Spinning Day Again!
I have some more spinning to report. I’m not nearly as prolific a spinner as others, but that hank up there is 102 yds of about DK weight yarn. I haven’t washed and block this particular hank as there will be a matching one of a darker alpaca that will become *something* for my grandfather. I was originally thinking a scarf, but now I’m thinking a hat instead. Perhaps Coronet with the cable in the lighter color???
I didn’t have a lot of fun spinning this fiber. I bought it at the Wool Market in Estes Park in June. It felt soooo nice and soft. However, it was packaged in a ball and the outer layer was clean of vegetable matter and the deeper into the ball I got the more VM there was. Most did not fall out during pre drafting or even spinning. So, I was doing a lot of picking by hand. But, there is only so much picking you can do. Luckily I had spun it all on one bobbin and didn’t want to mess with both ends of a center-pull ball again, so I used my ball winder to make two balls of roughly the same weight and came pretty close to the same length of singles in each one and all the processing of the singles into balls caused more of it to fall out. And still a little more fell out in the plying process. However, it kind of makes me think of Noro yarn and while I *love* the Noro colors I hate the VM in it! We’ll see what I have once I do the washing and blocking when the other color is spun. Speaking of the other color - I need you guys to kick my a** to make sure I get on it soon because I suspect the experience of this stuff will have me dragging my feet a bit.
Those of you with more experience in buying prepared batts, blankets, roving etc. What should be considered a reasonable amount of VM and what is not reasonable? Should I spend more time in picking junk out than I actually spend spinning it? That doesn’t seem right, but does the fineness of the alpaca mean I have to deal with more than in wool because they can’t make as many passes without creating neps?? Or was this a bad process job and I should avoid this company in the future?
In more pleasant spinning, I also got two small hanks of about 30 yds each of the other two .5 oz Ashland Bay tops I bought at Shuttles after the Boulder Knit Out.
This is the last merino/tussah blend I had. I think it’s Ashland Bay’s “purple” but I’m not positive. I’m so glad I finally figured out the worsted draw as it results is such a shiny and dressy looking yarn!
This was the one 100% merino bit that I bought. I believe it is the Rose Quartz color, though when spun up it ended up being much more lilac than rose color, but I still like it 
I’ll get these in the spinning gallery later this week. (Possibly even this afternoon, but no promises.)
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At least you’re spinning. I haven’t been able to get back to it. It’s looking beautiful!
Comment by margene — 10/11/2005 @ 2:03 pm
Wow, nice job spinning!! These look so interesting. I need to make a post about my spinning experiences … that pink stuff I got on eBay (orig. from Brown Sheep) has almost no VM in it. I got a spinning book from the library, too, so we’ll see where that leads me …
Comment by Jenifer — 10/12/2005 @ 8:27 am