Spinning: November 2006 Archives
Don't tell John, but I've been hanging out with my Boyfriend quite a bit lately.
I'm a little over halfway through my first bobbin of "My Boyfriend's Back", another batch of superwash roving from Crown Mountain Farms. This picture is not entirely representative of the roving, because the bit I had just spun had a lot of white areas in it. I don't know if Teyani does this intentionally, but in both batches I have spun so far, half of the roving has a good deal more open white area than the other half. For stripey sock yarn, this is an excellent thing, because those white areas help to set up a lot of nice contrasty stripes.
What makes me most happy is that while this area has lighter red areas, it really doesn't veer into the land of pink. It maintains a sort of stately and sedate deep red color (I know, I know, the photo reads pink, but that is because the color defiition is a bit poor in this flash picture).. So far, this color has been mostly acceptable to the male for whom the yarn is being spun. Because he has bigger feet than I do, I decided that rather than spinning it up in 4 ounce batches, I would divide the roving in half and spin it all up as one batch (I mean one batch made up of two plys, not one single ply) so as to have one solid continuous yarn. I still have a lot of spinning to go, but I am already at that place where I can't wait to ply and see what shows up!
Big thanks to everyone who left supportive words for me yesterday. I am working on the socks, and the more I knit, the happier I get with what I see. My Sloopy yarn is like knitting with sunshine, and the fabric is firm but soft, so I think I will have a good and durable sock. Good therapy for the grey rainy weather we are getting in Chicago right now.
I am not going to rant about about airlines, or weather delays or running around airports. Or about the fact that 4 out of the last 5 flights I have been supposed to be on with Chicago's "hometown" airline have been delayed by an hour or more. I could. But I won't. I suspect my annoyance wouldn't be all that entertaining. But I must say, I am extremely tired of hearing about weather delays, and I am particularly intolerant of this when it occurs on a day where there has been no truly bad weather throughout the country.
Ahem. Perhaps I did need to do just a little bit of ranting. I feel much better now.
From a fiber processing perspective, I'm actually feeling quite productive. I've made progress on John's grey socks (one finished, the second started) and I've plied up the second skein of moorit CVM. The second skein is just under 400 yards, so I'm right about at the 800 yard total mark. And now it's time to start spinning up more singles. Good thing I have a couple of fun audio books to listen to while I spin.
But before I got back to the business of spinning up more CVM, I took a little break that I had promised myself and spun up the last 4 ounces of Hang on Sloopy superwash merino from Crown Mountain Farms. I did something a bit different with the second half. In stead of splitting the roving into pieces vertically, like I did for the first skein, I decided just to tear off a couple of feet, pre-draft a little bit, and spin the roving without dividing so I could get longer stretches of color that would, hopefully, also lead to wider stripes in the socks. In the picture above, the orange skein on the left is the original skein, and the skein on the right is the new skein. Hard to tell much difference this way (or unhanked) so I guess I won't have my experiental results until after I do some knitting. One thing did come as a big surprise however.
Skein 1:
Finish Date: 7/25/06
Yardage: 320 yards
Weight: 110 g/3.9 oz
Grist: 1312 YPP (yards per pound)
Skein 2:
Finish Date: 10/31/06
Yardage: 340 yds
Weight: 108 g/3.8 oz
Grist: 1431 YPP
To me, this seemed remarkably consistant for someone who put 3 months between spinning up each batch. During my next "CVM break" I'm going to start on the 8 ounces of "My Boyfriend's Back" that's destined to be socks for John. Funny, how when you're working away at 2 lbs of fiber, spinning up 4-8 ounces of anything just seems like a little breather project!
