Category Archives: things I spin

pcsw week thirteen: “dakota star,” and some spinning

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To start with, the obligatory weekly pony club block.

pony club sampler quilt week thirteen:

This was one of those blocks that looked way more complicated when I was staring at the templates than when I actually started making it. Essentially, it goes together like a pizza (or pie, or whatever round-food-cut-into-triangular-food simile you prefer). Once that “clicked” for me, this came together really easily.

This is also one of the last blocks I’ll be able to do with this background fabrics. I’ve worked my way through most of the beige fat quarter, with just enough left for one more, if I’m careful about how I cut things.

The other thing I’ve been working on this week is spinning. A little bit for a spinning class I’m taking at my local yarn shop, and a little bit I’ve been working on for a while.

I took the fiber from this post, and turned it into yarn.

Gradient handspun!

The fiber I used came gradient-dyed – one end of the braid was pink, the other was green, and the colour went from purple to blue to teal in between. I wanted to keep that progression, and had a vague idea that maybe it would be nice to have the option to do something that came in a set, like mittens. So I split the fiber down the middle, into to equal-ish pieces.

I spun each half from end to end, and then chain-plied my singles to keep the colour progression. This left me with the two skeins up top – each of them progresses from pink to green in the same order, from end to end.

They don’t match perfectly, unfortunately. See how the top skein is slightly bigger than the bottom one?

gradient handspun skeins

Yeah. There’s about 10g difference between them – one is 65g and 140m, the other is 55g and 95m. This isn’t a huge deal, but it means that if I do make a matching pair of something, the colour progressions aren’t going to line up exactly.

Still, it’s a very squishy worsted-weight yarn that I’m pretty pleased with. And it’s a merino-silk blend, which is hard to go wrong with.

another wooly post

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The other wool-related thing I’ve been doing a bit more of lately is spinning. I got back into it a little over my Christmas vacation, when I went to visit my parents. I brought my knitting, obviously, but I also brought my drop spindle and a bag of fibre that had been waiting patiently in my stash.

Handspun!

I ended up spinning it into two skeins. The larger skein, to the left in the above photo, was made on my drop spindle and two-plied. The smaller skein was done several weeks later, made on my spinning wheel and chain-plied into a three ply yarn.

Last Import-5

I’m not as pleased with this skein, to be honest. My singles are much less consistent on my drop spindle, and that plus the two plying really makes it show. I think knitting it up will forgive a lot, and it’s a lovely, bouncy wool in gorgeous colours, so I’m sure I’ll use it eventually. But I’m not as proud of it.

Last Import-4

This skein looks a lot nicer, but unfortunately I also have a lot less of it – less than 100m.

Still, it’s motivated me to get back in touch with my wheel and keep up my spinning skills a bit more. This gradient-dyed merino/silk is already on my wheel, and I’m almost done with the singles!

rainbow!

yarned!

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A couple of episodes of Lost Girl and a lot of plying later, my handspun is done.

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This is spun from The Black Lamb 50/50 merino/silk fiber, which I bought almost exactly a year ago. The fiber was about 2/3 lime green, 1/3 black, and I decided it would be neat to try making some self-striping yarn. I split everything into similarly-sized small “bits” (each about 1 staple length), and alternated spinning green ones and black ones when I made my singles.

I chain-plied the singles (my new favourite way to ply) to keep the stripes in the same ‘order.’ After washing and skeining, I have about 280-300m of DKish weight yarn.

As I was spinning, I sort of had the idea that I’d make this yarn into socks. On handling the finished skein – which feels soft and drapey and squishy – I am thinking it might be too fragile for socks. Perhaps a nice slouchy cowl, instead.

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