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.

Sick Day

I haven't been feeling too well for the past couple of days, so I finally went to the doctor and they basically put me on a lot of medicines. Then my mom (who works at the doctor's office that I go to) ended up calling in another medicine for me to take care of my cough and to hopefully get me feeling much better. Apparently, I am a strange person so that medicine makes me really tired so I have been sleeping a lot.

I have managed to get some spinning done and I have done my first chain-ply on my spinning wheel! Plying on a wheel goes by really quickly compared to the spindle. The yarn both twists and goes onto the bobbin simultaneously. It is really awesome. Of course, I have watched some videos on chain-plying on the wheel after I got the second bobbin halfway plied, so I think the second half of the second bobbin is more tightly plied than the first bobbin. I will find out after I wash and dry the second bobbin since I just finished that one tonight and I am giving it a night to rest of the bobbin before I wind it up on my niddy-noddy.

I talked about having cotton on my Golding in my last blog post, but I really like spinning it! I hate how people say that spinning cotton is so hard when it is so easy to spin. Cotton fibers are shorter than wool fibers, but they almost want to spin themselves. It does feel really different than wool, so that is probably what scares people off.

The last thing I have been doing is watching a few videos about spinning flax into linen. It is so fascinating to watch. The best videos I have found are done by the guys at the Hermitage. If you watch the videos, then you will understand where the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale came from because it really does like you are taking straw and turning it into gold. I think it would be fun to try growing my own flax to turn it into linen, but I think I need to go shopping at their store first and get some flax to see if I even like spinning it in the first place. Then if I do I will have to convince my dad to help me make my own processing tools. The only trouble would be the hackles, but I will cross that bridge when I get there. Right now I will probably be sticking to cotton.

Christmas Loot

I was so busy during the last few weeks of the year that I didn't really have time for blogging anything. What I did do was contract a killer headcold that turned into an ear infection that forced me to take today off. The good news is that I feel better now and hopefully I'll be able to return to life as normal tomorrow.

I got a couple of new toys for Christmas. First off, I got a gorgeous Kromski Sonata wheel and a matching spinning stool. The mahogany finish just glows and it is so much fun to spin on! To go with my wheel I got a full pound of yellow wool (of some uncertain breed, probably Corriedale) and two bags of Alpaca fiber dyed in two wonderful shades of green.

I am almost done spinning the pound of yellow. I am stuffing as much as I can on two bobbins mostly to see how much yarn I can actually put on a bobbin. The bobbin on the lazy kate on the wheel is the first bobbin I filled up. I have some more to go and I still have room on my second bobbin, so I am not worried about if it will fit or not. Of course, I have no idea how big normal bobbins are, but I have been reading that Kromski has some of the biggest standard bobbins out there.

Along with a spinning wheel from my family, I also got a 2 inch Golding Tsunami in Cherry. I have been wanting one of these spindles ever since I thought about learning how to spin. It spins like a dream and it is so light! I never thought that it would be so easy to spin consistently thin on a lighter spindle. Of course, I still love my old spindle and I will never give that up. I do still have a spinning project going on it. But this little thing is just dreamy to spin on!

I have a batch of combed cotton on my Golding right now. Yes, cotton on a drop spindle. This little speed demon makes it easy to spin fast which cotton loves. Since I found the combed cotton too sticky to work on my tahkli, I decided to try it on a drop spindle. That extra bit of stick it has lets it hold together nicely until the twist gets introduced to it.

The last big things I got were three socks worth of sock yarn, a cookie scoop, a video camera, the first season of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, the Derpy Hooves episode of MLP Friendship is Magic, and the midnight purple Nintendo 3DS with a free copy of Nintendogs + Cats.

I felt like a princess this Christmas getting spoiled like this. I haven't had that feeling in a while. Now I really need a job so that I can keep feeding my wheel and spindles fiber.

New Year, New Goals

It is a brand new year again and it feels like everything is starting fresh again. I have managed to keep up with this blog without changing it for an entire year. I feel like that is an accomplishment on its own because I kept changing it every few months. Since I started on a new year resolution post last year, I thought it would be fun to do a similar thing this year.

I have decided that I am not going to set thirteen crafting goals for this year because that is just too many for me right now. Instead, I have decided to focus on six goals.



2013 Knitting & Spinning Resolutions

1. Go through my stash and donate/gift/get rid of yarn I am not madly in love with
2. Organize my spinning fiber into animal fiber and non-animal fiber groups
3. Spin the entirety of my Padame fleece and make something from the resulting yarn
4. Make a pair of socks for my mom, my dad, my brother, and my fiance
5. Make a pair of socks out of leftover sock yarn
6. Get the fiber and spin the fiber for my wedding ring shawl

Let's hope that this new year will turn out fantastic. Happy New Year!