Hello Crafties!. This semester has been full of interesting topics in the fibers class that I was mandated to take while I was under the teacher certification program. Wjile in our final weeks, we got to learn how to spin and felt yarn, which was quite interesting. Our professor brought in his fiance who
enjoys spinning her own yarn and she gave us quite the demo.
I've been crocheting for going on 10 years and I have never spun my own material before, so this particular class period felt really worthwhile. I got the opportunity to not only use a drop spindle, but I got to try my hand at a two pedal flywheel as well.
I will say it right off the bat that the flywheel was completely unsuccessful I think that I need a lot of practice and also it would probably help to use one with the single pedal. The drop spindle however, was sensational. So sensational in fact, that I went home and impulsively purchased a drop spindle and some pre-dyed roving material to spin my own yarn. As for my first attempt at spinning yarn, I took that spindle home over my Thanksgiving break and continued to spin the material that I had left while I was working on other art projects.
There's a certain amount of thrill that comes with spinning your own yarn and I can definitely say I can appreciate hand spinners a lot more. It takes a lot of skill and coordination to get your fiber to remain consistent and look nice at the same time. I didn't expect to be masterful with this project, instead I played with different weights and thicknesses.
I've had an absolute ball with this and after nearing the end of my little roving stash, I went to the Internet to learn a little more about spinning with a drop spindle. I found an excellent video on it
that gave me a lot of confidence to move forward with my latest fiber fascination and I'll leave that video here in this blog.
I looked at other videos on the topic of finishing off the yarn and discovered the wonder that it settling the twist. Naturally, I don't have a niddy noddy so, I decided to use my yarn swift to wind and stretch my new yarn off the spindle. It worked out pretty well if I do say so myself!
During this process, I realized exactly what over-twist was. If there's one thing that I'll do differently on the next go around, it will be to twist each segment a little less.
After getting what was essentially an untwisted hank off my swift, I decided to soak my yarn (as suggested by the finishing tutorials I watched). I know a little bit about wool and decided to add a little vinegar and dish soap to my bath, letting it sit for about 20 minutes.
I used cool water because there are dyed fibers mingled in and I wasn't sure how well they were dyed
so, to nix any bleeding, I used cool water. Then came the agonizing part... letting it dry. Conveniently enough, we still use a clothes line for drying laundry so, I didn't have to do any extra setup for that.
I wish that I could tell y'all how many yards I spun up but, because I don't have that niddy noddy thing, I can't really 😅.
At this point, I'm trying to decide on what to make with this special yarn or, if I should just cake it and keep it as a trophy.
November 23: After sleeping on it, and caking my special yarn, I grabbed a 6 mm set of circular knitting needles and cast on 47. I knew I wanted to knit with it because there's such a limited quantity of the fiber and knitting extends the amount of material you have to work with.
I got about 12 rows done on it before running out of yarn. On Monday the 27th, my professor so graciously let me spin more yarn, let's see if I can finish this little project by next Monday!
