Friday, May 25, 2012

Playing with my wheel

I need to work on my relationship with my spinning wheel.  We like each other, but we could know each other a helluva lot better. 

I was getting into a rut using the same pulley size and tension, which is great for producing consistent yarns of a certain size, but not so good for making sure I'm comfortable and familiar with all of my wheel's potential.  So I changed to the fast pulley size and began working on producing much thinner yarns than I ever have on my wheel. 

I'm frugal with experiments, so I typically choose a nice but inexpensive fiber to play with for these skill building projects.   I had several ounces of grey variegated mill ends wool in my stash, so I grabbed that bag and starting playing with it.  I don't know the exact fibers in this bag of mill ends, but it's pretty fuzzy and I suspect there's some mohair in this mix. 


I'm spinning singles with a more worsted style of drafting, because I think the yarn will be fuzzy enough without allowing twist into the drafting zone:


I spun enough to fill three of my 6" plastic storage bobbins, which will give me plenty of yarn for a knitting project, perhaps a hat or scarf.  I usually opt for 3-ply yarns, but in this instance, I will make a 2-ply yarn.  The bobbins are loaded on a lazy kate and I'll work on plying this yarn over the Memorial holiday weekend!



2 comments:

  1. As a spindle spinner, it's always interesting to hear about wheel experiences. I am so glad it worked out for you, the way that yarn spun up is really pretty. I know what you mean about using less expensive fibers for experiments, I do it all the time :)

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  2. I love using both spindles and a wheel. They are different but complimentary skill sets - I wouldn't want to use one exclusively over the other. I'm so very glad I started with spindles! I would never give them up. :)

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