Summer 2014 Bucket List

Friday, July 16, 2010

Contest time (not my contest though)

Do you like coffee? Do you like chocolate? Do you like to support local businesses? If so, you should enter the Blogiversary Give Away on LifeHealthFit's blog! I love JustUs coffee so I really hope I win! ;)

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

You spin me right round

I was bored last week and felt like getting out my drop spindle and doing some spinning. I've only made yarn once before and it didn't go too well. The fibre that time was merino and had a short staple. It kept breaking and I had a hard time pre-drafting it to make spinning easier. Earlier this year Yarnpirate sent me a bit of BLF roving to practice with, so I decided to spin it up.


I separated the roving into long strips and then pre-drafted all those strips into thinner pieces. I call the pre-drafted pieces "buns" because that's what they look like to me! :P

Pre-drafted rovings.

I piled all the "buns" together and divided the pile in half. If I had a scale, I would have weighed out 2 equal piles. I planned to spin singles and ply those together to make 2-ply yarn. It would have been nice to make 2 equal singles but I did the best I could by guessing.

Drop spindle full of spun singles.

After I spun another spindle full of yarn, I plied the 2 together, learning from Youtube videos. The plying was tricky. For one thing it was really humid in that apartment, so the yarn was not moving through my hands smoothly. It may have even been felting a bit because my hands were sweaty. Gross! I also wonder if the singles were spun too tightly because they were kinking back on themselves. I kept on though and ended up with a yarn that I am quite happy with. 

My first 2-ply yarn.

After plying I dunked the skein in a bath to set the twist, then hung it up in the shower until most of the water had dripped off. Unfortunately I didn't tie the skein in enough places and the yarn got a bit tangled up. Oops. I knew better but I guess I was in a hurry to finish. To finish drying I hung the yarn up on a clothes rack, and it took a few days to finish drying because of the humidity.

I am really happy with the finished yarn though. I'm not sure of the yardage, but I will probably pair it with another yarn in my stash and knit a hat or a scarf.

Finished product!