N-joy

I don’t think the thrill of making yarn will ever wear off.  The more I do it the better it gets.  Each new fibre is the opportunity to explore and create, the possiblities are vast.  I’ve spun half of the BFL angora silk tops that I dyed earlier in this post and Navajo plied the resulting singles because I’m still excited about Navajo plying, it means all of the singles get used so that’s good, I hate waste.

I love how the colours turned out.

On the needles is Habitat by Jared Flood.  How much am I enjoying cabling? It’s so much fun, I don’t know why I don’t do more.  The yarn is lovely to work with too, though judging by the weather I may not be wearing it until next year.

Despite this I think I may need to knit Seraphine very soon, Melbourne weather is after all notoriously fickle.

N is for…

…Navajo plying. Which is what I’ve been playing with recently.

It started with the two locks that I photographed for the Bendigo post.  I washed them to see how they looked clean and both of them came up beautifully.  I’m excited to have new fleecy possibilities to explore but I don’t want to rush into anything.  However, lately there has been a lot of conversation of carding amongst my friends, Sharon has just become the proud owner of a Fancy Kitty drum carder, I recently purchased a pair of Ashford hand carders from Spun Out and we met Richard Ashford at Bendigo who was utterly charming and generous and gave me a lesson on drum carding resulting in free batts for both Sonia and I.  So with all of this carding excitement going on I picked up my hand carders and began to card the two locks together.  I spun the resulting rolag with one of my Ken Ledbetter spindles and then had a go at Navajo plying the single.  Heaps of fun!  Although I can be a bit project orientated I do love to play around with fibre just for the fun of it.

I think it has a rustic charm, though I don’t think I will be blending the two fleeces when I come to spinning them proper.

Anyway, so the Navajo plying, I don’t know why but I had got it in my head that it was way more complicated than it actually is.  I do this occasionally, spend ages looking for the trick when there is none, it really is that simple, just my brain getting in the way.  I fear I am doing the same with crochet and hopefully one day soon that too will just click.  So yesterday I had another attempt using the singles left over from Julie’s birthday yarn.

I made a N just because I can!  I’m quite happy with my dabblings so far there are lengths of yarn that are beautiful though more practice is needed.  I fudged a bit when the singles broke which looks a little bit shit but hey, practicing this is fun. I’m also practicing my long-draw but I don’t have anything worth showing there. Hopefully that too will click with time but I think that’s a muscle memory/co-ordination thing rather than a silly mental block, or maybe it isn’t, time will tell.

Well, I better get back to the gift knitting and musing about fleecy possibilities.  Going back to work is going to be a real wrench that’s for sure!

ttfn Melanie x

To ply or not to ply…

…that is the question I’m asking myself this week.

I finished the first 100g of the Wensleydale/Teeswater/Tussah silk singles and it’s looking pretty.

Spinning does magical things to fibre don’t you think?  So I have another 100g to spin and I’m wondering whether to ply or not.  Here’s a picture of the singles in a twist.

I quite like this also.

I suppose in the end it all comes down to what I want to do with it and the honest answer to that is I don’t know.  I know I definitely need more bobbins so that I can leave the singles on the bobbins and keep spinning while I decide but that’s not very helpful.  Does anyone have any ideas?