Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Spinning Away

Spinning has been an interesting pursuit for me because even though I don't do it very often my improvements seem exponential from time to time. Maybe it's because I've been doing some reading and thinking about it in the off time, but the results are getting closer and closer to what I want.



The first thing I spun up was the February installment of the Spunky Club, a merino named Forecast. I tried a technique from The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook (awesome awesome book) and divided my roving by color and spun one bobbin mostly blue and the other mostly brown. I then plied them together. Or at least that's what I intended on doing. The actual result is so loosely plied it's humorous. But that's ok as the spinning itself was pretty good. It's spun enough that it didn't come apart when I was taking it off of the bobbin and yet isn't kinky.



Next I spun up another thing of roving from HPY. This time without nearly the amount of cursing as the last time. I tried a different technique and spun from the fold and found that this made it much much easier to deal with the slippery merino. I was trying different draws on this one and it's not as consistent as I would like, but overall it's strong and beautiful.

On Saturday instead of hanging with my usual knit cronies I visited The Cast on Cafe in Willoughby, OH with a mama friend. What a great shop! Despite my resolve to not buy yarn (ha) I bought some beautiful cotton crepe for some sort of tank. Usually at yarn shops I am amazed at the yarns but sad at the prices but she had some wonderful stuff for decent prices and I will definitely be going back.

I'm currently debating whether to knit Sizzle or a basic tank from the store's pattern. I got gauge and cast on for Sizzle but somehow my gauge in seed stitch is way off from my stockinette. I have frogged and am going to try again with a smaller needle and hope for the best.

4 comments:

Cetta said...

Oh! I am dying to go to the Cast On! I'm not far from there...

PCR said...

You went to Cast On without us?! :P

Can't wait to see Sizzle. I've been thinking about knitting that one too.

Michelle B said...

I've started Sizzle! Hey did you know Yarn it By Sue(in Fairview on Lorain Road) is closing and they are 40% off everything? Still have a lot of stock....I got some good deals the other day!

Sourire11 said...

Beautiful!

I love that idea of spinning two different colos and then plying them together... although I'm not allowed to spin anything that fun yet - i have to finish practicing on plain old gray wool..,