The Heathen Housewife

It’s getting really hard to keep thinking up names for blog posts about spinning. S’mores have absolutely nothing to do with this post, which is too bad – I love s’mores. mmmm…

But back on track. I managed to squeeze in quite a bit of spinning last week. It helped to keep my hands busy and not scratching at my itchy face.

I’ve gathered together the pictures from start to finish on this yarn for once, so let’s tell the story properly. I started with three of these 8-ounce packages of SeaWool Fiber from Creatively Dyed Yarn. It’s a blend of 70% superwash merino and 30% Seacell fiber.

I did very little pre-drafting of this fiber – I just unbraided it, split it lengthwise kind of randomly, and went to town. It is incredibly soft and easy to spin.

I really love the colors in this roving, and seriously, don’t click through to that site unless you want to fork over and buy some wool – she’s got awesome stuff. AND! I’ve noticed since I started spinning that you really have to catch the good dyers right when they update because they’re always either really picked over or just completely out of product. I was pleasantly surprised tonight when I clicked over there to see that she’s got lots of good stuff up, and SO many pretty colorways. It’s a good thing I’ve made that vow not to buy any more wool till Shepherd’s Harvest!

Well, I got all the singles spun up – the first 8 ounces I split between two bobbins, then I went a little nuts and squeezed all of the following two packages onto one bobbin apiece. I was feeling so smug about how much I could fit onto one of my Majacraft bobbins.

The box that they’re in is the “carrying case” provided with the Rose when I bought it, and it functions as a basic lazy kate, albeit an untensioned one, which is less than ideal, but I haven’t yet decided that it’s worth springing for a tensioned one, especially while I’m saving my pennies in hopes of attending SOAR in the fall, plus that other major purchase which is coming up soon – I promise I’ll give all the details when it happens – I’m SO excited about it, but it feels too good to be true, so I’m not going to jinx it by talking about it now.

Anyway, that carrying box/kate works a lot better with underfilled bobbins than it does with overfilled bobbins. Next time, I really should fill them no more than level and call it a day. I ended up with a couple of extra bobbins for this project, so there’s no reason why I couldn’t have spread the singles out a bit more, or just added more to the first two bobbins. Live and learn, right?

I started plying the yarn on Thursday night, and it took till Saturday morning to finish. There were a lot of singles, and even with cranking away at it steadily, it took a while to get through them all. Here is the finished three-ply yarn hanging out on the wash line on Saturday afternoon. I love it that it’s warm enough to hang things outside again. So much better than my dark, dank basement!

And up close you can see the melding of the colors better. I really like the way the blending acted to tone down the brights to more pastel and earthy colors. I love the barber-poling, and I love the fact that it’s still going to make pretty pretty stripes knit up.

And a final picture of the finished skeins.

All told, it came out to just under 1500 yards of yarn that I would say averages at worsted, although it is fairly dense worsted. It’s hard to explain – this yarn is quite soft, and I think it will drape well, but it’s not super airy either. I really worked to not over-twist the singles, but I think there is something about the seacell that makes it a little heavier and definitely shinier and stronger feeling.

There is totally enough yarn here for an adult sweater, and I think it would look best knit up into something very simple. Textures wouldn’t show up well with this yarn, and this is the kind of yarn that wants to speak for itself with it’s striping patterns. Another Sunrise Circle Cardigan would be nice, or even just a basic raglan. I’m going to go off and look at all the patterns people knit with the Noro yarns, because I’m sure this would be a great substitute for them. Still, this project is going to be way down my priority list. I have so many other things begging for my attention. So….if anyone reallyreallyreally wants this yarn, I would sell it for $180 plus shipping, which is twice what I paid for the roving. It’s a three-ply. A lot of work went into this, and I would be just as happy keeping it for my own knitting pleasure. But, of course, the income would go straight to my SOAR fund, and that’s a totally valid purpose as well.

Moving on to the next spinning project, I looked at the shelf and picked out a nice little fiber-snack of a project after having tackled such a big feast…

This is just four ounces of superwash merino. I’ve only just gotten started playing with it, I’ve got it unbraided and fluffed out a bit, and barely started spinning. I’m not sure exactly what I’m shooting for here, but I’m making very thin singles and will either do a two-ply lace weight or maybe a four-ply sock yarn. For that, I’d either have to rig a kate for a fourth bobbin or maybe try out cable plying. But really I’m leaning towards a thin laceweight for a shawl or scarf of some kind. We’ll see.

Next up, a finished sock project too long in the making!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 2:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.