Needles on the Move

There has been much spinning happening here lately. A number of projects, secret and not-so-secret, are on the go and I have been spending at least five or six hours a day at the wheel (yes, there is a certain amount of bliss in work at the moment!).

There is more blue yarn, which I mentioned once before:

This is the weft to go with the earlier spinning. I didn’t need to make this skein quite so smooth and firm - the warp is subject to abrasion from the heddle and imperfections can cause breaks - and it has more of the character which I like in my handspun. I don’t see much point in always creating yarn which looks machine-made, one of the reasons I also like to choose things like Polwarth and BFL rather than processed Merino. The heavier fibres somehow feel a bit more like ‘real’ wool and give a bit more interest to the finished yarn.

We also have some last-minute Falkland which I spun up to augment a project which is running out of yarn:

I dyed it with Landscape dyes and I love the colour variation which comes through when you don’t stir the dye around too evenly. It makes me think of melted chocolate!

Finally, another project which I can’t tell you much about yet:

This is some of the baby Polwarth fleece which I bought last year, I have washed and dyed it in lock form and am spinning it for lace one lock at a time.

It’s rather time-consuming and not generally a weight that I choose, but I’m blocking a swatch right now and I think I could get very into the idea of lace-spinning! There’s a great deal of satisfaction in creating something so fine - a sense that practice has paid off and anything can be achieved with care and effort. (That’s a dime, btw, almost the same as a 5c, or a 5p - just trying to cater for everyone…)

And believe it or not, I have still been knitting during the gaps!

One Neighborhood Tunnels sock is finished and I should be able to cast on the second tonight, ready to knit all Saturday in front of Pride and Prejudice.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Weekends are for Spinning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.