weight.

Rhubarb Pie (fiber hand dyed by Spunky Eclectic) is a 50/50 mix of Merino and Tencel. The yarn is soft and has a nice sheen to it from the Tencel content.

Sunset (fiber hand dyed by alltheprettyfibers) is a 70/30 mix of SW Merino and Nylon. The yarn turned out very soft and smooshy.

I thought of designing a semicircular shawl with Rhubarb Pie, and Sunset didn't know what it wanted to be yet. However, both skeins were sold yesterday, so with one laughing and one crying eye I don't need to worry about that anymore :-)

Currently I am spinning a lovely Merino/Silk mix, hand dyed by Corgi Hill Farms in varying shades of dark red.I just adore this color.

It will be a 2-ply lace yarn, spun with a ratio of 1:19.5. Since I have 8 oz this will take me a while....

BTW, you might see a Wollee Winder on my wheel. Maybe it's my German heritage that makes me anil enough to hate the ridges that form when you use a regular flyer.And I love spinning without having to stop.
So even though the WW does sometimes give me problems I can't live without it :-)

I have a few spindles, too, namely two Goldings and a Wildcraft besides several more simple wooden ones.
Here is the Wildcraft spindle - it's sooo pretty:

 

I don't drink Whiskey and I don't want to advertise this particular brand - but the box is perfect for storing a spindle :-)