Questions Answered

Today is all about words since I gave you so many pictures yesterday! There were a number of good questions in my comments over the past couple of days, and I figured that some of the answers might be of interest to more than just the asker... so in no particular order...

Alix had an interesting observation and question:

I attended a spinning demonstration at my LYS back in October, and the 'instructor' made an interesting observation: in her experience, it seemed like people tended to spin the yarn weights they most liked to work with. She likes laceweight and working with lace, and she found that most of her spun yarn was also laceweight.Could that be your case as well?

That's a really interesting observation by your instructor. The longer I knit, the more I do find that I like lighter weight yarns and I find myself gravitating towards projects that have a smaller gauge and finer details. And even though I haven't worked on much lately due to a lack of much real brain power, I do love knitted lace (it's probably why I liked working on the Backyard Leaves scarf -- a little bit of open work, a lot of shaping). But I also like things that don't take years and years to knit (at my heart, I think I am more of a product than process knitter, as much as I'd like to believe otherwise), so I'd like my handspun to end up closer to DK weight than to the fingering weights I seem to be getting now. Of course, another way to solve this problem would be to learn how to create three ply yarns...

Sarah asked:

How long did you spin with the spindle before you embarked on the wheel? I've been spindling for a little while, and eventually want to work up to a wheel. My singles are getting more consistent with the spindle, is it easier to get the same consistency on the wheel? Do you still pre-draft with your wheel?

Actually, I probably didn't spend that much time with a spindle at all (although that didn't stop me from accumulating quite a few of them in a short period of time). I started learning how to use one in early May of 2005 when I went to MS&W and got some great lessons from Claudia. I didn't start on doing much with the wheel until October when I took a lesson from Toni Neil at the Fold (who also helped me get my wheel in shape for spinning).

To be honest, I did next to no real spinning on my wheel until deciding to get serious with the wool silk blend. Part of that was just being busy. Part of that was getting frustrated by the fact that while this wheel is in better shape than it was, there are still a few things that make it not completely fun to work with. And a part of it was just not realizing that a lot of parts of the wheel are adjustable and one of the problems I was having was due to not having the wheel adjusted properly.

One thing I did feel was true, however. Learning to spin on a drop spindle makes learning to spin on a wheel a lot easier because your fingers have already learned some basic principles about handling the wool. So learning to spin on a wheel then becomes more about figuring out how to get your feet involved in the equation and getting comfortable with figuring out how to get twist when you want twist and how to wind on when you want to wind onto the bobbin.

As far as consistancy goes... well, I would thing that would depend on the fiber. But I think it's more likely that you'll get more consistant yarn from working on the wheel -- in large part because you can do a lot more spinning at once and that means that it's harder to "forget" what you were aiming for between sessions. I also think it's easier to control the amount of twist that you put into the yarn with the wheel since you control the treadling speed and it only slows down if you do, whereas with a spindle, the rotation does slow down over time and how the spindle spins can be affected by the weight of yarn on the spindle.

Do I still pre-draft? You betcha. I think it helps a lot with getting a better yarn. At least for me. Compared with a drop spindle, that fiber is moving a lot more rapidly through your fingers, so the more smoothly it moves, the easier it is to spin and the easier it is to draft out consistant amounts at a time. I've been pre-drafting the wool silk a lot, otherwise it would tend to stick to itself and I think it would be way more rustic than I would enjoy working with.

Dani asked, in regards to my wool silk yarn:

Are you going to dye it? Any idea what you will use it for?

I am really tempted to dye some of it... just to see how it takes the dye. But to be honest, I'm also sort of drawn to the natural color of the yarn. It makes me think of some lovely old cabled sweaters I have seen and owned. I think it might be the sort of yarn that would like to be cabled. However, even plied, it's kind of on the fine side. I'd estimate that it's closer to fingering or sport weight than DK weight (I don't have my WPI tool handy or I'd measure and provide an "official" answer). I'm probably going to have to follow the suggestion of several people commented that I should swatch it up to see how it knits. Which I'll probably do soon, once the smaller skein I plied (from the singles that were left over after I got the first bobbin-full of plied yarn) is dry. (Giving this yarn a good soak to help set the twist seems to be a good thing since there also seems to be a bit of dust that gets released when it hits water and Eucalan -- the yarn definitely gets "brighter" after it's bath). I suspect that it will "talk" to me a bit as I swatch with it and get a feel for what it does and doesn't like to do!

Finally, I can't for the life of me remember who asked this question, but I did get asked where I got my UMich Lorna's Laces. I suspect that you can find it in a variety of places, but I purchased mine from ThreadBear Fiber Arts in Lansing when I visited there a while back. They had a number of different colorways that were compatible with local colleges and universities. It's been a while since I've made a trip there, so I'm not sure if they still carry it or not.