Monday, June 2, 2014

Spinning courtly frogs


Being part of a fiber of the month club (seriously, get on the Into the Whirled waiting list!) is a lot of fun.  There is so much excitement when you open up the package and see the mystery colorway.  I LOVE the double excitement of not knowing what fiber to expect.  This month, it is 100% merino wool and I started with 111 g.


I wonder about the title of the fiber courtly frogs doesn't really seem to describe the color however one might be able to see exotic frogs if you really expand your imagination.  The fiber is red and dusty blue with hints of a paler blue and green.  And some purple.  Yay!  

 

Spinning not the thinnest, but still with some thickness.  I think I will N-ply in the end to make a tripple ply yarn.  


I'm not very consistent with the spin of this yarn.  Some parts are thicker and the beginning is much thinner.  But I'm sure it will be okay in the end.  Thick and thin yarns are fun to knit with, right?   (It doesn't help that I'm sick as I'm spinning.  My focus isn't quite there but the act of spinning is making me happy.)  


I went up and down the length of the fiber rather than pulling off chunks from one end.  One end is blue and the other red.  So when I joined a new section, I joined red to red and blue to blue.  Obviously the thickness of the predrafted pieces varies, so the length of each color will change but the repeats should be somewhat consistent.  


My progress was impeded by a few things, the first was mainly my cold. The second was that we had a lot of visitors.  The third?  I started running again!  After a rough snowy winter the sidewalks were clear enough to bust out the jogging stroller and make some other wheels turn fast.  The downside is that I've had a lot less energy to spin.  I am looking forward to a quiet evening with my wheel after the baby has gone to sleep. 

The singles are 20 wpi where I finished, but I know that it is thicker near the beginning.  Maybe I can check both ends when I'm done N-plying. heavy fingering weight.  


When I first started plying, I had MANY issues with breaking.  I just held the ends o the break over one another and had a tiny section of 4 ply.  I guess there is just not enough twist in the yarn.  And I think I'm overtwisting my plying.  This is NOT the best example of my spinning ever.  Thankfully these broken sections became much less frequent as I reached the center of the bobbin.  (I'm thinking back to Sandry's Book (Circle of Magic, Book 1) where one of the characters says that Merino isn't great for beginning spinners.  I don't think Tamora Pierce is a spinner, but Sandry has been one of my favorite characters since I as a young teen and my wheel is named Sandry.)


N-plyed 9-10 wpi.  worsted weight.  Wahoo!  this was the goal.  For all of my errors, the yarn is beautiful and soft.  I set the twist with warm water on the niddy noddy.  138 wraps.  552 feet = 184 yards. 


I came away from this project thinking that maybe I shouldn't try merino for a while, or at least not 100% merino.  I find silk blends to be a lot easier to spin, probably because silk is so long it almost spins itself!  Of course, next month the fiber is 100% superwash merino, so it looks like I will have another chance at this fiber sooner than I thought.  

 


spinning begun 3/17/14
singles completed 3/30/14
plying completed 3/31/14