…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
