Tag: Spindle

Spinning Jill

On 29 Mar, 2009

I picked and washed about 8 oz of Jill.Â The post wash and dry weight of Jill was just a hair over 5 oz.Â That’s not a whole lot of loss.Â I would have expected more loss due to grease for a merino.Â But this is a pristine fleece.Â I found very little vegetable matter in the fleece.Â A few stray bits, but nothing else. A wee bit of 2nd cuts, again not anything really noticeable.

I’m flicking the locks and spinning directly from the locks.Â After showing Judith last weekend what I’ve been doing, she immediately said that my Strauch Flicker was much too much for the delicate fleece. So, I pulled out the cat brush instead.Â Much easier on my hands too!

moorit-in-process

So, there you see it. Very basic. A cat brush and a drop spindle.Â (Don’t ask which spindle because I don’t know. I typically lose my tags as soon as I get fiber on the spindle, which means as soon as I get it in my hot little hands. They are meant to be used, n’est pas?) I can tell you that it’s very light. Less than 1/2 oz. (10 grams, perhaps?) What you see on the bobbin is my first spindle full. It has about 15 grams of singles on it. More than the weight of the spindle. But the spindle wasn’t even half full. But I will not be filling my spindle that much from now on. It really affected the grist of the single. I wasn’t able to draft as fine as I did at the beginning, when the spindle was still empty.Â The single had to be a bit fatter to support the weight of the spindle toward the end.

I want consistency more than I want to try and pack as much as possible on the spindle. After all, it’s all about the process, not speed nor efficiency.

Oh, I wound off the single twice. Once on the first storage bobbin, and then onto a second one.

Why? Judith suggested spinning from the tip (as it grows from the sheep, or as if you are spinning right off of the sheep), and plying from the butt end.Â If I only wound off once, then I would be plying from the same end that I spun from, the tip.Â Twice, I get the butt end out and ready to ply. Make sense?Â (And of course, we all do what Judith says, right?)

jill-in-a-bag And one last photo for you because it tickles me.

This is the plastic zipper cover that came with the flannel sheet set I bought for the Point Bonita retreat last week.Â In it, the remainder of the washed locks that I have yet to flick.Â Two neat little walls of locks, tip to butt.

I don’t know why it pleases me, but it does. The locks were a bit messy after they came out of the wash and dryer, so I gently pulled them apart. Of course, at that point, I loathed to put them back higgledy-piggledy. And so, here we are.

Jill in a bag.

On The Go Spindling

By Ann

On 29 Jan, 2008

In FO, Spin

Splinding - finished skeins

You know those fibers that you buy at a fiber event that you just had to have and were itching to start spinning as soon as possible or you’ll just die? Then you spend the rest of the event spindling everywhere you go…to meals, while drinking wine, while drinking and laughing with your friends, before you go to sleep at night, find it in bed with you the next morning (and the first thing you worry about isn’t that it’s stabbing you in the stomach, but that you didn’t bend the hook), at the airport.

Then you get home and unpack. The bag with the spindle and the fiber are put away as your on-to-go spindling project. Then the bag gets lost in a cleaning frenzy, because you have 10 on-the-go projects piled up next to the front door, ready to be picked up and, well, go somewhere.

A few years later, you wonder what happened to that spindle, you know, the really pretty one that works great for this new fiber you just bought. You tear your stash apart looking for it, and find a half-filled spindle, and a few ounces of unspun fiber still in the bag.

Well, I’m making a dent in my on-the-go stash. Above are two of the oldest known on-the-go spindle projects. On the right are some Angora x wool (Romney?) purchased from Black Sheep Gathering 4 1/2 years ago, spun on my Golding spindle. I bought this as my move to California spindling. I spun on this in the car, while Martin was driving, and while I was staying at my mom’s until our rental was ready.

On the left is Coopworth from RainShadow Farm (no website, but the fibers are dyed using natural dyes), purchased at Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat 4 years ago (back when it was still known as the Gig Harbor Retreat). It was spun on the spindle of unknown origin. I couldn’t resist the pretty colors, and just had to get some fiber to start spinning right away. Unfortunately, it was a case of wrong spindle for the fiber. The fiber would have benefited from a heavier spindle, say the Golding. But the Golding was otherwise occupied (ahem). The yarn was plied with the Golding though. I took advantage of its recent vacancy.

Now that I have these cleared, I’m working on some alpaca/tussah blend that I bought at SOAR on a beautiful Forrester Spindle (also purchased at SOAR). This project is mere infant compared with the age of the other projects. I know there is at least one other on-the-go spindling project from our sailing vacation to the British Virgin Islands 3 years ago, but I can’t seem to remember where I put it away to.

There is also a silk and camel spindling project in the living room, but I’m not counting that as an on-the-go because I’m doing some experimentation with it.

Why this frenzy of finishing? I’m headed to Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat in a couple of weeks and I need to clear these spindles so I can buy more with a clear conscience.

On the Go Spinning

By Ann

On 28 Aug, 2007

In Spin

Bird of Paradise, Plying Spindle Bird of Paradise, Wet Finished

Fiber: 4 oz. Superfine Merino from Lisa Sousa, colorway Bird of Paradise
Plies: 2
WPI: 22
Yardage: approx. 558 before finishing

This was my on the go spinning that I’ve been working on and off for the past 18 months or so. After the surgery, it wasn’t comfortable for me to sit and spin at my spinning wheel, so I dug this up and finished spinning it and plied it.

While the time span is 18 months, I spun about half of it in under a week, post surgery. Plying took about 2 days. I had wound the singles on my nostepinne. I ended up with about 5 balls of singles in varying sizes. I plied them together by holding 2 balls at a time in my left hand. When it came down to the last partial ball, I used it as a center-pull ball and plied from both ends.

I used Judith MacKenzie-McCuin’s wet finishing technique (in other words, I abused the heck out of the yarn) to finish this yarn. I don’t know if you can see it, but the skeined yarn is much puffier than the yarn on the spindle. The spindle is my plying spindle. It’s the first time I’ve used it and wow! it holds a lot of yarn!

On the Go Spindling Boxes I thought I’d take this time to show you my on-the-go spinning kit. These are two wine gift boxes that I picked up on sale at a stationary shop.

Before I found these, I would put my spindle, fiber, and whatever else in the nearest handy bag and stuff it in my purse, tote, backpack. And I would hope that I don’t damage the spindle hook and mess up the fiber or accidentally sit on the whole thing.

These were perfect. The cardboard box was large enough for some fiber, the spindle to stand up in, and keep everything from getting seriously damaged. The one on the left is a one-bottle gift box. The one on the right is a 2 bottle gift box with a center divider.

On the Go Spindling Kit On the Go Spindling Kit - Packed On the left are the contents of my on-the-go spinning box: spindle, nostepinne, fiber, and a ziplock bag of spun singles (wound into center pull balls with the nostepinne).

And on the right, all packed to go!