Spring Flowers
One thing I am trying to change in my life is my need to have a book before I jump off into something. This statement should not be taken to mean that I don't think books are valuable, or that I don't love books in general. It's more a statement about me and how I do things. I often look to books to get instructions on the "right way to do things" and then I just religiously follow the recipe. There's nothing truly wrong with this approach, but for me, once I establish some protocol in my brain, I stop thinking about what it means or what the instructions represent. I know how to do something, but I don't know why I'm doing what I am doing.
I've been trying to change a little of that way of operating as I learn to sping. Certainly I have bought books and I'm using them as a reference as I go along, but I am also trying to understand spinning as a process that I am learning by doing as opposed to simply following a recipe. I hope in the long run that will mean that I can be more creative about what I am doing because I understand more of the principles of why things work the way they do.
I'm still working on spinning the Blue Faced Leicester rovings that Julie and I dyed up. This weekend I started on one that might actually yield enough yarn to do something of reasonable size with. I'm referring to it as my "Spring Flowers" roving, because the colors in it remind me of the vivid reds, purples and greens of spring crocus, tulips and hyacinths.
One thing that I've learned on my own is that I just am not very good at spinning from big thick pieces of roving. So I've taken to dividing my rovings into as many smaller, but still manageable to spin from pieces as I can. Then I spend some time pre-drafting them by yanking on the piece of roving, moving from one end of the roving to the other in 3-4" intervals. The result is that the dense roving above turns into the cotton candy below.
The pre-drafting also softens the colors a bit. They maintain that softer look on the spindle. I tried to divide the roving as evenly as possible so that the color intervals would be fairly regular. It will be interesting to see how they all blend together when I ply the yarn.
In comments to my post about the "Easter Egg" roving, Natasha asked:
is bfl soft? i hate spinning with anything that isn't really soft. i am a wuss.
I'm a wuss too, which is why I put the indigo dyed roving away for a while. I would definitely consider BFL to be soft. Not as soft as merino or cormo, but softer than some of the longer staple wools that I picked up at MS&W. Its definitely a nice wool for a beginning spinner like me because the staple length is long enough to make it easier to control, and it's not too coarse or rough on my fingers, so you can spin for a long time, and it seems to me that the best way to get good at spinning is just to do a lot of it.
You are exactly right Theresa! The more you spin the better you will become. Truly it is a hobby which requires an investment of time in the beginning to produce product you will be happy with. You're doing great so far and I've been enjoying watching your spinning progress! It's addictive, isn't it? :)
I'm so happy to see those spindles getting such a workout.
Beautiful job, and that's what I figured out right away, too, is that I need to do a bit of pre-drafting to get anything thinner than a bulky...but I've only just started, so that bulkiness is also a function of my beginnerness :-)
The spindle is beautiful! I'm using a thing that looks like a rather large tinkertoy, and I'm so addicted to this already that I'm thinking I'd like something a bit prettier. You know, to make it...even more addictive. :-}
You know, I never really used to do much pre-drafting, but in the last few months I have been doing it and find that I enjoy the spinning a lot more. I even enjoy the pre-drafting!
And I agree about spinning. I think the best way to get good at it is to practice. Which is why I can't wait to go to Marengo! I've been "practicing" so much lately that my fiber stash is running low!
That sounds just like me. I'm great at following directions, but venturing away from the directions is sometimes hard. The roving is beautiful and looks pretty good on the spindle from what I can see.
i am so excited that i was cited!! yay!! that will be linked in my bloggy, dear. anyway, i have tended, with my art background, to do things ass first, no directions at all. as a slightly more, um, mature artist, i realize that there is not only nothing wrong with getting a book, but it saves a lot of time and mistakes. from working with younger artists, i see the tendency to cut corners and not figure out the best way to do things. it can be fun to experiment, but i think having the basics down first is a really smart idea. and as a linear thinker, which i would imagine science people would be(?) there is nothing wrong with doing things the way you feel comfortable doing them. you are so creative, so you are left and right brained. pretty impressive!
Your "Spring Flower" cotton candy looks yummy!
Practice, practice, practice.
I'm just laughing here, because that's practically my first instinct for ANYTHING . . . to go get a book! I may not religiously follow everything it tells me (and often, different books give different rules, so that doesn't help, anyway), but yeah--I like to get a handle on what I'm doing (or supposed to be doing) right at the very beginning. I figure I can personalize and work out what works best for me later, but it never hurts to start knowing how important it is to do . . . whatever . . . hold the yarn a certain way to have good yarn tension, predraft the roving, mince the onions, trim the dog's nails . . . it never hurts to be prepared. (I'm a lot like Hermione that way.) Oh, and that picture of predrafting?? Very pretty, and the first thing I thought of as I scrolled down the page was that it looked like a butterfly!