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Spinning Pencil Roving

Several years ago I purchased some pencil roving with which to knit.  Pencil roving has been drafted until it is the size of a fat pencil (ingenious the way they named it, right?).   It can be used by spinners with minimal drafting (something at the moment I seem to need).

Generally speaking anything that has not been spun will also not hold up very well under pressure, aka anything that will be worn or used.   At the time I was knitting a wine bottle cozy that was to be felted.  Felting or fulling refers to putting innocent wool in water (generally hot water) and working it around enough to make it shrink.  Yes, this is a real technique that often yields very beautiful end products.  So as the roving is felted the strands or staples of wool bond together and the final product can hold up to pressure. (BTW it worked out great in the wine bottle cozy.)  At any rate, there was quite a bit of the pencil roving left waiting for just the right thing to come along.  Below is a photo of what pencil roving looks like when you purchase it.

Pencil roving as it comes ready to spin or use 
My first idea was to spin my leftover pencil roving together since I now own a drop spindle and have very basic skills in spinning, but there are six strands wound together as one on my cake.  Apparently this is one of two ways it comes; the other is in two strands.  This six-strand cake will make a rather bulky yarn.   If  I revisit the fated False Creek cowl from last fall which requires chunky weight yarn it might work.  Or perhaps what I should do is somehow separate the six strands and use two strands together at a time to make a much lighter weight yarn.  As you can tell I haven't quite finalized its fate.


Here's another use for dyed pencil roving.  It is a silk shawl/scarf felted with multi-coloured pencil roving.  Strangely enough I had just looked into this as a possibility when a friend mentioned she'd seen these lovely silk scarves available at a local  market on Granville Island.  She was just amazed when I started describing how easy this would be to make for yourself if you could source the silk and pencil roving. (I sounded smarter about this than I am, of course.)  If you're interested in making one of these scarves, check out this link.  You will get step-by-step instructions; and it requires no skills in knitting, merely a lot of patience in working the pencil roving and silk together in bubble wrap.

I love it when I finally figure out how to appropriately use some of the stash that's been around for years (I think the False Creek is back on the docket again).  And the best thing for me, it is the "next new shiny" thing to do.




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