Here you are, gentle readers, the dyed mohair spun up as a single:

It’s a thick and thin single that averages about worsted weight (which let me tell you, is really thick for me; I had to consciously tell my foot to treadle extremely s-l-o-w-l-y) and now I want to knit it up into something, despite the fact that it’s only 1 oz and about twenty yards long and very, erm, energized. I’m soaking it to set the twist right now. I spun it yesterday after I got up from my two-hour nap. (I then proceeded to fall asleep right after the boy went to bed at 7:30 and not wake up till 6:30 this morning, so evidently the nap didn’t negatively impact my night, for which I am deeply grateful.)

Someone asked me what I was going to do with all these tiny skeins, and the answer is: nothing. I’m going to keep them in a box with labels tied to them identifying the fibre, the speeds used to spin and ply, the weight and yardage, and the date. They’re samples. They’re not big enough to do much of anything with, but I didn’t spin them with a project in mind, or to stash them against a future project, or for any goal other than having the experience of trying something to see what happens. I’m playing with new fibres, or new speeds, or dye jobs, or new grists. It’s a way of experimenting without committing a bunch of time and money to something that might ultimately fail. And with these smallish experiments under my belt, I’ll be able to apply the skills I’m learning (mohair, long-draw, silk, bamboo, semi-worsted) to larger projects in the future without losing investment.

What I want to know is if the basic Louet line is all about bulky to medium weight yarns and I’m pulling off fingering to laceweight as my default, what the heck would I manage to do with the high-speed flyer or the faster wheels? Spin fingering to laceweight a lot faster is the answer, I suspect, but my point is basically that these supposedly slow wheels are capable of a lot more than those who don’t use them give them credit for. (Also, maybe if I spin with the brake band all the way on I’ll get thicker yarns. I had the brake band on about one-third of the way for this single so that the yarn would actually draw onto the bobbin and I wouldn’t put as much twist into it.)