And More Spinning

I have been knitting a lot lately, partly because I was traveling a lot, and partly because I was keeping the house neat and tidy because it is on the market. It's a lot easier to stash the knitting away quickly when the call comes that folks are coming over than to put away a wheel and balls of fiber.

That all changed last weekend, because when I realized how much I missed spinning. I rearranged some things so that I had nearby storage space for the fiber and a corner for my Suzie, and now I've been spinning up a storm.

I already showed the superwash merino from the weekend, and now I'll do a little show and tell of the current spinning. This is merino/angora/silk blend, in cotton candy colors (from Spirit Trail):

This ball is one of two, as I have separated the fiber into two lengths and fluffed the fibers. On thing that I noticed as soon as I started to spin is that the angora was making it "sticky" to draft, and as I sampled I noted that this was not a fiber that I wanted to spin into a thin yarn. I am naturally a lace-to-fingering-weight spinner, so I think it's a good exercise for me to spin worsted-to-bulky-weight sometimes. This will be one of those times.

I then determined that it spins much more quickly and easily when I adopt a Deb Menz technique - stripping the fiber into pencil roving-type pieces, then spinning quickly with little additional drafting and relatively low twist. My feet really wanted to treadle faster to put more twist in, so it's even more of a good exercise - lower ratio (8:1 or so), slower treadling, lots of take-up on the Scotch tension to pull it in quickly. I was happy with my test plying, so I proceeded to spin singles that look like this:

I finished a couple of ounces last evening, and will do the rest over the next couple of days and ply it up.

And for a little excitement and temptation to a lot of folks out there (and you know who you are), here is my next spinning project:

It's a gloriously greeny green that's named Limeola, and the fiber blend is a Merino/Rayon from Bonkers, purchased at the Fiber Factory in Mesa AZ during my trip earlier this month (the Lenten resolution did not extend to fiber, remember, just yarn). The 30% rayon is shimmering in the photo, and the fiber is very soft. I'm not sure what it will be yet, other than beautiful yarn, but there is the possibility that it wants to be a SoapTurtle. Hmm, we'll see...