All Wrapped Up In Yarn

The last few weeks had me spinning some fingering weight yarns on my new S-45. It's a spiffy little wheel and I love it! I wish the bobbins were bigger but hey, you can't have it all, right? So I kept myself busy spinning some undyed mill end singles and navajo-plied every single one. I ended up with about 4 skeins and before I knew it, I plopped it into my crockpot and dyed it with the only remaining dye color I had - turquoise. It's difficult to catch turquoise on camera but the photo shows the "before" yarn in the center flanked by the "after" dyed skeins on both sides. It was my first time dyeing yarn instead of fiber, and I totally forgot that bit about tying those figure-eight ties LOOSELY. And so I ended up with a thin band of undyed yarn instead. Oh well...

And just when you thought that I had probably quit my day job, think again! Yesterday I taught a class in Herbal Thai Massage to 16 students and while it didn't seem exhausting while I was teaching it, I definitely felt it as soon as I got home. I stayed up long enough to finish spinning some bamboo-tencel singles which I then plied into a decent dk-weight yarn. I would have hoped to make some fingering weight yarn with the S-45 but apparently, I don't spin that fine...yet.

But fine yarns aren't really my forte. It's nice to know how to spin them, sure. But I really wanted to get spinning some novelty yarns again. I've been spinning more vanilla yarns than the usual art yarns and today I wanted to get started. And so I did.


I've been inspired by Insubordiknit's Sit and Spin DVD and even though I've seen the whole DVD from beginning to end, I am working on each technique one at a time - although I do pick out the ones I want to spin, and not all of them in a sequence. I've done supercoils in the past but have yet to do beehives. Beehives, though, will have to take a back seat to wrapped yarns. I've wrapped yarns using a drop spindle in the past, and also the wheel, but I've always had tension issues. I hold back my core yarn too much and don't let go as fast as I should. So this afternoon, I started spinning a series of wrapped yarns.

I actually spun on all 3 wheels, too. The S-45 has pretty small bobbins and so spinning the first of four wrapped yarns, Orinoco Flow, wasn't ideal when it came to yardage. So I started spinning the second wrapped yarn, Mesa Sunset, on the Babe. However, half-way through, it started acting up again and I had to dissassemble the left treadle and just use the right treadle - and not too smoothly at that. I may end up sending it back to Nels so he can figure out what's wrong with it. I've wracked my brain enough over it as it is...

And so I went to my go-to wheel. My Fricke did the job on the last 2 yarns and I'm pretty happy about it. I did start wrapping the yarn with too much tension on my core yarn while spinning on the S-45, and on the Babe it didn't help that the bobbin's too heavy to begin with and so there is greater tension than normal. By the time I got to the Fricke, I had relaxed the tension enough and the finished yarns, Jungle Boogie and French Riviera, twisted all around only once. A few whacks after I wash it tomorrow should relax it some...

This is the last wrapped yarn I did for the night. This was spun from a batt by Gritty Knits and it's merino with tons of sari silk. This particular shot gave me the idea for the yarn's name: French Riviera. One of my best friends, Galia, had once dated some guy who took her to the French Riviera and when she came back, she said, Even hair down there was too much hair. So she had to take it all off.

I also spun some supercoils. I had spun the singles a few weeks back and supercoiled it on my Fricke. 15 yards later, it was done, and I have no idea what to do with it. Maybe when I get some more sleep tonight, I can think of something...