Skip to main content

Lots of Spinning Wednesday

There were two projects spun today.  The failure from last week remains a non-success.  The problems of last week were fixed, but now the final project isn't anything like I hoped it would be.  Perhaps you will see it sometime in the future, not today however.

The generally successful project was this:


You are looking at 100 grams of Sweet Georgia hand-dyed 100% merino wool.  Anyone who spins can look at this and say, yes she's still a beginner and they are right.  I learned a few things about spinning today, but I need to continue practicing.

The hank above started the day in this beautiful braid.  Sorry it is sunny here and the colours are a bit washed out.  There's mauve, golden rod, black, and white in the braid and then all the transitions making it a combination consisting of all my favorite colours.


The braid was undone and split in half (or so I thought, more on that later).  Each half was then spun on its own bobbin.


See how those lovely colours begin to blend together in their own special way.  From here the bobbins are plied.


The photo above actually captures the true colours best.  I love the fact that the different colors plied together to create a barber pole effect.  This makes me very happy.  The niddy noddy was used to create the hank.  The hank will go for a soak.  I think vinegar will be added to the water first before the wash because the mauve came off on my fingers, meaning that colour hadn't quite set.  Once the wool has dried I will need to figure out what to do with it.

Oh, I ended up with only 99 grams in the hank.  There remains an ounce of single ply left on one of the bobbins, apparently the measuring wasn't nearly as accurate as it needed to be.  Next time I will be more precise.

Sure I created art yarn, but it is yarn I will be able to use to knit something, perhaps a hat or cowl for myself.  Those colours make me happy and will match most of my wardrobe.   Today was a good spinning day and that too makes me happy.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms...

Gosling's Meme and Knitting

What is a meme, you may first ask? Well Dr. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, came up with the idea in the late 1970's and stated something like: a meme is to a society what a gene is to a human. Both are an element or unit that can be replicated or passed from one individual to another. During the Internet age memes can be easily shared, replicated or otherwise passed on to another. Recent examples can be found on Gawker . Memes can include piano playing cats, a honey badger, the Call Me Maybe phenomenon and so on. The political campaign in the U.S. helped fuel memes using some of the most unusual statements like, "binders of women" and "you didn't build that." A few memes have staying power but most have a relatively short life span. Gosling's meme related to knitting has been around for some time; so when I again saw another post about him recently, it was time to figure out the origin. Ryan Gosling is a Canadian actor born in Onta...

Yarn Usage II: Crochet vs. Knit

All four swatches were made.  Each is 6.25" or 15.875 cm square; each prepared with the same sized yarn and needles or hook.  It took 25 stitches to get the appropriate width for the knit swatches and only 20 stitches for both of the crocheted squares.  That already says something, but I'll get to it in a minute.  (Don't know what I'm talking about here?  Check out this post first.) Unfortunately, you'll just have to trust me that four swatches were prepared and that they were all the same size.  In the excitement to get to measuring and weighing of the swatches, no photographic evidence was taken.  Luckily for me the results of this research doesn't have to be reviewed by a jury of my peer.  This blog post will be the sum and total of where this information is published. The remains of my four swatches What can be shared, however, are the balls of yarn rewound after the weighing and measuring was completed.  You will note the size ...