Fledgling Spinner

I might have already mentioned, but I know myself and my craftitis pretty well. When I wanted to learn how to spin I bought a copy of this book and tried the “first spinning” techniques suggested in the book. I got a hooked piece of a clothes hanger…the wire ones. I just made a tangled worm of roving. I tried a dowel and CD contraption and ended up with rubber grommets all over the garage trying to get them over the dowel.

Somewhere between off-center cup hooks and twirling fiber in my hands, I got a small bonus and decided that if I liked spinning, I would want a wheel. If I was really bad at it or hated it, the Ashford Traditional tends to hold value enough to find it a new home…

I have never tried the drop spindle until this past Saturday. My mom, the original craft loving enabler constant support of my hand crafts sent me two drop spindles in a goody bag with my visiting sibling:

I must admit – not as tedious or frustrating as I feared! I translated the drafting techniques I am trying to practice and manage some decently even singles on both. The Ashford top whorl on the left holds practice wool of unknown origin. The lovely dark wood spindle has a  50/50 merino & soysilk blend that is a bit too fast for my fingers at my present learning curve, but I love the colors. This roving is from SugarBee Art & Fiber Studios and I found it in She Sells Yarn, my nearest LYS..

I can’t decide if the dark wood spindle is a top whorl on account of the notch/turning details on the end of the shaft. However, there is a hook on the same side as the whorl.

New toys need new homes so I repurposed what I would consider a modern day “train case” for makeup. Those square bags are cute, but I love the rigidity of this MIL b-day gift. Plus there is a wee pocket for my cell phone or scissors.

I knit a little more on my Sideways Spencer, practicing my first I-cord bind off. I still need to do the button band and collar, but after that I can move along and block it….if I am not too busy spinning.

Roving, like yarn, is never a promise of what a thing may become. How I see it, how I work it, and how it unfolds under care of my hands could be world’s apart from what someone else would do with the same medium. I like to think of it as birth because the possible combinations appear reasonably infinite.

Take this lovely roving I oggled and ordered from Knit Witch:

Commercial rovings were intimidating to me at first. I wasn’t confident my spinning techniques were “worthy” or anything other than the alpaca roving I labored over. I was wrong. The luxury (so to speak) of having things combed and ready for your artistry was almost easier than fussing from beginning to end. I digress.

First things first, take the label off the braid and unwind to get a good look at all your fleece has to offer. Note: not all ready-to-spin fibers come “braided” like this. Combed top, slivers, and batts all look different. More on that as my addiction unfolds. In principle, I would say the plan of attack should be the same.

The braid is basically one long run of prepared fibers looped up on each other in a pretty way to keep them together and neat. At least this is my interpretation. I deconstruct the pretty and look at the whole pile.

I knew I wanted to do a two ply so I imagined the best way I could divvy up the fleece over two bobbins. To this end, I laid out the sliver/top (still not sure which is which) and tried to match color repeats. It is SO long there is no way I would predraft the whole length of it so I knew I was going to be tearing it into manageable lengths. This exercise helps me decide where to make the tear.

For this fiber, I divided the whole into thirds, which gave me a blue/silver/teal repeat I could wrap my head around. Each of the three got divided into quarters and I predrafted and wound into loose clouds from the same end for each of the four. I kept the same quarters together. When I was done I had a basket that could be translated into text thusly:

Four balls of blue/silver/teal/silver/blue/silver/teal (you get my drift), four balls of the next chunks of color and four balls of the third. In this way, I could figure on nearly correct color alignment if I took one ball from pile #1, next ball from pile #2, next from pile #3, back to pile#1, #2, #3. Stop, End of bobbin. Then I had two of each left for the second bobbin.

I figured my reasoning was sound. The only complication I considered as I spun is what anyone who braids knows – sometimes the ones that have more overlap are shorter. If I pulled a little less on one of the balls and a little more on the next bobbin the whole thing could be thrown off. But it was as close as I was gonna get.

The next step is to have the Chief Inspector make sure your bobbins full of singles pass his high standards. Then ply.

Not too shabby in the match-up department…..

There it is, all 100-and-lost-count-on-the-niddy-noddy yards of squishy two ply.

My progress on the Very Tall Socks is not what I hoped, but nonetheless they are progressing. I am also about halfway through my Sideways Spencer.

Unfortunately, I am not sure about either one. The quietly deflated skein attached to the sock suggests to me that I may not make it all the way to the toe without running precariously low on fiber.

The sweater isn’t ready for its close up but investigations on Ravelry suggest to me that it may have been a too small choice. Is it possible to be bitten by a knitting pessimist bug?

Is it too soon to cast on something else instead?

It always seems like there is a universal joke in which all patterns have gauge to show you what you should do, and hardly any knitters actually test with a swatch first. I have maybe three or four swatches for every dozen things that get cast on. Like most people (I imagine….or I could just be projecting on the needlework masses) I kinda measure when I have knit on a piece for a while or if something appears to be going hideously wrong.

So it is with the hopes of the magic of knitting and yarns that I keep my fingers crossed that the Very Tall Socks I cast on which are written in a pattern for worsted will work in the fingering I am actually knitting them in. I have done several rows already and put them on waste yarn once to see how they fit…..just in case.

In other size news, I have also been playing with some 7mm drop stitch markers….something which required some tiny hand/eye coordination to get miniature stitch markers. I think they worked out okay – I still love the brains the best.

Those are Size 2 needles, for reference.

I also broke down and pre-drafted some of “Vatican”, I couldn’t help myself. I still haven’t given the Merletto Mitts to the intended wearer, but I figured they might motivate me to make my own.

When I first started researching online to learn about hand spinning, I watched a few videos on YouTube. There was one by chicksinrubber that was a favorite – it made spinning on a wheel seem delightfully accessible. She has this sweetly honest part where she talks about how spinning keeps you from eating sweets, since you don’t want to get your spun yarns all sticky, it does make delightful sense.

Post Halloween, I could take it a step further and suggest my recent bout of wanting to start new projects (even though I have some lingering old ones) could be a good preventative for eating more lil’ chocolate bars and candy.

So far, I do have one knitted finished object to show the world – my first hand spun wool meets hand knit object. In fairness to the huge amount of pride I feel for this, it was a quick knit. And one of them is slightly larger than the other due to smaller spun product. Still – I have touched them and gushed over them a lot.

They are knit from the “Tuscany” roving from the Knit Witch. An Italian named roving becomes Merletto Mitts – Italian for lace according to the Ravelry description of the pattern – for a friend who is Italian. Hope she likes them!

In other start-itis news, I received some sock yarn from TurtlePurl – gorgeous and squishy and soon to be cast on for socks of some kind or another. I cast on a pair of Very Tall Socks for my friend in Toronto, I have gone a couple of repeats into a Sideways Spencer, and now I want a shawl. Oh, and I pre-drafted the “Vatican”. That is it though. Til I finish something else. Promise.