What’s on the wheel?

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to update you on my projects, so here’s what Lizzy Lendrum and I have been up to!

We made some quick work of this Polwarth:

I stripped it down into pencil roving sized strips, and then did minimal drafting and twist while listening to the Spin Doctor podcast. Gentle plying, then a couple hot/cold change rinses resulted in this nice squishy yarn. 132 yards, not bad for an evening’s work!

The long ongoing project is to spin up the 4 pounds of chocolate Romney I purchased at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool festival. Here’s a closeup of one of my batts (and the yarn up above there is sitting on another one.  The color is somewhat between the two pictures.)

Right now I’m going for a sport weight 3 ply, but we’ll see what I get. I know, I know….sample sample. It can spin really fine, also, so I may end up with a lace shawl instead.

I’ve had some serious guilt about stash reduction, and a need for spinning some color, so I finally got out this superwash merino rainbow top.

I’m spinning up something medium weight and twist, and am going to try my hand at n-plying. Right now the challenge is learning to feed the fiber back and forth across the fan of the end to keep the colors less muddy. I can get one way to go well, so I just flip it over and keep going. It is fun to see the different colors build up on the bobbin.

Next week is SOAR, and I’m pretty sad that I’m not going to be there, especially since it is only about 3 hours from my house. Obligations keep me to home, but I’m happy to say that I’m participating in a Virtual SOAR. Care to join me? Break out your books and/or videos and schedule yourself an intensive retreat, or a few workshop sessions.