Category Archives: Spinning

January Round-up

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Well, here we are at the end of January and I’ve already stuffed one of my New Year’s resolutions: not to have more than three knitting projects on the go at any one time.

I was doing really well at first: I had an overdue baby blanket, a rectangular shawl that I cast on in December 2010 and I joined the Through The Loops Mystery Sock KAL. That’s three. Then during a post-Christmas knitterly meet-up, Ling of Socktopus threw me a skein of yarn that I’d been admiring but not dared to bring home with me and said that I could knit them a sample.

So I started that.

And then I felt the sudden urge to change my mind about my colour choices for a pair of colourwork mittens, which resulted in me having yarn that no longer had a purpose, so I decided that I needed a new hat.

A hat with what feels like a giant tassel.

Pattern: Wood Hollow Hat, by Kirsten Kapur (Through The Loops)
Yarn: Quince & Co. Lark in Winesap
Needles: 4.0mm

So even though I finished the hat, I still have four things on the go rather than three. And I’m about to cast on something else. It’s all gone a bit wrong, but I figured that maybe it’s okay, and it’s me being genuinely excited about knitting again. I fully aim to finish the overdue baby blanket before the end of February, though, so that should help clear my conscience… if I ever had one to begin with.

I did, however, finish spinning a bump of fibre. This braid here:

became this skein of yarn here:

Fibre: Spindlefrog Oatmeal BFL in Woodland
Specs: 4 oz, 130 yards, 11 wpi (DK weight)
Wheel setting: Spun at 1:13.7, plied at 1:9.5
Technique: worsted-spun, short forward draw

I pretty much threw this fibre into the wheel and waited to see what would happen. I’m currently in an odd love-indifferent relationship with spinning, where sometimes I’m happy doing it, and other times I sit there, staring at the singles on the bobbin, the fibre in my hand and genuinely think: “What is the point? It’s still crap.”

I know I can’t get better at spinning without actually, you know, spinning. But I constantly feel like I’m having to relearn a lot of things, and making the same mistakes despite all my trying. I’m probably overthinking it all, and I did find that the spinning was easier going when I had an audiobook to listen to, so I’m sure it will be better.

I thought just for fun I would do a post at the end of every month also rounding up the books I’ve read and the films I’ve watched. So for January:

Read: Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King (from the library). I’ve always preferred his novellas and short stories, and this was a nice collection. I liked Fair Extension best, because it was simple, cheeky but horrific in its normality. 1922 I thought was the hardest to get through, but it was one of those stories where I kept checking how many more pages I had to go, not because I couldn’t wait for the story to end, but because I didn’t know how much more of the claustrophobic horror I could take before its conclusion. It’s that sort of good.

Still reading: Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio (Kindle). It’s my second read-through of Stories, though I never read the last story by Joe Hill, so while I can’t say anything about that one, I can safely say that my favourite stories in this collection are Gaiman’s The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains – there is a moment in this story where I had to exhale in satisfaction, because something that was at the beginning caught with something near the end – and A Life in Fictions by Kat Howard.

Songs of Love & Death, edited by George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois (hardback). I’ve only got through six of the sixteen stories so far, but it kicked off with Love Hurts, by Jim Butcher, set in the Dresden Files, so that was a great start. I really need to keep more short story collections around. These have been fun.

Watched: Thor, dir. Kenneth Branagh, 2010 (LoveFilm). We rang in the New Year with this, and it’s just ridiculous fun. It helps that Chris Hemsworth is rather nice to look at, and while that’s all well and good, I really want to see more of Tom Hiddleston. It tickles me that Kenneth Branagh directed this. Who knew he could come up with an Asgard that was so beautiful to look at that all Nick and I could say was, “Damn. We need a bigger screen for this.”

The Rock, dir. Michael Bay, 1996 (BBC1). I have a soft spot for this film. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it harks back to a time when daft action movies still had Don Simpson, and Michael Bay hadn’t got the idea that he might be the best thing since sliced bread. But I can quote this movie in too many places, and I own the soundtrack. I am not ashamed.

Four Lions, dir. Chris Morris, 2010 (LoveFilm Instant). A film is a great comedy about radical Islam when each and every time I laughed, I thought whatever God was in charge of this world would strike me dead. Within the first ten minutes Nick and I were quoting bits to each other and laughing like idiots. It’s bittersweet near the end, but as any good satire, it made me wonder about all the people out there who do think like Barry (Nigel Lindsay), or who are perfectly innocent like Waj (Kayvan Novak).

And there goes January.

That’s How I Roll

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I’ve been a layabout with my spinning for a while now. For a long time it was because I was being too precious with my fibre, and that I felt I wasn’t a good enough spinner to be let loose on such beautiful colours and fibres. Then I had an epiphany: that I would never be a better spinner if I didn’t spin.

I mean, duh.

So, ages ago I experimented with carding fibre into rolags. This in itself was a skill and a half to learn, because I practiced carding so infrequently. But with the help of a patient husband who went looking for online tutorials and videos, I turned this:

Spindlefrog Falkland, in an unknown colourway

into these:

I couldn’t separate the colours as well as I wanted to, which meant that bits of gold and pink were left behind in the darker fibres where I split them apart. So I had to put more effort into blending the fibre so that those bits of gold and pink got incorporated into the mix a little more.

Not only was I experimenting with carding, blending and then making rolags, I also wanted to spin this lot woolen. Again, it’s something I don’t practice often and I figured, I have rolags. Rolags like to be spun woolen. What the hell.

After a few false starts, I had this:

Which was fine, soft and rather quite beautiful. I found it much easier to spin fine singles when using the long draw method. It’s a nice, lazy, relaxed way to spin, and I’m kicking myself a little for not spinning this way more.

All seemed well and good, until, of course, Idiot Syndrome struck. I forgot to weigh out the rolags evenly, which meant I had no idea how much I’d spun and how much I hadn’t. And I wanted a 2-ply yarn.

So I figured that I could spin it all onto one bobbin, let it rest, and then wind it into a ball and ply rfom the two ends. This, it turned out, was easier said than done. It look more internet-searching and firing an email off to the awesome Diane before I got it to work and I stopped tying myself – and the precious single – into knots.

After a bath, a whack and a spell in the airing cupboard, I got this:

33g, 96 yards, 13 wpi.

The yardage is very encouraging; I rarely get anywhere near 300 yards out of 100g and here is a third of it coming in at nearly 100 yards. The finished yarn is soft, light and airy, and I can’t wait to spin the rest of it.

Mmmmm…. squishy.

The Spinning

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Among the people I met in my early knitting adventures was Diane. Now, Diane is a clever and persuasive sort, and not long after coaching me through my first cables and my first pair of socks, asked the question she inevitably asks new and vulnerable people:

“So. When are you going to learn to spin?”

Diane is a queen of many crafts, spinning being quite foremost. She used to teach spinning, but now spends more time teaching people how to use their bodies properly and bend them funny: she’s now a Pilates instructor. I digress, however.

So we started with a spindle; I was rubbish at it. And then we moved up to a wheel which my mum-in-law got me for Christmas one year. It was a double-drive traditional wheel with only two speeds and was incredibly cantankerous. I named it Olivia, because on Top Gear Richard Hammond named the car that took him across Botswana Oliver.

Eventually I did find out what make she was – a Westbury – and I also found out that they did have a reputation for being pretty stubborn. Naturally, of course, when my best friend Chantelle tried to have a go on Olivia, they got on beautifully. I’m not sure what this says more about whom.

After much penny-scraping and saving, I got the wheel that would be my companion for a good long time to come. This is Gabriel, and he is a Rose.

I tried out a Majacraft Rose at my first trip to Wonderwool Wales in April 2007, with the intent of trying out as many wheels as possible before deciding on The One. And this one? Oh, I wanted to take one home pretty much immediately. But I waited. And a couple of months later, he was mine.

I’d given up spindle spinning in the meantime, thinking I was going to remain pretty crap at it no matter what I did. But as it turned out, wheel spinning made my spindle spinning better, so I came back to it. And amassed a small collection of spindles. Which is what you do. Isn’t it?

I don’t spin nearly as much as I would like to. Indeed thanks to being in two fibre clubs – the amazing Southern Cross Fibres and the delectable Hello Yarn – my pile of fibre grows pretty steadily month to month without much reduction. I mean, the fibre stash was pretty good to start with, but now it’s getting a little silly and having lost a bit of my knitting mojo I have been spinning more lately.

There is a thing called the Tour de Fleece. It coincides with the Tour de France, and if you’ve guessed wrong, no, it does not involve the Tour de France on sheep. If you’ve guessed right, it’s a spinning challenge that you set yourself which pretty much involves spinning throughout the Tour de France.

You can aim to spin enough for a sweater. Spin and then knit a laceweight shawl. Aim to spin 30 minutes a day, every day, during the Tour. Spin up 2 lbs of fibre. Whatever you want. It’s up to you, really.

I think I may do it this year, to help out the fibre stash. I’ll see what happens.