MUCH SPINNING

In my last post, I mentioned that I had been doing a lot of spinning lately because it does make me feel so relaxed and good. So I have been logging some time on the wheel and, as you will see from the pictures below, I seem to have developed a split personality. On the one hand, we have the totally anal control-freak spinner and then we have the fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants free for all. I actually enjoy doing both and am having such fun with the artsy skeins.

Here's a skein that I spun from one of my "marled" rovings -- "Violets Marl". This is a fingering weight yarn and it is so soft, having been spun from a merino/silk/angora blend -- one of my very favorite fiber blends to spin and knit with.  440 yards in this little lovely.

I think this next skein probably takes the prize for the largest (yardage wise) skein I have ever done -- one continuous strand -- no knots. And believe it or not, I got all of this plied onto one of my regular size Majacraft bobbins on my Rose wheel. (I forgot to change to the plying bobbin before I started plying.) Towards the end of plying, I was sure it was going to start slipping off the sides but it didn't.  Ta! Da! 882 yards and 7.4 ounces. Yessiree, on one bobbin. Needless to say, this is fingering to lace weight.  And the colors -- well, now that's another story.  I'm thinking holidays, Christmas.  Margie just rolled her eyes. She sees pink. Well, it's festive.  This skein is a 50-50 extrafine merino/bombyx silk blend. One of the plies was from a roving I purchased from Red Fish Dyeworks at the Torrance show in November and the other ply was from one of my randomly dyed rovings. 

And then I've tried another artsy skein, this time using some natural colored fibers as well as dyed ones.  I'm loving this fooling around, just feeding fiber into the wheel without giving a lot of thought to what I am doing. 

And I ended up with a whopping 30 yards.  Of course this is a chunky yarn and would probably be used as embellisment and on 13 to 15 needles.  

So we've got some very gloomy weather here today in Orange County, just the perfect day for a fire in the fireplace, some knitting and some spinning.