Fiber Fool

You know, I recall being young (grade 7 or 8 probably) and thinking one of my aunts was off her rocker. You could randomly speak one word and she’d break out into song. I now realize that we all have a soundtrack rolling around in our heads and certain phrases or activities will bring at least portions of their lyrics and often their melody to mind. Anyway. just a bit of a long explanation for my post title today :-)

So, I mentioned last week that I was going to try plying the same singles from last week’s skein with a 3rd ply made of wooly nylon. It was an interesting experiment. I went from what looked to be a light sport weight while under tension to very interestingly textured bulky yarn. It was 385-yds under tension and I’m guessing about 257 or so yds not under tension, but that is purely a guess based on the shrinkage of the hank. I have no idea what I’ll do with this yarn. The idea at SnB was large needles so it would be less likely to split the yarn and so there would be plenty of room to see the texture of the yarn. It is likely to sit in the stash for a while.

Here are some comparisons including the 60 yds of leftover singles I had, the 2-ply and the 3-ply with the wooly nylon. Interesting, no?

I also spent some more time with my drop spindle this week. I’ve had some lovely pink and yellow coopworth that Snow gave me over a year ago on my spindle for several months now and I finally finished it up (in only 45 minutes) and then I plied it (andean style - Hannah has pics I believe so that Cathy can show Anne that people really do ply on the drop spindle) on the spindle at SnB. There was more on there than I thought and it took much longer to make the andean bracelet so I stood out in the parking lot for aobut 30 minutes finishing up the plying after SnB was over and Catalyst Coffee closed. Ashley kindly kept me company though and it went quite quickly.

There was a total of 66 yards of 2-ply when all was said and done. It’s really fuzzy and sort of soft, but sort of itchy too. The plying could have been a little bit better, but I was performing for an audience and in a bit of a hurry, not a good recipe for a great plying job. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it, but I have some two-tone blue coopworth that was also spindle spun that I overdyed. That one is about 85 yards, so between the two I should be able to do a little something. Wrist warmers come to mind, but I’m a little concerned about the itch factor…

For the summer spinning challenge instead of running out of steam this week as I feared I spun more this week than last week! My total for week two was 6 hours of spinning. 2 hours and 10 minutes of that was spent with my drop spindle! That six hours also does not include the time spent finishing the 511 yds of completed yarn (60 yds singles, 66 yds of spindle ply, 385 yds of 3-ply with wooly nylong) from this week either - wrapping onto the niddy noddy, washing, etc. If I did not spin again until week five I’d still be on pace with my goal of averaging 3 hours per week. So, I’ve given myself a bit of a break. I didn’t spin on the 4th or yesterday (hubby was still home). Part of it was for a bit of a break and partly it was due to my inability right now to make a decision I don’t know what to spin next!

Do I spin up some of the lovely purple blend that will be one of the prizes for the challenge? That would also count for project spectrum! How about some silk? I have the lovely 3 ounces of hankies that Amanda kindly brought back from Stitches West for me or the two ounces of sliver I bought at Detta’s last year… Or, I’ve still got samples that Snow gave me last year as well as some other samples that Cathy gave me for my birthday, those would not require a long commitment to any one thing… What shall I do?