Tuesday, April 14, 2009

*A Whole Post NOT About My Horse.* You Spin Me Right Round Baby!!

Just before I left to go on my trip my pay pal account reached $12. I'd been waiting to get enough money to buy some fiber so I could use my drop spindle and make myself some yarn. My eventual goal is to hand spin my own wool yarn to hand knit my own wool stockings. *passes out just thinking about it*

So I bought the "Medium Grade Wool Spinning Wheel Fiber Top Roving Felt" on eBay from Little Barn Fibers. I seriously highly recommend them. I placed the order tuesday, got my wool friday, and was surprised by how nice this $5 bag of wool was! I was expecting something less.... everything! Something I wouldn't mind screwing up with while I learned, to be honest. Instead for almost nothing I got some nice quality wool that I am making poorly crafted yarn out of that will actually make me a nice lumpy hat!I wish I had taken a pictures of the huge wad of roving I got! 8 oz is a ton of wool roving! And the fibers were very consistent in length and nice and soft and with good crimp.

First, this is my pre-drafting in preparation to spin the wool. The loose stuff is a section that is about 1/8 of the total wool I got. Like I said, a LOT more wool than I expected for $5!!!

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This is a roll of my first attempt at spinning along with my pre-drafted wool and the undrafted roving:

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And here is picture of my third attempt at spinning still on the spindle:

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I'm going to ply the first two today, I think. Then I am going to knit a simple voyagers toque out of some of it, if I think I have enough. If not, I will make more!!!! Haven't decided if I want to try knitting out of the plyed stuff or not. I still have to set the twist and all that crazy stuff. DOH! I'm having fun with this for sure.

2 comments:

  1. Oh I SERIOUSLY have to try spinning now... I've got about a pound of hand-dyed roving that I got for my birthday last year... I've been scared to try!
    It looks wonderful Pony!!
    ~Kimmy

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  2. It really is pretty easy as long as you don't over think it or expect perfect store quality yarn out of it. Watch a few youtubes and you are set.


    Word of advice, pre-drafting the entire piece and rolling it before you start spinning makes spinning 100 times easier!! And honestly I like my lumpy first tries better than my more even consistent later attemots. I am intentionally trying to make it a bit lumpier, haha!

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