Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Aw fleece fleece.

Pictured above is two pounds of corriedale roving for spinning. This is a corriedale:

And this is me at my first and only attempt at spinning on a wheel back in November.

Yesterday I got a text message from my mom saying a spinning wheel is on its way for my birthday. Hooray! I'm pretty stoked. The corriedale came early, and it's keeping a pound of falkland company on the bottom of my yarn shelves. I tried the drop spindle thing, which was all right, but not really yielding the same results you can get with a wheel. Part of the problem is that my inital attempts at spinning on a drop spindle were with cotton, which has a really short fiber compared to wool (Yes, I'm geeking out on fiber talk.). My second attempts were with something like romney, which is easier, but not as easy as lambswool, which didn't have the natural lanolin washed out of it. It was kind of sticky...actually very sticky, which not only made me feel like I was spinning with honey, but made the spinning process much easier. The fibers tend to want to stay together, so it's harder to break your lead.
Yes, I've come to accept the fact that I'm a severe yarn geek. We all have our addictions.
So I've fairly conquered knitting (the title of this blog came from a compliment I got from a random British woman when she found out that I taught myself how to knit). I still don't do lace, and I have yet to finish a sweater, but it's mostly because I'm an avid sock-maker, and a knitter could spend the rest of their lives making nothing but socks and never get bored. Now it's time to see if I can make yarn, actual yarn, yarn that can be made into other, useful objects.

1 comment:

  1. Those two are actually undyed. There's a really dark brown, and the other color is described as gray, but there's a lot of light tan mixed in with it, so it's kind of almost an oatmeal color. There are a lot of different ways to dye wool at home. Some people use kool-aid, since it's non-toxic and readily available. I haven't tried dyeing yet, the wool is just too pretty to mess with. :)

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