Monday, November 15, 2010

Spinning Afternoon

Spent this past Saturday afternoon at a friend's (Helen) lovely lake-side home spinning and chatting and sipping tea...afternoons like this replenish the soul and help to lower the stress level that has been building for weeks now. Helen was spinning some lovely Romney she purchased at The Spinnery after her spinning lessons there. And even though in this picture it looks like we are very serious about the task at hand...we were really enjoying ourselves!
I finished spinning the Alpaca/Romney blend I had been working on:
and then I plied it (that is what I am doing in the top picture) with the brown Jacob I had just recently spun (shown in the previous post)...at least, that is what I thought the brown singles were...until I realized that this was some other brown roving I had spun...oh, well - one brown yarn looks like any other brown yarn, right? At least it was brown!  I LOVE the result and hope I have enough yardage to knit the Reversible Plaited Scarf that Helen knit from her first hand-spun yarn...you can see the scarf, a matching pair of fingerless mitts and the rest of the hand spun on the table in the front of the top picture. Below is the Alpaca/Romney/Jacob plied yarn at 12 wpi (a heavy worsted):
I have really gotten my Spinning Mojo back and am now plying Border Leicester that The Fleece Connection [you remember us from an earlier posting :-)] got last year. I had actually spun the singles sometime last year and they had been sitting patiently on bobbins waiting to be plied all that time. Plying this yarn reminds me of why I don't really enjoy spinning it...it is very coarse and rough on the hands...but it is beautiful to look at when it is finished:
When that is finished this afternoon I will skein the Alpaca/Romney/Jacob yarn and determine the yardage. Why the crazed rush to complete all of this just now you ask...and even if you didn't ask I will tell you...I am hurriedly plying and skeining because I am selling my Louet S-50 this coming week and I will no longer have a skein-winder available or a spare spinning wheel to use for plying. Also I need to empty some bobbins now that I am spinning almost every day. Add this to the hours I am spending knitting potential Christmas presents and you can see where the stress is coming from...and isn't all of this supposed to be a way to lower stress?? Not in my world!
PS...The yardage of the Alpaca/Romney/Jacob(?) turned out to be about 210 and the skein is now drying after a lovely washing where it 'bloomed' beautifully :-)

3 comments:

Ruth said...

You are working way too hard! Have a soothing cuppa and put your feet up and daydream.

Ask me if I take my own advice.

Unknown said...

Looks nice and relaxing! I MUST move spinning to the top of my list!Speedy123

Graceful Space said...

I hope my tea cosy is among them!