I had heard so many horror stories about plying on the drop spindle, but since my (potential) wheel won't be arriving for a while I also didn't want to sit around with a pile of singles and not make any finished yarn!
So I gave it a try.
Here's the system I cooked up:
I had Alex (the husband) drill 1/2 inch holes in the tops of those two containers, filled the bottoms with coins for weight, and popped a center pull ball of single in each of them. (I spun up the leftover rolags on the drop spindle and wound it into two roughly equal balls.) I kept them nice and far apart on the floor so the singles wouldn't find each other before I wanted them to, and then ran them up and over my hand and arm. The only tangle (which was near disastrous) came from the outside strand of one of the balls catching on the center pull strand. I didn't notice until the double strand was at the top of my hand and by that point it had caused a hot mess. I'll have to figure out how to prevent that in the future.
And here's the result:
I obviously still have a lot to learn. Parts of my yarn are over plyed and over spun. A few parts of it are underspun. It definitely varies in thickness and I have a few slubby bits in there.
That said, I am unseemingly, immodestly proud of this yarn. This is fiber that I took from unwashed fleece to two ply yarn with just hand cards and a drop spindle, and I enjoyed every step of the process. Spinning = love. More, please!
2 comments:
holy crap this looks great!!! you're making me ashamed of wanting to buy a spinning wheel when i could be a spinning MacGyver like you.
Shame, shmame. The only reason I'm not wheel shopping with you right now is that I know there's one with my name on it already! If it gets here and turns out to be unworkable I'm pretty sure I'll be buying a new one soon.
Spinning MacGyver. That totally cracked me up.
Post a Comment