Saturday, February 16, 2008

Spinning and SPINNING!!




Where does the time go? Yesterday I pulled out the spinning wheel finally, have to spin in the bedroom as we are putting the stone on the fireplace so are walking on sand all over the floor and there are pieces of stone all laid out all over. I am trying to stay sane because what a difference it will make with stone on that wall instead of black tar paper and chicken wire, think we will be able to stand the change?? I had washed some of the black alpaca that was too long to send to the mill and had carded it with a bit of grey merino roving but with the merino being so short and the alpaca so long it did not card in very well and you can see the grey bits, should have dyed the merino first. Then I got the great idea to put it through the carder again putting some colored silk in it. It was really hard to spin being so long and sometimes it would break and I would have to go back and find the end and get it started again Grrrrrrrrr. One thing that happens (at least to me) is I think too much when I am doing things and I thought as the singles are so fine maybe I should spin up another bobbin and ply three together, was almost finished the last bobbin and the single broke and I could not find the end!! As the picture shows I made a real mess trying to find the end and was at the point where I was going to find a scissor and start cutting but had to go medicate myself with some chocolate first, that calmed me enough to not pick up the scissor but to try to find the end again and there it was!! (picture happiness)Off I went and finished spinning and started plying thinking to myself that if I would smarten up and get the navaho plying thing down I would have just to have one bobbin instead of three. Note to self....you can not do anymore spinning until you get the navaho plying thing. When I was plying and ran out of singles on one bobbin I thought well I could just start the navaho plying right now....so that is what I did. I could always cut that bit out if it did not turn out...right. I skeined it and gave it a wash and hung it to dry overnight, it looked a bit overspun. Now this morning as I sat drinking my juice in a sunbeam with the cats I was glancing through a spin-off mag. and behold!! there was an article about navaho plying!! They warn you about putting too much twist in your singles if you are doing a three ply....forgot about that....but then the singles started out to be two ply. Just went and got the dry skein and it is overspun a bit but actually it is not that bad, it is really soft, really do not like the grey wool bits showing up in it but.....I had another thought......if I had not put the colored silk in it I could overdyed the skein and all the grey bits would have showed up in color.....right? Now I am all excited to spin another skein with wool bits and overdye it!!But first I better go practice on the navaho ply thing, I have a full bobbin of tan colored alpaca/wool already spun and I am going to navaho ply the whole thing if it kills me. I am also going to try to spin the long alpaca from the fold and see if that is better, haven't spun from the fold in ages so that is liable to be another adventure.

1 comment:

Alpaca Granny said...

This was a fun read. Probably because your mind seems to work like mine. Why don't we just have a plan & stick to it? About Navaho plying - everytime I have a little left over single after plying, I practice. I think that I'm getting quite good although it is usually a little overtwisted.