Jane of All Trades

I confess, my spinning has slowed down for the past couple of days.  I have picked up some knitting projects again, and taught my daughter and her friend to spin on a drop-spindle (which was too fun), but the Tour de Fleece spinning has slowed.

So I figure today is as good a day as any to take a look back at some previous spinning projects.

 Here we have the first yarn I ever spun.  I used a drop-spindle and some blue-faced Leicester (BFL) roving I dyed using Kool-Aid.  I was thrilled with the colors, less so with the process of spindle-spinning.

Here is more from the same roving, the very first yarn I even spun and plied on my Baynes wheel.  It was eventually knit into a very floppy hat.  Fun colors, though.

Around about the same time, I dyed this BFL and spun it.  Also Kool-Aid.  The colors made me very happy, though I’ve had trouble photographing them accurately.  Very robin’s-egg blue.  That roving was eventually spun and plied and knit:

 Into this very fun pattern from Knitty (Yes!  See that?  I believe I have just successfully hyperlinked some text!  Hot damn!).  I love this pattern (alright, it’s Foliage) and have knit it several times.

And finally, there is this lovely roving (Merino, I think) which I hand-dyed (again, the Kool-Aid).  I divided the total roving in half, and dyed each half for a long color change sequence.  Then I spun half of it, plied it, and knit it into a capelet for Daughter #1, starting with the red at the neckline and transitioning to the blue along the hem.  The second bump will eventually be knit in reverse order, blue along the neckline, for Daughter #2, ideally while she’s still small enough to wear it.  I should get some pictures of the capelet…

So after I had spun my first two bobbins of possum roving into singles, I was ready to ply.  I switched to my jumbo flyer/bobbin, because one thing that frustrated me about spinning is winding off these itty bitty little skeins when it’s all said and done.  This was the first time I had broken out the jumbo set, and I had been warned it was harder to treadle. (FWIW, I spin on a Baynes double treadle, more on that later.) (I seem to be unable to hyperlink text, so here’s their site: http://www.spinning.co.nz/index.html)

The jumbo flyer was a little harder to readle, but not terribly, though it does have a much larger ratio than what I had spun the single on. (The standard flyer comes with 5.5:1 and 7.5:1, whereas the jumbo has a ratio of 3.5:1).  Also, there are some mechanical aspects with the Baynes that I found a bit irritating when using the jumbo flyer, namely, the screw holding the rear flyer upright kept loosening (as you pivot this part to swap bobbins/flyers) and then the jumbo flyer would work itself loose and fall.  (Major PITA).  But the extra capacity was lovely.

I plied my first batch to neutralize the twist in the single, so I had a balanced yarn.  Unfortunately, it was also hideously under-plied.

I didn’t realize this until after I had already set the twist though–which is funny, since it’s totally obvious.  (Since this is a mix of possum and other exotic fibers, I soaked it, brought it up to a boil, plunged it into cold water, flung it a couple of times, and then hung to dry.)

By then, I was ready to ply my second set of singles, which I had spun a little tighter, and then consciously twisted more in the plying stage.  The result was a rounder, tighter, overall nicer yarn.  I plied it until it was a little past balanced (when doubled-back on itself, it would coil up with a loose twist):

After setting the twist as mentioned above, it relaxed into a (basically) balanced, cushy, two-ply.  and I was stoked:

Now I’m debating about color–I love the natural color of the yarn, which has a lot of variation, but I’m planning on knitting this into a vest for my dad, who is not into brown, so much.  So I am debating dyeing it burgundy/marroon-ish.  So far I’ve finished up about 400 yards, and have another bobbin full of unplied single.

So why it wouldn’t occur to me that my dogs would be even more intrigued by a possum-fur-roving than I was, I don’t know.  But here was the result:

Actually, that was not quite accurate, because the *real* result was four ounces of what had been neatly-coiled sliver rendered into bits and pieces and spread all over my room.  I almost cried.  Almost.  Instead, I gathered it all into a box and ignored it for months, then dragged it out last week for the Tour de Fleece.  And here is the result:

So I used to have a blog, and for a variety of reasons I have failed at keeping it up, and was bound and determined to do it over again but–alas and alack–I have been fettered by my utter incapacity for things computer-related.  Enter the good people at Word Press and their too-good-to-be-believed “Free Install” team and–shazam!–I once again have a blog.

What prompted my re-entry into the increasingly populous blogosphere?

The Tour de Fleece. (link in side bar until I figure out why I can’t insert it here.)

So here was my tour de fleece goal: to spin up the roughly 1.25 lbs. of a certain roving I’ve had in my stash for some time.  (pictures to follow, welcome to my learning curve.)

The roving was called “Magical Mix” and came, as do many things strange and mysterious, from ebay.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to contact the seller, and it appears to no longer be available, but i do remember it contained possum fur, and I think camel, and perhaps some wool.  It is the natural tan-brown-grey color one would associate with various animal undercoats, sometimes greyer sometimes redder, and it is soft, but has some random white or black guard hairs (goat? llama? dog? who knows).  The wildly variable staple length ranges from a low of maybe 2 inches to a high of maybe 6.  if you don’t count the sporadic little downy clumps which have no length at all, only puffiness.  It is, in short, a trainwreck, and I love it.