Category Archives: Knitting, Spinning, & Weaving

Weekend Roundup Etc

I was disappointed in the debate last night. I was hoping for actual adult discussion of policy and platform. What we got was people pointing fingers at one another. Snarking about it on Twitter with Canadian friends helped me get through it. All I really got out of it was an odd dream that I was an environmentalist active in avian preservation, and Stephen Harper personally promised me that he’d build a new habitat for penguins at the Biodome if I’d vote for him. I think the bird book is getting to me.

We had a whirlwind trip out to Rowan Tree Farm on Saturday for our annual spring equinox ritual (affectionately referred to as OsTaras) with t! and Jan, which was very enjoyable, and the next day we did a late equinox/early Easter brunch and egg-decorating session with the Preston-LeBlancs:

The bulbs HRH and the boy planted all over the place last fall are coming up, and we have discovered naturalized crocuses (crocii?) in the back garden, to our delight:

(Hello, lovely macro setting on my camera. You make crocuses look very, very nice indeed.)

I did a preliminary dye test to tint the Falkland warp fibre green to better match the Manos weft yarn. The green dye really turned the fibre an emerald, Astroturf-y green despite me using a half-saturated solution, gack. So I hauled out the hackle and blended the emerald fibre with undyed fibre in two different proportions, spindle-spun both samples and plied them, et voila; a pretty decent match, I’d say. The left photo shows the Manos at the back, a sample skein of a 2 white:1 green yarn in the middle, a sample of 1 white:1 green yarn on the right, and on the far left is the emerald dyed fibre, just for kicks. The photo on the right shows the two sample skeins laid over the skein of Manos, showing just how close my two hand-blended yarns got.

There’s so much variation in the kettle-dyed Manos that either of these blends would work, I think. Or rather, I could be a bit less precise about how much of each colour I’m blending in as I go, and it will still look lovely. Now I know that I can blend it, I could dye up about 4 ounces of green at this solution and trundle down to Ariadne Knits with it and another 4-6 ounces of undyed fibre to crank out 8 to 10 ounces of batts on the drum carder there… or I could further experiment with a much, much weaker solution of emerald green on a larger amount of fibre. Which I may still have to card with undyed fibre; who knows? It’s academic at this point, though, because I need my order of undyed Falkland to arrive at the shop first.

The bird book proceeds apace; deadline is in two and a half weeks, five days of which I am away for Easter. We had a bit of a setback last week when we discovered some of the art wasn’t available, which led to a three-level list of birds to be cut, and unfortunately I’d already written over half of them. It was somewhat demoralizing so close to the finish line, especially because I immediately assumed I’d have to find about twenty replacement birds from among the available art, but it turns out I won’t, so I’m still on track. I do mourn the loss of the research and time spent writing those entries I’ve already completed, though, especially since a couple of them were extensive. I am very tired, and I am aware that this manuscript will not be the shiny, polished thing I prefer to hand in. It’s somewhat uneven in that some birds just have a pile of folklore and superstition attached to them, and others don’t. Generally, birds that are found both in the Old World and the New World have more; New World-only birds have a lot less. It’s simply a question of the amount of time that the lore has had to accumulate. The proposed cover for the book is just wonderful, and I’ve been signed to write the intro to the accompanying birdwatching journal as well.

The book has been wringing me out, so I’ve been restless without a lot of mental focus to apply anywhere. I’ve been spinning a bit, and because I can’t seem to gather enough energy to select music I actually want to listen to I decided to try downloading free audiobook recordings. I’m working through the Librivox Sense & Sensibility right now, and I’m of two minds about it. Librivox switches narrators every two or three chapters, which is fair, but also jarring. I’m lucky in that there’s only one narrator I’ve really disliked so far whose reading isn’t very good at all (her recording level is low, in mono, and her enunciation isn’t great so a lot of the time it’s mostly a murmur). On the other hand, it’s kind of neat to have different interpretations; the change in narrator really wakes you up and makes you listen a bit more closely. I do about five chapters in a session and get through almost a half-ounce of fibre in that time. I wish my library had a decent audiobook selection.

A Friday Fibre Post

I’ve finished spinning the first two ounces of the Rambouillet. Oh, lawks; this is the sweetest thing. It’s like creamy Merino, only better, somehow. (Without going into a major digression about breeds and history, Rambouillet is essentially a offshoot of the Merino breed, created by breeding Merino with French or German sheep in the eighteenth century, and handles very much like it. I find it a bit silkier.) This is the “Wistful” colourway from Squoosh Fiber Arts. Her dyeing and preparation are spectacular, and her fibre is absolutely going on my list of things to stalk in Ravelry destash RSS feeds.

I thought it would be more like the first photo, pale olive greens and crabapple reds with some barklike grey-brown. As you can see for the second photo, it’s got those colours in it, but overall the browns and pinks became more predominant. I find how dyed fibre spins up fascinating. It rarely behaves the way I expect it to. I’m going to preserve the colour changes in this by chain-plying it to a heavy fingering weight. (I am lazy and have not measured the WPI of the single, but my eye and experience tell me that it should yield a heavy fingering weight after chain-plying.)

The wheel continues to work well and is a pleasure to use. I’m testing out the Scotch tension this time, since I’ve tried and like the double drive setting. And it wasn’t until I read the article on flyer wheels in the latest issue of KnittySpin that I realised durr, if I can set it up in Scotch (flyer-lead) tension by putting both loops of the drive band over the flyer pulley and the brake band over the bobbin, it’s also possible to set it up in Irish (bobbin-lead) tension by putting both drive loops over the bobbin and the brake band on the flyer. I’m sure this hasn’t occurred to a lot of people, since Irish tension is considered the most basic and limiting of the three settings. Having trained on a Louet, which is bobbin-lead tension, I know it’s not limiting. It just doesn’t occur to most people to use it if they’ve got the preferred Scotch or double-drive options.

Oh oh oh! Hey, gentle readers! You know that I am not a knitter, right? I knit very basic things like scarves, but somewhat badly. Well, I’m having a baby, and while there are spinning-then-weaving projects in the works for this event because that is my forte, I thought it would be kind of neat to actually knit something for her, all myself. I know plenty of fabulously talented knitters and I am aware that there are already two or three blankets on the go for the Owlet, as well as hats and variously snuggly things (plus a quilt!), but I wanted to knit at least one thing myself. It wouldn’t be heirloom quality, not by a long shot, but it could be cosy and pretty in whatever colour I chose, and it would mean something to me.

So I did. This is the Owlet’s Daffodil cardigan:

It’s a plain old garter stitch cardi done in a soft yellow Pima cotton yarn. I used a pattern for 3-6 mos and modified it to fit a 0-3 month old. (Yes, that’s me, converting a pattern I haven’t yet knitted before I can see how it works, with little to no understanding of how knitted objects are put together. I change recipes before testing them as per the written instructions, too.) It seems to have worked. I may add a couple of rows of crochet in pale green cotton to the bottom as trim. (No, I do not crochet at all. See how fun this is? My enthusiasm far outweighs my skill.) I forgot to put the buttonholes in when I knit the front because I was paying such close attention to making sure it matched the back, so I made button loops for the lovely buttons I bought for it instead. I love how rustic this is, with the bumpy garter stitch and the little wooden buttons.

My next project is tiny little boots in pale green Pima cotton, made from garter-stitch squares that you fold up like origami to magically make a shoe shape. There’s no point in taking a photo, because at the moment it’s only three four-inch-long rows of knitting on a needle. But hey, garter stitch squares! That is totally within my skill set!

And for fun, here is a snap of the test samples I did for the blanket I’ll be weaving for the baby. I spun test skeins of Corriedale, Merino, and Falkland, and have chosen Falkland for the warp to use with this lovely green Manos Clasica yarn I bought to use as the weft. Thing is, I didn’t know if I wanted it to be weft-faced, which makes it more green but creates a stiff fabric (left), or a more balanced weave, which drapes better and feels softer (right). I like the visual of the left, but prefer the feel of the right. I may try a dye test on the white Falkland warp and see if I can get it a pale willow green that matches one of the paler variegations in the Manos; then it will vanish more into the warp colours, and I will have my cake and eat it, too. The Falkland fibre I need won’t be in at my LYS Ariadne Knits for at least a month or so, so I’ve got time to mess about with dye tests on the sample Falkland skein I spun. I designed this to use a fingering weight warp so the green of the weft would be predominant no matter what, but I’m wondering if spinning a fluffier two-ply Aran weight to match the Manos wouldn’t be better. I have some Falkland left I could spin a sample of that with, too. (I theoretically could use the Manos as warp, too, but I don’t think I have enough for both warp and weft, and it’s a single instead of a plied yarn, which fares less well in respect to the beating of the heddle; a single gets worn away more easily than a multi-ply warp does.)

In Which The Polworth Is Put To Bed

It is done.

Way back in September 2010 I acquired 4 ounces of yellow-orange Polworth in a Ravelry destash. I couldn’t remember ever spinning Polworth (checking my notes might have reminded me that I’d had a Polworth sample in the January 2010 Phat Fiber box, which I did indeed spin up; my notes tell me that I had the same issues with the drafting being uneven and the fibre being too spongy for my taste, but discovering those notes came after I finished this 4oz braid, alas), and the colours were outside my usual green/blue/natural comfort zone, both good reasons to buy it, I thought. Besides, I said to myself, if I do not fall madly in love with it and need to stash it for midnight cuddling sessions, like I do with so much of my handspun yarn, I am sure there will be someone out there who can use it.

In No-Light No-Love No-Hope November I reached for it, desperate for something sunny and new. And I decided to give myself a challenge. When I spin four ounces of something I usually don’t end up with anywhere near enough yarn to do anything with, because I spin thicker singles and then chain-ply them, cutting my yardage by three. This time, I decided, I would spin as thin as I humanly could on the equipment I had, and make a two-ply laceweight yarn!

Ah hah hah hah. Hindsight, you are so informative.

It took me a month to spin the first half of the fibre. Four weeks to do two ounces. I have been a strong proponent of Louets Can Do Anything Even Laceweight since I started spinning with one, but I have very firmly learned the lesson of Just Because They Can Does Not Necessarily Mean They Should. The single I spun on it was about the thickness of sewing thread, and it took so long, long, long.

It was frustrating, partially because I was at the limit of what my equipment could do at my skill level, and partially because the fibre and I do not fully get along that that blissful, harmonious happily-ever-after way every spinner envisions their relationship being with whatever fibre they’re handling on any given day. This Polworth was cranky. It did not draft smoothly. I felt like I was fighting the crimp every step of the way.

But halfway through December I had this to show:

I decided to spin some beautifully dyed fluffy Merino afterward into singles in a Manos Clasica style, and blissed out on that as an antidote. And I decided that as I was planning to buy a Saxony wheel with twice the ratios my Louet had, I’d wait till I’d acquired that before continuing with the Polworth, so as to make the experience the least painful it could possibly be.

The Kromski Symphony wheel was purchased in late January, stained and waxed in early February, and ready to go by mid-February. I broke it in by spinning that lovey wool-bamboo blend, and then picked up the Polworth again with renewed vigour and optimism.

Well, at least it went faster. I still had the drafting issues. Polworth and I may not get along, or maybe it was this particular example of it that I didn’t get along with. (Again, those notes tucked away in my sample skein box would have told me that no, it’s just Polworth in general.) What didn’t help was that while it was very cheerful colourway and bright in the drear of winter, it wasn’t a colour I was in love with. I had no attachment to the yarn I was spinning. I wasn’t going to keep it, or use it, because I wasn’t a fan of the colours.

I finished spinning the second half into singles at the beginning of March, then went right into plying it because even though the first bobbin had sat there for two months, I wasn’t waiting any longer for the second single to rest. I plied and plied and plied for about six straight hours this past weekend. My first bobbin had two hundred more yards of singles on it (I swear that I weighed the fibre into equal halves), which meant I had to wind the remaining single off onto a ballwinder and then ply from a centre-pull ball (that newly acquired skill, huzzah and go me). And then I had to skein the damn stuff, which took two sessions because my arm was hurting from turning the skeinwinder.

Almost exactly eight hundred yards, give or take a yard or so. It’s a two-ply laceweight yarn, which means sixteen hundred yards of thread-thin singles spun. I wish I liked it more, because that’s the most impressive yardage I have ever achieved from a four-ounce braid of fibre.

I can aesthetically and objectively admire this yarn (it looks like sunlight! and marigolds! and lots of other lovely similes that my Twitter list came up with!), enthusiastically appreciate all the hours of work that went into it, and the skill required to produce it. I am very proud of my yardage, and the overall consistency of my singles and finished yarn. But I do not like it very much. I really, really wish I liked it more after investing so much in it.

My Twitter fibre-friends (spinners, knitter, and crocheters, bless them all) saw me through this whole process, sympathising with me and cheering me on as I posted pictures of the yarn in progress over the past four and a half months. Much support was had in the SpinDoctor What’s On Your Wheel? forum on Ravelry, too. Did I learn a lot? Sure. Academically, did I enjoy and appreciate the experience? Mostly. Do I like the product? Well… not very much. It’s just not my thing. I am sure someone somewhere will love knitting it up into a delicate lace shawl.

Next up: Wensleydale! It should be arriving this week. I shall spin it, then cable it, and then dye it for a particular, special project which is to be a gift. Have I ever spun Wensleydale? No! Have I ever cabled yarn? No! Is this going to stop me? Heck, no!

LATER: Just out of curiosity, I converted 1600 yards to kilometres, and got 1.46. I spun a kilometre and a half of Polworth singles. Wow.

For The Fans

I have had requests for pictures of the boy and his proper-sized cello. So without further ado:

That thing on the floor under his feet is a mat/map showing where his feet go in two different positions, where the endpin goes, and where the chair goes. He got to decorate it (and chose rockets and arrows and alien script, as you can see).

We both survived March break together last week, and I made my noon deadline on Friday. In general, he was very good at understanding that when Mum was working, he was to be doing Other Stuff. It was hardest at the beginning of the week, when he interrupted me pretty much every ten minutes asking for help or entertainment, but it got easier. HRH took him to work on Thursday to give me the entire day to work on my own, and he had a blast there helping HRH cut out the stringers for stairs, buying wood, eating in the cafeteria, and playing with clay.

Today HRH cut out what will be the doorway to the attic stairs. It’s framed and has molding around it and everything, and tomorrow, a door will be hung in it to contain the workspace while the attic is being built. At the moment it goes into my office closet, but once the plasterboard is up, the stringers can be mounted, and the stair steps (also purchased on Thursday) can start being placed. That should come in a couple of weeks. We think it should be warm enough to punch through to the attic itself in April, when all the work on lifting and strapping the insulation can start. Somehow, the new doorway makes the hallway look much bigger.

I finished spinning the Polworth, and then finished plying it this morning. I’m skeining it now, and it’s taking forever, because it’s turned out to be real laceweight, and so far I have 400 yards of plied laceweight yarn. And it’s not even quite halfway done. I’m boggled. There will be pictures when the pile of skeins are done.

In Which She Is Tired

Stuff has happened, but I’m tired, as usual, so all you get is:

– We (meaning the owlies and I and the blog) are nine years old as of a week ago. Happy birthday, little owlies and your Court!

– The hospital tests happened, and I’m not dead. The procedure was extremely uncomfortable, although I was told that it was out-of-the-ordinarily so due to specific circumstances, and it’s something I hope to never have to go through again. The doctor’s initial response was positive, but that was based on looks alone; we have to wait four weeks for the samples to be analysed for final and accurate feedback. I spent most of the rest of the day on the couch downstairs trying not to move and jar the painful test site. I was mostly okay by the next morning, though. I have prescriptions contingent on the outcome and follow-up appointments and all that sort of stuff.

– Chuffed by my success with my beautiful, beautiful wool-bamboo blend on the new Symphony wheel, I jumped into the second half of the Polworth so I could have it finished and done. I wish I was enjoying it more. While it’s easier and certainly faster on the new double-drive wheel, it’s still not the fabulous experience I’ve read Polworth is supposed to be. It doesn’t draft easily (in places it does, but generally it does not), and doesn’t have the light shine Polworth is apparently supposed to have to it, and looks dull. I am willing to believe that it’s due to how it was dyed or handled before it got to me, and that this is not representative of the more general experience, but it’s not encouraging me to try the fibre again, really. The best news is that it’s going miles faster on the Symphony than the Louet, so it will be done with and then I can ply it and that will be that.

– The boy completed his first ever self-directed school project with no teacher input. He planned, designed, and executed a three-dimensional model of a penguin. I’m very proud of him, because on last term’s report card the teacher indicated he needed to work on clearly thinking through all the steps of an activity, and he accomplished this very well indeed.

I love this for so many reasons, including the wacky orange pipe-cleaner beak and the googly eyes. The paper-towel tube wings are held on with brass brads so they swing back and forth. It is, he would like you to know, an emperor penguin, and obviously a male, because it has an egg at its feet.

– We finally have the 1/8 size cello! It looks exactly like my 7/8, but miniaturized (it’s from the same manufacturer). It is adorable. The boy and I are sharing a lesson slot this coming Tuesday, as it is March break and I’d need to bring him with me anyway. I think it will be very good for him to watch another lesson in progress.

– The boy began his March break on Friday morning. Friday, being one of my work days, was very trying, because while he intellectually understands “Mum is working till lunchtime, do not bother Mum,” he is a very social boy and drops by frequently to see what I’m doing, to invite me to play, or to ask me to problem-solve. HRH has been marvellous this weekend, giving me an hour here and there to catch up on work time I missed due to doctors and hospitals and other regular engagements last week. He took the boy out to do groceries yesterday morning when I had a brutal headache, and they came back with a potted hyacinth:

and a potted daffodil:

Bless them.

– I have to work this week while the boy is home on March break. This is going to be a Very Valuable Learning Experience for everyone. We are doing our best to get through the boy’s head that Mum is working when she sits at her computer, not playing as he does when he sits at it, and she cannot be interrupted every five minutes. I have a deadline on Friday at noon, and while I’m at the halfway mark as of this afternoon’s work session, it could all go very badly if the manuscript takes a turn for the worse, or the boy is too clingy. The afternoons are being spent together. Trust me, if I could have taken this week off, I would have, but I miscalculated how much time I’d lose to hospitals and medical professionals and waiting rooms last week and accepted a freelance assignment, and so I have to finish the last half of the project this week while he’s home.

– It’s beginning to feel suspiciously like the end of winter (note: this does not exactly equate to “the beginning of spring”; that happens sometime later). The sun is reducing the huge snowbanks down somewhat, and there are steady drops of snowmelt off the roof. We are all very cranky every time Environment Canada issues weather warnings for the region that scaremonger with threats of 25 cm of snow, but so far we’ve just gotten 5 cm here and there. March may come in like a lamb after all.

In Which She Mostly Talks About The Yarn Made On Her New Spinning Wheel

This new spinning wheel. Gentle readers, I tell you: I am in heaven.

I love how this wheel handles. I disassembled the treadle assembly and thoroughly saturated all the wood/metal friction points with white lithium grease, and there has been nary another chirp from it, which had been the only drawback to the first week. The wheel is easy to treadle, and although it works well enough if I just used the right treadle, I prefer using the double treadle. (Astute readers whose brains stubbornly hold on to ludicrously unimportant trivia will remember that I was angsty about investing in a double treadle wheel in case I didn’t like it. Borrowing Bonnie’s exquisite 30″ Schacht-Reeves Saxony wheel throughout October pretty much cured me of that, but there was always that small frisson of what-if.) It spins beautifully both clockwise and counter-clockwise. Taking a bobbin off is a bit more complicated that on my bobbin-led upright Louet, as it entails loosening the mother-of-all unit, removing the drive band from both the bobbin and the flyer whorl, removing the whole flyer assembly, but then unscrewing the flyer whorl, switching bobbins, screwing the flyer whorl back on again, then doing the rest in reverse order. It’s a bit fussier, that’s all. Because I’m using it in double drive, replacing the drive band on the two whorls and tightening the mother-of-all has been the trickiest part, because I”m never sure if my tension is the same as it was or not.

I love the double drive, as well. Double drive is supposed to be great for spinning really thin yarn. I am, perhaps, undermining this by using the largest bobbin whorl and flyer whorl to get used to the wheel, but I am loving how double drive uses the difference in ratio between those two whorls to wind yarn onto the bobbin and adjust take-up tension moderately. I should test the Scotch tension at some point, too, which means a single drive moving the flyer and a tensioned string running over the bobbin whorl to slow it down, enabling winding on when yarn lock is broken (in other words, when you release your firmer hold on the yarn you’re spinning and let it wind on)… but the double drive is just working so well for me right now that I’m probably going hold off for a while.

Plying was great. I ended up with a nicely balanced yarn (more on that below). I love the separate lazy kate; I love that can put it a few feet away to enable the twist o even out between the kate and the wheel; I love that it’s tensioned so my bobbins don’t spin madly when I get a good clip going.

I also love the wool/bamboo blend I chose to spin first on the wheel. I have no idea what the proportions are, but let’s just say I love it enough to be looking at buying a pound of 50% Merino/50% bamboo to dye on my own. It is soft, it is silky, it drafts incredibly well. It is everything spinning straight bamboo is not. And my, but it looked pretty on the new wheel. There are, alas, no pictures of that part, because I was so busy enjoying the spinning part that I forgot. Just trust me; the lovely soft green variegated fibre against the warm walnut of the wheel? Pretty.

Despite weighing the fibre and attempting to split it evenly for a two-ply yarn, I failed miserably and ended up with a bunch of extra single on one bobbin. In the past I have ruined lots of singles by trying to ply from a centre-pull ball, the basic way to divide the remaining single into a form from which you can pull both ends and ply them together. I have failed so utterly, in fact, that I avoid centre-pull balls and that’s why I taught myself to chain ply, and that became my default for everything. I was determined to get the last single into a two-ply yarn, though. So I wound it off onto the ball winder, and slipped it into a paper roll. I couldn’t figure out a way to get it on the arched lazy kate that wouldn’t tangle the two singles coming from either end of the ball, so I held it in my lap and plied from there.

Here is the key: My first wheel has a non-tensioned onboard lazy kate, angling up toward the flyer, onto which I’d slip my roll and the centre-pull ball on it, which didn’t have anywhere near enough weight to stay where they needed to be, and tangled and made huge messes. Holding the tube in my lap meant I could (a) hold it in place, and (b)manage the crossing that the two ends did as they unwound.

Readers, I plied from a centre-pull ball on a tube, and made real two-ply yarn. I wet-finished it for this photo:

The resulting two-ply yarn is so balanced that it doesn’t really twist back onto itself. As in, when I hang the freshly wound-off yarn from a finger or a hook, pre-finishing, it’s essentially straight. I am flabbergasted at this particular accomplishment. I have yet to wet-finish the two final skeins, as the week started and it’s been non-stop gogogo ever since. In the end, I have about 175 yards of two-ply yarn, of approximately light fingering weight.

Nixie took possession of a small test skein of half Falkland, half unknown blue wool I spun the first day. She’s been sleeping with it.

In non-fibrey news, the school bus strike is over as of last night (yay!). The boy hit 100 days of school last Friday, which was a big thing for all the kindergarteners. There are penguin projects happening at school which are student-led, so we went hunting over the weekend for purchased art supplies that the boy decided he needed in order to build a three-dimensional model of a penguin (in addition to a home-sourced granola bar box, two paper towel tubes, and some egg-shaped plastic balls); we got white feathers, foam balls, multicoloured pipe cleaners, but we could not find black feathers, so guess who dyed half a packet of white ones with her fibre dyes? (The boy helped, and it was actually a very interesting experiment to share.) Third-term report cards come home on Thursday.

I accepted a new copyediting gig this weekend and didn’t realise until afterward that this week’s workdays are cut in half by hospitals and clinics and a ped day on Friday, and all next week the boy is home for March break. Working at home when other people are here is rarely productive, but the boy and I are going to have to work something out. Perhaps mornings will be a PBS-fest for him while I get a half-day of work in, and the afternoons will be spent together.

Last night I had to cancel yet another regular thing that was soul-nourishing but consumed energy I needed to put elsewhere. Or rather, it’s been put on hold for the next six weeks at least; we’ll re-examine how things are at the beginning of April when winter is pretty much over and the cold and boots and coats no longer sap so much of my energy. Various family health issues continue to be stressful, and ramp up this week to a whole new level of eek. Some are out of our direct control and we can only be as supportive as we can be for those involved and stress on our own time, but on the personal front, I’m going into the hospital for tests on Wednesday morning and am on at least twenty-four hours of bed rest afterward. (Do not panic; I am mostly fine, and that is what the tests ought to confirm. We do have the rather unpleasant experience of waiting three to four weeks before we get those results, though, and this after waiting six weeks for the tests themselves.) I have the two new February-release Elizabeth Bear books to entertain me, my mother sent down her copy of A Red Herring Without Mustard so I could enjoy it right away, and if I get tired of reading I have three (yes, three!) spinning DVDs I have been hoarding that I can put on the TV or a laptop. I may sneak some work in there too, on the laptop. Maybe.

Momentous Decision

We (meaning the wheel and I) have made a decision regarding what we will spin first together.

It is not the Rambouillet. Nor is it the Wensleydale. Nor is it any of the indie dyed Merino I have, or the BFL, or the very squooshy Polworth I have, or the last half of the yellow/orange not-as-squooshy Polworth I started on the Louet. Nor is it the Romney I scored from Feeling Sheepish last year, or the batts from SpinKnitandLife, or the Fleece Artist braids from Mahone Bay in 2009, or the Lorna’s Laces roving Ceri bought me before my first wheel arrived. Nor is it any of the undyed fibre I have tucked away for basic spinning and dyeing purposes. I had it all spread out on my office floor today, trying to figure out what would be best. (Yes, I have a fibre stash. Do you want to make something of it?)

It is a wool/bamboo blend dyed by Projekt B for Ariadne Knits that I bought last summer because I’d never spun anything like it. I love the green/olive colour range in this. I have two knots of the fibre, one in this colourway, one in a red/yellow/brown colourway I chose because the colours were outside my comfort zone. There’s two ounces of it.

I wonder if my subconscious is offering support to Jodi by spinning something with bamboo in it. I think I chose it because it’s super soft and I love the colours. There’s a touch more yellow in the colourway than the photo shows, and it’s not quite as celery-coloured; it’s very spring-like. I haven’t tried spinning a bamboo blend, not like this; there were streaks of bamboo in the HAY batts I spun last summer at the sheep to shawl event, but they were so streaky that they essentially slipped right out of the fibre as I spun. I have most of it stuffed into one of the pockets of my spinner’s lap cloth, actually. This is well and truly blended, so we shall see how it spins up. I’m looking forward to the soft silkiness and the pretty colour on my wheel.