Little Monster

When I first started looking into spinning a few years ago there was a lot of arguing about "art yarns". The spinning groups were basically split up into two categories: the more "traditional" spinners and the "art yarn" spinners. The more traditional spinners didn't understand the appeal of the lumpy-bumpy yarns that were made on purpose and preferred their smooth yarns. The art yarn spinners would get annoyed that their yarns were being called "beginner yarns" just because they were lumpy, bumpy, wild, and crazy.

It has toned down a lot now, but I still remember all of this going on. I didn't understand the appeal of crazy art yarns either. I thought they looked messy and the finished objects that were made out of them just looked tacky to me. But something about them made me keep them in the back of my mind.

A year ago I tried to spin some thick and thin yarn on purpose on a spindle and ply it into what is known as a coil yarn. It worked, but the thick parts were too thick and didn't hold together when I washed it. So, I decided to perfect making regular yarns that I knew I would use on a day to day basis.

Then I found the Novelty and Art Yarn Spinners group on Ravelry. It was fascinating to look at the different yarns in the group because they were made out of materials that I had never thought to use, like feathers and other scraps of yarn. I still didn't really like any of the finished objects that came out of the group because they just weren't my taste most of the time, but I loved looking at them. One of my favorite threads in the group was the thread called "Palettes: Before the Spin" which was about showing off what you were going to spin into a yarn. It was fascinating and I loved looking at the baskets full of different types of materials and fluff.

I wanted to know more, so I went onto YouTube and found fantastic videos about how to spin different types of art yarns. One of my favorites was made by a lady named Ashley Martineau and it was about how to corespin yarn. It was the first video I ran into and it quickly became one of my favorite videos. She spun everything from alpaca locks, wool roving, shiny firestar, and bamboo to things like recycled sari silk fibers, beads, and strings of sequins.

So, when I got my wheel for Christmas, I knew that I wanted to try out at least a corespun yarn. I gathered different materials including some of my wool locks, mohair locks, cotton lint, a piece of one of my batts, some small skeins of yarn that I had spun, and a couple of sample skeins of alpaca that came with two of my alpaca fiber bags. I chose a bright red crochet cotton core because I would be able to see it if anything didn't grab onto it and it was thin.

I knew the yarn was going to be lumpy and bumpy, but I didn't expect to enjoy spinning it this much. It came out wild and watching the fibers wrap around the core was fascinating. Even the cotton lint ended up spinning really nicely around the core.

I only got 14 yards out of the spinning, but that was because I was getting tired of manually wrapping the yarn I had spun around the bobbin because the orifice of my wheel was too small for the thick bits to actually go through.

This is the wildest skein of yarn that I have ever spun and it was really fun to do. I have no idea how it is going to knit up, but I am looking forward to knitting it. I think it might become a funky cowl.

I would love to do it again, but I really have to wait until I get the jumbo flyer for my wheel. The orifice is bigger and it would be easier for the thick yarn to go through. Until then, I'm just planning out different corespun yarns in my head. If you think you would like to try to spin an art yarn, but you aren't sure if you would like it then just try it out anyway. It is fun way to let yourself go and just let the fiber spin itself.

It might be a small obsession...

Sunny Day Handspun

I swear I actually do have other things to talk about other than spinning. I have a pair of socks on the needles at the moment as well as a pair of silk fingerless mittens. You think that the allure of silk would help keep me away from the wheel.

It is just so relaxing to sit down and start spinning at a wheel. The activity is both productive and infinitely lazy. The feel of the wool slipping through your fingers and twisting into fine thread is highly rewarding because it is so magical. It is amazing how it holds together once you spread out a sheet of fiber so thin that it could fall apart, but before it does the twist shoots through the fiber and, suddenly, it is thread. When you think about it, there is no surprise that the ancient people made up myths and legends about spinning.

Purple Cabbage Handspun

I finished spinning, plying, and washing the pound of yellow roving that my parents got me for Christmas. It spun up to about a heavy worsted weight to a fingering weight, so it is slightly thick and thin. The skein at the front of the picture is slightly underplied while the skein in the back of the picture is slightly overplied, but that is just the learning curve of chain-plying using my wheel.They are also the biggest skeins that I have spun to date measuring in at about 100 yards per skein.

The little fiber batt that I got with my Golding is also spun up and plied. It has been done for a while now, but I didn't get around to washing it as quickly as I thought I would. The wheel played its part in distracting me. This skein is also chain-plied and is a nice fingering weight yarn. That means a two-ply with this spindle will be the perfect lace weight yarn that I am looking for.

Of course, my wheel only sat empty for about a day because I had misplaced my orifice hook. I had sat it down on my green armchair to get it out of the way when it fell off of my wheel and underneath a treadle when I was spinning. It turns out that the mahogany finish on the handle blended in perfectly with my fuzzy leopard print blanket on my chair and Sassy, a fat tabby cat, was sitting on it.

I am attempting to spin sock yarn out of the remaining Cherry Chocolate Chip batts that I got when I received my second spindle. I would like it to be a three-ply yarn, but I only have three bobbins. That means that I could either wind a plying ball to get the three-ply or I could do another chain-ply with one massive bobbin of singles.

The downside to the chain-ply is that the yarn will come out striping in some way again because the nature of the chain-plying tends to keep colors together. But the downside of winding a three-ply plying ball is to have an unequal amount of singles on any of the three bobbins and trying to deal with making a three-ply out of the leftovers or to chain-ply the leftovers anyway. That is the only reason why I haven't done a traditional three-ply yarn yet. I am not sure how to deal with the leftovers. So, I have to think about it and decide.

Tatting Saved My Knitting

I know how to do a few different crafts. The main craft that I like to do is knitting, but another craft that I like to do is shuttle tatting. I haven't done any tatting recently because I didn't like how my shuttle was working. It has a bobbin inside the shuttle that you can pop in and out to fill it up with thread easily, but the bobbin kept slipping the more I used it.

I was working on taking out my holding thread on my handspun socks so I can put in my afterthought heel and I was getting frustrated because my knitting needle was not small enough to un-knit the strand easily. I tried the small crochet hook that I have for fixing knitting mistakes and that wasn't small enough either. So I thought about my tatting and remembered that the shuttle had a tiny crochet hook that you can use to un-tat your mistakes. It worked beautifully to help me un-knit the holding thread.

I recently house-sit for my parents when they went camping. They have been going to a nice little campground with a town nearby that has an awesome yarn shop called the Gentle Arts. Last time they got me a comfy blue t-shirt with the name of the shop on it.

I was teasing them when they were leaving to remember that my favorite color was red. My mom also knits so I was hoping that they would bring me back a skein of sock yarn because I knew they would be going back to the store. Instead, they remembered that I wanted a niddy noddy that was more travel sized and brought one home to me. It is beautiful! It is made out of medium walnut and the top and bottom bars rotate so that it can lay flat in the bag. This makes it perfectly travel sized! It wraps up skeins that is 1 1/2 yards in size which is smaller than the bigger niddy noddy that my dad made me which wraps up to 1 3/4 yards. If I had it my way, I would have my Dad make me another one that had the features of this tiny one, but was big enough to hold 2 yards. That way I wouldn't get them mixed up. I can't wait until I get to use it.