Spinning FO: Indigodragonfly PandaBaa

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Rayna

Two years ago, I started Tour de Fleece, armed with nothing more than a few braids of fibre and my Houndesign spindle. I got about 9 days in, and a few things came up, and that, as they say, was that.

Two years later, with my trusty Lenrdum wheel, I decided to give it another go, and while I was at it, I thought I’d head up the indigodragonfly TdF team. I had a single braid of PandaBaa (merino/bamboo) and if I managed to finish that one, I figured, I had another couple I could work on. Truthfully, I was not really expecting that to happen, but a girl can hope.

PandaBaa in “Cast-On Couch”

I had not at all figured on the addiction-inducing properties of this fibre. So soft, so lustrous and it, as I have said before, drafts like butter. I had half the braid done in the first weekend, and then spun the other half over the next four days. Plying always takes longer than I think it will (this is in no way aided by the fact that I have had to ply my last two skeins twice) so I saved it for a peaceful Sunday morning activity.

Finished Single

There’s a saying…”Man Plans. God Laughs.” I am guessing he had a mighty chuckle at me yesterday morning.

After the recent success of plying from both ends of a centre-pull ball, that seemed like the most reasonable way to go. I wound the single off the bobbin and settled in, not knowing the horror that awaited me.

Ready To Ply!

This time, something went horribly awry, and even now I can’t say what exactly. The strands doubled back on themselves and each other. They got twisted and tangled, and the strands were almost sticky….keeping them apart proved to be impossible and in one case, no matter how hard I tried, scissors were required. The air was positively blue from the language that erupted as I’d untangle one bit, only to hit two more.

The only thing we could see that would work would be to have the ball spin so that the strand on the outside never had a chance to wind itself around the middle one. My darling husband was good enough to hold the ball, slowly turning it to keep the strands apart while I plied. (As I write this, he is busily trying to invent/MacGyver something to help me with this in future. If he fails this will NOT be a method I am idiotic enough to try again. Fool me once….)

90 or so minutes later, the yarn was plied, but I could see, like last time, that it was too loose for me to be happy with. So after some coffee and pancakes (yes, I was also stupid enough to try this un-caffeinated) I settled in with the plied bobbin and ran it through the wheel again. I mutter as I do this, but I have to say, for the second time now, the second pass made all the difference in the world. Actually, since the last skein had already alerted me to the fact that I ply loosely, I suspect that this one would have been tight enough the first time if not for the unanticipated snags I hit, as the closer I got to the end, the more nicely plied the yarn was already.

In the end…just barely shy of 300 yards. It looks like fingering weight but might be sport – I haven’t had a chance to do a WPI test on it yet. But no matter what, I absolutely love it. So soft and squishy and such lovely colour. I am seriously contemplating using it to warp my loom and then wefting with just a plain natural colour lace or fingering weight to keep the colours from being obscured.

And now back to the Humpspun I started last week.

The Tour de Fleece is underway!

Posted on July 5, 2014 by Rayna

My indigodragonfly PandaBaa is all ready to go! Come join us!

Let’s get spinning!

Some Saturday morning spinning inspiration!

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Where I’d Rather Be Today…

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Where I'd Rather Be Today...

Caught the spinning bug

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Rayna

Two years ago, when I started spindle spinning, I signed on for Tour de Fleece, a Ravelry event that takes place during Tour de France where we spin the same days that the riders do. I got through a 50g merino sliver in the first three days, and started on a 115g braid of Mixed BFL from Two If By Hand in an interesting pink and gold colourway called “Blooming Bougainvilla”.

I got 9 or 10 days into TdF and fell off the wheel, so to speak, with about a third of the braid on my spindle.

My Houndesign spindle…as pretty as the fibre!

And so it has sat in my crafting cupboard for the past two years. With my renewed interest in my wheel, I decided I’d probably never finish this on a spindle. But why couldn’t I finish the braid, but on my wheel? Since there’s only a third on the spindle, if I spun the other two thirds on the wheel, the amounts would be uneven and make for weird and awkward plying. So what’s a girl to do?

I’ll tell you…she spends an entire episode (and then some) of Scandal winding the spun yarn off her spindle onto her wheel, then attaching some new fibre to it and continuing the effort.

And off we go, albeit a little blurry!

The yarn is significantly thicker than my current spinning so it will be a task to keep it that way. And if I choose to chain ply, that resultant yarn is going to be quite thick.

Here’s the most interesting part…looks like I spin in the opposite direction on my wheel than I do on a spindle. With the spindle, I push off the inside of my left leg, this causing the spindle to go counter-clockwise, resulting in an “S” twist. With the wheel, I default to pushing the wheel clock-wise, resulting in a “Z” twist. So for the next few days, I have to remember to spin my wheel as though I were plying, instead of my usual way.

But at least a two year old spinning project will get finished.

What old projects have you resurrected because you got tired of knowing they were just sitting there?

Chain Plying for Newbies

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Rayna

Last night I bit the bullet, so to speak, and decided to try my hand at chain plying. I had a single that I had spun from this superwash merino and I was intent on trying to preserve the colours.

Needlework’s Pleasure Handpainted Extra Soft Merino Wool Roving

The single sat for a few weeks while I balked at the idea of trying a new technique, and a few nice spinners on Twitter recommended this video to help me along.

Last night I pulled out some bits of singles that my friend, Val gave me and made an interesting discovery. Chain plying is not for the faint of ~~heart~~ yarn. A few of her singles were good and sturdy and plied beautifully, but several others were softer and finer snapped at every single attempt to ply them. As luck would have it, my single was either sturdier, thicker or both because while it snapped twice in two very very thin spots, overall, it plied well.

I also noticed something else that, as a newbie, is likely not unusual but for experienced spinners is not an issue. As I plied off the bobbin with the finished single, my yarn got increasingly less “nice”. It got thicker, and slubbier and had more underspun spots, the closer I got to the start of my spinning. Since this was the first thing I had spun in over a year, this is not really surprising. In fact, it’s sort of motivating as I could see, in the span of an hour of plying, just how far I had come in the week or so that it took me to spin that single.

Since I could not sleep this morning, in the quiet of my 6 AM apartment, this:

The single

became this:

The finished skein!

Overall, I am pretty happy with it.

Certainly I am happy with my progress towards spinning that looks like real yarn 😀

My Return to Spinning

Aside

One of my fibre goals for this year was to spin more. Spinning always seems to take a back seat to knitting for me, and even more so recently because I had deadline projects where spinning always has less of a sense of urgency.

When I finally did manage to pick up spinning again recently after a several month long hiatus, I got quite discouraged as I was finding I was encountering some difficulties that I hadn’t previously. I had started using some Schoppel Wolle pencil roving that was a gift from my mother in law for Christmas, thinking this would help me get back into the swing of things after such a long break…I mean, predrafted fibre…what could possibly go wrong? Instead my yarn was dissolving in my hands any time I pulled on it at all, but it didn’t seem woefully underspun.

Time to call in the expert! Leslie Ordal, my first-spinning-class-teacher-turned-friend, offered to come take a look, and Shireen thought this would be a great chance to come learn how to spin on a wheel. So the three of us convened at my place on Saturday, with Shireen and me ready to absorb the knowledge imparted by the pro. This was the inaugural use of my new WooLee Winder (more on this miraculous device at another time!), so I put on an empty bobbin and spun up some new fibre, using some bits and bobs samples I had lying about. I showed Leslie what I had been doing and she decreed that overall, I was doing fine and that while I should probably be putting a little more twist into it, she could not see what was causing the issue. And this new yarn wasn’t falling apart. So I showed her the bobbin with the pencil roving and she immediately knew what had been going wrong. The fibre had tweed-y slubs in it, so when I was spinning, most of the yarn was spun with enough twist, but the slubby parts, because they were thicker, not so much. Those were the parts that were falling apart.

Once I switched to something with a more consistent texture, I got this:

Random Halloween-themed fibre spin

Not bad at all, considering I hadn’t spun in ages.

Once I got the hang of it, I broke out a braid of superwash merino and decided to try that. So far I have turned this:

Into this:

Handpainted Merino

I spent about an hour last night spinning away in front of the Penguins/Rangers game and I am planning to set aside some time each day to try and move my spinning forward.