Knitting Away

I've been knitting away on this project for years now. It's a variegated wool-silk blend, plied with blue silk filament. I can date it as "pre-spinning certificate" by the way I've done the spinning. That means at least 2008. I put a lot more twist into my fine spinning now, but I like the yarn enough to persist with it. The yarn is so fine that I can knit away at it for half and hour or more and still not see any noticeable difference in the size of the ball. I had it as my "carry along" project for a while, but the yarn wasn't standing up too well to that treatment. Then it sat neglected for some time. Now I'm trying to do a little bit every morning. As for the photo being on its side, I'm sorry, it's just one of those blogger days.

Identity Crisis

Here's what I'm spinning at the moment:It's a Corriedale fleece, and there's nothing really wrong with it. The trouble is, I've been told to spin it into a fine yarn. This is basically an exercise in contradiction--and therefore, an exercise in frustration. This fleece, by nature, wants to be a medium yarn. The fibres are not particularly fine, they're just not. You can see my attempt at a fine yarn: the strand immediately above the clump of fleece--it's not particularly fine either.

This exercise for my Spinning Certificate Folio is to spin a fine, medium and bulky yarn from the same fleece. It made sense to start with a medium fleece and try to push it to the extremes on either side. All the time my fingers are reinforcing the message, "spin to suit the fleece". It's hard work trying to make fleece spin into something it really doesn't want to be. I have yet to try to make a bulky yarn from this fleece. I'm hoping that will be less frustrating. And I'm so looking forward to the next exercise when I will do my best with a fine yarn from a fine fleece.

Still on the Silk

The trouble with spinning fine yarn is that a small amount goes a long long way! I guess in the end that's a good thing. I spent more time yesterday on my silk and to my great satisfaction, I got as far as plying it off. I even had a visitor in the evening who could point the camera for me, so here's an action shot: There are two tightly twisted singles of spun silk tops coming from my bobbins to the left of the picture. They are twisted together in the opposite direction and wound onto the bobbin on my wheel. My right hand is controlling the twist. So there you go. Now I need to wind the yarn off the bobbin, give it a little soak and let it dry. All going well, it should be ready to show off to my group on Saturday.

Lace Wing

The smaller the spindle, the finer the yarn I can spin, so what I've been spinning on my tiny Pax spindle is so fine that it could be used as sewing thread. In fact I showed it my friend D who teaches embroidery. She oohed at it's possible use as embroidery thread. The beauty of the 50/50 wool-silk blend is that it spins almost as easily as wool and shines nearly as brightly as silk.

As for me, my favourite use of fine yarn is for lace knitting or crochet. Lace is all about the spaces between the stitches. Of course the yarn and the shape of the stitches is what defines those spaces.

This pic is of a little insect who got caught in the house. I've never looked at a wing in so much detail before . . . and it's strong enough to fly with. I snapped this for a pattern before letting the insect go in the garden.
Of course the insect wing is stiff and I usually want a lovely drape in my lace knitting, though crochet lace is traditionally stiffened in some applications--not that I plan to be limited by traditions!