Fledgling Spinner

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.

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.

I have been “spinning” for over a year now. I cannot say that I have accomplished much. I can honestly tell you that I retain the fledgling part of my name. What I have learned is to just go with my gut…….and assume that if it was really that hard, all those people who developed it independently across the globe, well, wouldn’t have.

Basically, I press the treadle on the wheel and let the fibers go when I think they have whirled around on each other enough to not fall apart completely. I like to imagine there is instinct for this. Planning helps too. If I pull apart the fibers in a long strand (so-called pre-drafting) then it is already mostly there…..they just need the twist and a little help pulling apart along the thick bits.

The first full spindles of single ply fiber are so rewarding. It has all the potential wound up in there. There are no final ply issues or yardage concerns but the whole color palette of the fiber is laid out, plain as day. Singles are terribly romantic to look at. I think that this roving suits the color on the wheel very nicely.

I have not been spinner only – my spouse has also helped me to properly merchandise my latest etsy products. He created an amazing wee box for Caution: Live Yarns!

North Carolina is made for knitters. There are crisp fall days and fiber festivals. I brought back goodies and congratulated myself on my restraint:I saw sheep and goats and all kinds of fleece and fiber.


I accidentally climbed the mountain in the background before looking down and realizing that the bridge we wanted to get to was in the other direction.
Alpacas don’t judge.

I also finished the sweater which was worn while on vacation.
Now it is time for covert knitting since it is almost the gift giving season and I have suffered another bout of knitting delusion and I imagine I can make four or more things to give away in less than two months. It could happen.

As surely as one will eventually lament the speed of their needlecraft, one will automatically begin to question their genetic destiny towards things like arthritis and carpal tunnel. I decided that I needed a night off spinning, carding and knitting. I have managed a sweater back in the impossible to remember basketweave pattern and one and a half spools of single ply yarn in the black fleece. I have quietly nursed a desire for a drumcarder to increase my spinning productivity and decided that first I must make the hand carders worth their weight in credit card spending. Although I fear for the overall size of the sweater and wonder at its likely stretchiness and my inability to knit a swatch to check for guage, I also remember the most important thing:

If I finish this sweater and it doesn’t fit Richard, I can always give it to a smaller man for christmas.

With the best of intentions, I have washed and carded the majority of Oreo, the black and white alpaca mama from the big bag. I started to spin what I can only describe in my amateur interpretation as her short and crimped fuzz bounty and am loving the softness. So many lines in the things I have read lend a certain amount of importance to the length of the locks you spin (staple length?) and hers are not too long but bathed in softness. The resulting single is still beset with some lumps and partial variation in thickness but I am determined to make two bobbins full and spin them together to make beautiful yarn. I have carded them after many minutes spent doing what one website calls monkey-picking – using my fingers to pull out the white bits from her fleece (she was named oreo for a reason) and any rogue pieces of grass or whatever – and rolled them in the worsted way (widthwise rather than lengthwise).

As far as set up, I have devoted an inherited tea cart to holding my spinning and knitting in the living room. A quick trip to a local craft store and I had one of those flat , square baskets to hold my roving. As I meandered through the aisles, a woman noticed my basket and asked me if I had read the newspaper. I replied that I had not to which she responded with an amazing declaration that there had been an article extolling the organizing virtues of baskets. “They can hold magazines and other stuff”, she told me. I was gobsmacked. I told her, “I just needed a basket. This was premeditated”. It was surreal. My husband pointed out that the news article was correct. Baskets have been used for organizing – for about six thousand years. We purchased and left. His archaeological accuracy aside, it was weird – no one should need a newspaper to tell them how to use a basket.

The basket use was short lived once it was filled with roving (carded bits of fleece rolled widthwise and predrafted…I think). I spun. And then I turned to knitting. I recently acknowledged that it may be the majority of a decade since I last knit a sweater for my spouse. He selected some wool and a pullover pattern from an older issue of Interweave. Spinning may have to give way to some knitting time as I have ground to make up. At this rate, we would be married half a century and he would only have five or six sweaters to show for it.

…or a week. It has now been seven days – give or take a couple of hours – since I started down this road. It is an incredible thing to see what changes as you learn and also how restrained you can be when it comes to the urge to pet and/or cuddle the first two ply skein that looks so fluffy and soft and inviting.

I give you the yarn bounty:They are organized from right to left in order of completion with a sock stuck in for the day where I began to worry about wobbly spinner’s knee and the funny click my ankle was making. I told my husband that I will have a new rule so as not to overdose on spinning – knit one day, spin the next. Barring work interruptions, I figure that will allow me to process all the alpaca goodies sometime before mid-winter when I hope to present a multi-coloured shawl to the gifter of fleece.

I hope that it will seem interesting to her; a shawl with all the natural colors from cream to black to brown of her alpaca flock (are they a flock?). That is my beginner spinning goal. I also had my first fleece coveting experience today. Never having spun before and then being chock full of fleece, I have never looked on fleece sites to shop.

A quick peek at the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair website led me to a woman – Miss Babs – website which has all manner of beautiful colorways and dyed roving & top for spinners. These things will, of course, come later, when my singles lack the slubs (wee patches of thickness along my attempts at thin, even spinning).

I can still look though.

There can be no doubt that some things alter your plans irrevocably. I wanted to be a simple knitter, now I have shunned laundry and dishes for most of the holiday weekend on favor of this:

It was fantastic! Without the stress of perfection as so many writer’s had cautioned against the notion that your first yarn would be anything but lumpy and thick, I went full tilt and spun and spun rolags until they were all used up. Then I carded more and tried to think about small, thin, even single ply yarns.

I drafted with my right hand, I drafted with my left. I tried the treadle with each foot in turn lest one side of my body have a heretofore unknown innate ability to spin. I decided that there was no genetic imprint for spinning but know now that should tragedy befall one joint on one side or the other, I can learn on the other.
Sometime on Saturday I produced a reasonably even pair of single ply yarns. Loading both bobbins on the lazy kate, I proceeded to make my first two ply. Thick and not particularly even, it was nonetheless balanced as the books tell me, spinning in no particular direction when I took it off the niddy noddy.

I laid out my skeins of first yarns and made two ply soup.

Labor Day saw me dispense with my chores in short order so I could return to this:

A single ply on a full bobbin which pleases me greatly. It is destined for navajo ply, something I was first brave enough to try this morning on the leftovers from the two ply adventure. I will scarce be able to pay attention at work tomorrow which makes me think of only one thing – Columbus Day.