For my birthday, my mom (hi, Mom!) sent me a spindle kit.
I’ve been wanting and wanting to learn how to spin, but kept putting it off. When this arrived in the mail, I couldn’t help myself. I immediately ran back over to Ravelry and rewatched all the spinning videos I’d ever seen (this one was really helpful, as well as ispindle.com), read as many threads as I could, and pulled out the tiny puffs of roving the kit-maker included. I used those as practice to make sure I could do this.
I created my first yarn barf. But! It was yarn-ish and spun. I knit it up and keep it hung on my wall.
I started working on the purple roving.
It reminds me of purple woolly brains. Mmm.
It took about two weeks for me to finish the full two ounces of roving. Lots of it was really thin, and lots of it was really thick. It definitely wasn’t the most even yarn, but not too bad for the first try. (Aside from the yarn barf.) So when I had a full cop, I had to decide whether or not to ply it. This involved a lot of drama.
I liked the somewhat fineness of the single, and the length. I really wanted to make a little pair of fingerless mittens, and plying the yarn would make it chunkier and shorter. However, plying the yarn would make it stronger and keep the unevenness from showing so much, both very good selling points for plying. Furthermore, a single is very twisty, so anything I knit with it would be kind of twisty, too; plying would calm down this twistiness. So I did what I always do: I asked the internet.
It’s a well-known fact that the internet likes to give opinions; I got lots, mostly in favor of plying. They were able to give me a couple other options, too, but plying won out.
Even with plying, there were options. My first thought was that I’d try Navajo 3-ply, which is basically making a big chain (like a chain in crochet) and letting it turn the way it wants. This video was really helpful for me. I practiced on some cheap acrylic yarn to be sure I had the idea, which turned out about as well as my spinning. But Navajo plying would make my yarn really short and extra chunky.
The other appealing option was to attempt Andean 2-ply, which I kept seeing people talk about on Ravelry, but couldn’t figure out how one might go about doing that. I looked up more plying threads on the Spindler’s forum and found even more links. Ispindle.com showed me how to make the wrap. And then, apparently, you just hook it to the spindle and let it go! It’ll automatically start spinning in the right direction because the singles are so springy with built up twist.
I tried the wrap on my practice yarn. It worked! (It was much easier than actually spinning, because I didn’t have to do anything except feed the spindle yarn and wind on the plied yarn when the spindle touched the floor.) But I did notice something someone had mentioned on Ravelry: lack of circulation to my middle finger. She’d put up a solution on her blog. Someone else had a nice idea, too, but I decided to go with my hand, since I knew I could do that.
Why yes, that is a spoon on my hand. I could feel my middle finger the whole time.
I’m glad I didn’t have more yarn than that; it wouldn’t have fit. I transferred it to my right hand (supposedly I should have been able to do this with my left hand, but I’m not that coordinated, and I needed to do the wrapping with my right…so I just had to switch hands. Kind of a pain, but it worked.
Plied yarn!
I chose a place to skein it up (the end of my desk) and wrapped it 31 times. (I counted so that later I could measure the desk and figure out how long my yarn turned out to be.)
Then it was time to set the twist. First it goes in hot water, then it goes in cold water. It sat in the bath for about thirty minutes, total.
When it was done, I squeezed the extra water out, rolled it up in a towel to get more water out, and then whacked it against the side of the bathtub. (I did, of course, warn my husband that I would be engaging in yarn abuse, so he shouldn’t worry.) They say it’s supposed to help full the yarn and do some other stuff, but I think spinners mostly do it because it’s fun.
I hung it out to dry.
It’s all yarn like.
Yes, there was a yarn modeling shoot.
It’s a little longer than 46 yards (assuming I don’t completely fail at math) and somewhere around ten wraps per inch, depending on where you count. I don’t think I’ll manage mittens, but perhaps I’ll make a hat.
A couple other links, because I can. I found Spinning on the Drop Spindle really educational, and The Joy of Handspinning was useful, too. I know there were some others, but they must have gotten lost in the mess of my bookmarks. These should keep link-chasers busy for a while, though!
