Micamynx's Blog

Yesterday was my birthday & I spent at least part of the day spinning on my Lendrum.  Only fitting since the wheel was my birthday present.  But because I am horribly spoiled, I got a dozen roses too! 

Here are the latest yarns:

The JulieSpins merino roving in the colorway Polaris -It was 6.1 ounces (yet another reason to love JulieSpins, her rovings are usually always more than 4oz.) and I spun the singles laceweight. After 2-plying, I ended up with 610 yards of light fingering weight yarn! Wow! It is the most yarn I have spun yet! I managed to get it all on the large plying bobbin with room to spare. I think that sucker will hold 800-900 yards easy. 

Partial bobbin of singles

Large bobbin after plying

Big fat squishy skein!

I also spun up the Ashland Bay merino/tussah silk roving I got at SAFF.  I snagged it on my frantic runthrough.  Remember SAFF was pre-wheel, so I wasn’t sure what I wanted to get, but I had read a post on Ravelry that talked about how nice the Ashland Bay silk blend was to spin.  “Drafts like butter” stuck in my head. One vendor had a little over 3oz. left so I grabbed it.  I spun it into fingering weight singles with the intention of leaving it singles.  Unfortunately, I overspun it.  I think it will still be okay as a single yarn, but it would have been much prettier as a more loosely spun single.  Also, I did not find that it was all that wonderful to spin. It was nice, but not as nice as the indie dyed silk blends and seacell blends I have been spinning.

Before

After-330 yards

I also spun up the playing with red & scarlet sw merino roving I dyed last week.  Here are the singles (again you can see my little overspinning tendency!)

Candy cane striped singles

I attempted to navajo ply this at first (mainly because after finishing that 610 yards of JulieSpins merino above, I was too lazy to wind this onto a second bobbin to 2 ply). Disaster. I am still not absolutely sure what happened, since I was able to successfully nav-ply the Dragonfly Fibers silk/merino earlier, but this time it was just a mess.  I used the regular plying head at the lowest (slowest) ratio and the yarn still got all crazy twisted up. My loop kept closing on my finger and I broke a nail trying to rush and stop the wheel. It was so bad that I just stopped, wound it off and decided to 2ply the remaining singles.  Managed to get 150 yards of DK/Sport weight in the 2 ply.  Probably could have been another 50 yards or so if I hadn’t mangled it.  Oh well, that is why I dyed up the merino to practice on.  The yarn is drying now after setting the twist last night.

ON THE WHEEL TODAY:  The Plucky Knitter sw merino in the Honey Wilkes colorway

The Plucky Knitter SW Merino "Honey Wilkes"