Autumnal fibres - more on that later
October has seen a flurry of activity spinning, knitting, and felting. First off I have finished spinning the Romney Marsh fleece I was spinning last month. I ended up with several bobbins full, so many that I forgot to leave one of the Wee Peggy bobbins free for plying! Doh! I pondered plying it on the Louet wheel, but instead I sat and wound off one of the bobbins onto a spare ashford bobbin I had. Plying commenced and took quite some time. I have a lovely bundle of skeins of this 2ply yarn - decided to ply all of the remainder as a 2 ply and it has resulted in a lovely yarn approximately 4ply with 14 wpi. All together I have about 630m, enough for a decent sized project. Awaiting washing still, but it's on my to do list!
Romney Marsh skeins
A few weeks ago was our local Guild meeting, a much anticipated meeting as we welcome Wingham Wool Works to the guild with all of their lovely wares to feel, to sample and to buy. I haven't previously taken my wheel to this day as I get involved in other things and never get around to spinning. But this year I was determined I would take the wheel and sample some fibres not spun before, and colourful combinations to get an idea of things I would like to spin again and also inspiration for colour blending. I had a lovely day, sampled lots of different things and have resulted in a lovely sample skein still patiently sitting on my niddy noddy. I was so busy having fun I only took one photograph at the beginning of the day. Ah well, my skein of finished samples is pretty to look at and shows what sort of day I had.
Sampling bobbin
Sampling results n-plied and on the niddy noddy
We did have a committee meeting in the afternoon that went on for quite a while so some samples were finished at home. I made a few purchases, but not a lot, I have enough fibre and fleece at home to be getting on with for now (whoa, did I just admit that!?!).
Finishing the romney and sampling got me thinking about all the skeins of yarn I have sitting waiting to become something, so since then I have spent time logging my handspun in a book - what the fibre is, yardage, approximate thickness. The idea is to then look at projects I'd like to do and see what skeins match the project. That's the plan anyway. Among all the larger skeins, I had several small skeins or balls of handspun samples or bit left over from other things, and lots of bits of my early uneven spinning. So I set to using these up, firstly making a cover for a tablet we have (my pattern database!), and for a kindle (on loan to us) and a couple of bags. A great way to use up all those scraps, oh no I can't call handspun yarn scrap, even just a little bit - all those bits and bobs.
Since the wheel was empty, I have started spinning some superfine merino roving from the stash in lovely Autumn Burnt Leaves colourway, beautiful bright colours for those grey days - holding onto a little autumn beauty. Pondering whether to 2ply or navajo ply.
Seperated the roving lengthways to spin
Spinning started
(have now a full bobbin and almost full 2nd bobbin but no updated picture)
Will show you this next month when it's finished.
I'm still knitting my tunic jumper - need to pop it on to see if the length is okay, so maybe that will be finished soon-ish. Knitting a few other little projects too, and this week I have cast on 2 pairs of 2-at-a-time socks too, with others in the planning.
