Ever have one of those weeks that you’d really like to have come to end? Well, it has come to end, but the troubles it brought with it are not yet gone - or the effects of those troubles are not yet gone anyway. DH got *very* sick last week and missed school/work from Wednesday on. Just when we thought he was on the mend (though not 100%) he came home yesterday afternoon with a really nasty looking rash. He stayed on top of it with Calahist (calamine and Benadryl topical), but as soon as he’d treat a spot a new spot would pop up. Then about an hour after going to bed it was covering probably 80% of his body. So at 1:30 am I went to Walgreens and consulted with the pharmacist to help get him through the night. I was paranoid about the swelling moving to his airway though so I was awake most of the night, sleeping in about 20 minute bursts and checking on his breathing and then it would take me at least another 20-40 minutes for my mind to stop running at 1000 rpm and let me fall back to sleep. I’ve not had more than about 4 hours of sleep a night for a week running.
When I worked with the BFL at the top of the post it was the first my wheel had been put to use in over a year I think. And I loved it! Oddly, despite the break, it was the most satisfying spinning process and product of all time I think. The result was a soft yarn with nice drape and phenomenal loft. It was really nice to knit in the evening and then wind down just before bed with 45 minutes to an hour of spinning.
I do think that despite the last-minute extra work added to my schedule that I slept a bit better when working on this project. I was spinning in the evening as my last thing before the bedtime routine. Even if I’m not actively working on a spinning related submission I really want to keep the wheel running. Maybe not every night, but at least a few times a week would be a healthy goal I think. This last week has really brought this to light!
Before the lovely BLF was on the wheel I had a partial bobbin of some striped rolags I created back in 2007 based on an article by Dianne Cutler in the Fall 2007 issue of Spin-Off. So I spun up the rest of that bobbin and was reminded why it had stalled out.
The idea of the article was to spin an almost Noro-like striping yarn. The basic premise is to stripe the batt as you drum card it. Then roll the bat around a wooden dowel to create a rolag or puni-like form (like shown above, but with it striped along the length) which you spin from one end, without unrolling. If you are consistent in creating the punis and the order and direction you spin them up you can get the gradual striping in a plied yarn. This excited me and when that article came out, I happened to have had Cathy’s drum carder, so I pulled together some coordinating scraps of random dyed roving I had on hand and made 6 striped batts according to the article with a plan to spin 2 per bobbin to create a 3-ply yarn.
I don’t know if I made mine too dense in the center by rolling it on the dowel under too much tension or if I just don’t know how to spin from a puni. I’m pretty sure the result is not going to be striped predictably as the fiber wanted to draft off of the outside, rather than spinning all of the first stripe of color and then going onto the next. I can’t imagine that colors would line up across multiple bobbins. I tried spinning straight from the punis and I tried predrafting. Neither was terribly pleasing or a pleasant spinning experience. Even trying to predraft them was an exercise in frustration. I have 2 out of 6 punis on one bobbin. I’m willing to sacrifice that and aim for a nice 2-ply with the remaining 4 punis.
I learned a few things about how I want to spin my singles with the BFL project. I’m pretty sure that even if I figured out how to draft and spin the remaining punis properly, I probably would find the 3-ply yarn to be heavier and denser than I want. So I can chain ply the currently spun bobbin and start over with the rest and aim for a 2-ply.
Can anyone shed some light on this spinning technique? What have I done wrong and how might I deal with it with less frustration?
In the meantime I might revisit this Wooly Wonka merino that Margene gifted me a couple years ago. When diving through the fiber stash I realized that it also has 1 bobbin of singles spun. I’ll have to find my reference spinning card for it so I recall the twist and grist I was aiming for and whether I was planning for a 2-ply or 3-ply yarn. I think I know where it is (*crosses fingeers*). But those colors seem great for this time of year, do they not? They are certainly in contrast to the brown outside the windows!
