Spinning: May 2006 Archives
You know, sometimes it's nice to be isolated from the world. Memorial Day weekend turned out to be one of those weekends that was so perfect I just didn't want it to end. We had three days in a wonderful and quiet corner of the universe at my aunt and uncle's cottage on LongAt Lake in Michigan.
Almost the entire weekend involved boat rides on the lake, eating, motorcycle rides, more eating, crafting, reading, journaling and even a little knitting. But one of the best parts of the trip:
This was Saturday night. After a long hard day of doing almost nothing and rewarding ourselves with some excellent local ice cream, Dad and I settled in with our wheels. He was working on his stash of undyed BFL and I was spinning up some Cochineal and Madder dyed Corriedale from Handspun by Stefania -- at least in this picture. I went on to spin up the Coopworth sample that I got from Liz. I'll talk more about those in the days to come.
It's hard to imagine a better weekend than one that involved spinning with my dad (his singles are really getting quite even, and he likes to spin a bit thicker than I do, which I just love since I can't seem to do thick to save my life) and learning more about sewing machines from my mom (I now think I understand why Romeo and I were having some issues) and getting to fall asleep in the sun on John's shoulder while taking a boat ride on a lovely little lake. I didn't miss being disconnectedat all -- there was just too much relaxing to do!
Little by little I've been working on spinning up something new to me: 100% tussah silk. It took me and my hands a little while to figure things out and for me to adjust my wheel correctly: longer draw, and only enough tension to keep it drawing on the bobbin. Today, while spending an afternoon spinning with Julie, I finally had the whole 2 ounces spun up.
Nice and squishy and soft to the touch is this bobbin full of fiber. The single is a bit variable. It probably all stays in the laceweight range, but goes from thread-like in places to rather thicker. My control on this wasn't really as good as I wanted it to be. I learned that it's very hard to correct mistakes with something that has as long a "staple" length and as little elasticity as silk does. Instead, the most important thing I could do seemed to be making sure that the fiber was well pre-drafted and that any clumps, VM or neppy things were removed from the top before spinning.
I also found, and this became especially pronounced after I moved it from the bobbin to my niddy noddy, that my silk has something of a fuzzy halo. I'm not sure if this resulted from the fact that I hadn't spun it tightly enough or that in the process of drafting I was not keeping the fibers together very well.
2 ounces did give me a significant yield, however: 528 yards of single. The jury is still out on the plying issue. I think I like silk better as a single, and I worry that it would get a little cord-like if I plied it. But it's also very fine, and I'm not sure I can bring myself to knit with it on size 2 needles! I saw a number of very nifty little scarves made out of a silk single at MS&W, and I am thinking that may be this yarn's destiny as well. But the pattern will have to be something that does well with stripes, as this single definitely has long stretches of the same color.
