It’s a major award!

Earlier this year, there was a fundraising drive for Ravelry. It was a raffle: donate money and get entered into a drawing to win a fibery prize. Lots of vendors put up prizes, and lots of people donated and signed up. Well, slap my ass and call me Sally, I actually won something. My prize pack from Black Bunny Fibers arrived today!

 

 

Beauty, eh? When Carol at Black Bunny asked what I wanted, I told her to surprise me. She agonized over her choices, and I think what she picked is perfect! Now I just need to find some projects that’ll do the yarn justice. Thanks, Carol!

 

Oh look, another fiber hobby.

Right. So, over the last couple of months I’ve been thinking about trying my hand at spinning. I went down to Renaissance Yarns during one of their spinning Sundays to see how it’s done. It was really neat, so I asked to try it out, and I did horribly. I couldn’t get the fiber to draft right, it kept getting wrapped around the bobbin wrong, bleh bleh bleh.

 

I wanted to practice at home, but I couldn’t see my self buying a wheel yet. So I decided to get a drop spindle to learn drafting and how fiber behaves when spun. I ordered a spinning kit from Spunky Eclectic, which came with a Cascade Little Si spindle, a bag of Corriedale handpainted roving, and a bag of handpainted Bluefaced Leicester (BFL). I practiced a bit with the Corriedale, and I did alright. Not great, but alright. I spun a bunch of singles (what you get when you spin roving; you take multiple singles to ply yarn) but it was slow.

 

 

Fast forward about a month, and there I am at my mother-in-law’s house. She has this spinning wheel, made by an uncle, and she graciously lets me borrow it. It’s a lovely wheel, all hand-crafted, in excellent working order.

 

 

After I got the wheel home, I grabbed the Corriedale that I was using on the drop spindle and spun up some singles. My consistency is all over the place, but I get the hang of it. Eventually I spun enough singles to try plying. I plied two small skeins, soaked them to set the twist, hung them to dry, and voila, something that looks like yarn!

 

 

As you can see, it goes thick and thin. I need to practice to get the thickness and spin to be consistent, but I think I’m on my way. The skein in the back was my first atttempt. I did the second skein (front) a little thicker, and the spin is a little better on it too.

 

I think I might actually like spinning. Yeah, I need another fiber hobby like I need a hole in the head, but what can you do?