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Spinning with Turkish Spindles: Singles to Plying

My second Fiber Arts related course through FiberyGoodness. This self paced course can be started at any time, and has three sections: S...

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Latest Spinning and Knitting Projects

I've been pretty busy over the past couple months trying to work on projects that were meant to be for Christmas but took a lot longer than anticipated. I made a pair of Gryffindor Mitts for my coworker Y2jenn,  I finished one Boomslang cowl from spinning to knitted and I'm still working on a second cowl which was carded, made into rolags, spun, and soon to be knitted as soon as it dries.

Before I get onto the projects and photos I had something exciting happen this week. I frequent the Majacraft forum on Ravelry posting my WIP and helping people out when I can. Earlier this week I received a private message from Glynis Poad one of the wonderful family members who creates the Majacraft wheels. She was impressed with my lace spinning with the Aura and was curious if I would allow them to share my findings on spinning lace with the Aura. Absolutely thrilled and honored that she asked I said yes right away, totally made my day. The article just went live yesterday evening and can be found on their Tutorial section on their Resources page.

You can download the PDF file here
I participated in a Secret Santa gift exchange with my team at work and got Jenn. I had made her a Gryffindor Scarf several years ago and unfortunately she really can't enjoy it in Texas so I thought some arm warmers might work out better.

Settings for Singles
Bobbin Drive - groove 1
Flyer Drive - groove 2 on lace whorl
Tension 25%

Settings for Navajo Plying
Bobbin Drive - groove 1
Flyer Drive - groove 2 on regular whorl
Tension 25%


465.5 yards out of 4.1 oz of Merino
413 yards out of 3.75 oz

The first cowl I made the spinning worked out perfectly for the pattern. I spun it as is and Navajo plied it to keep the beautiful color transitions. Even without adjusting the pattern the color transitions fell right into place perfectly.

Same settings as the Gryffindor Mitts yarn above.

BFL/Seacell dyed by Woolgatherings - 8.15 oz

915 yards 24 WPI


 The second cowl I'm working on I purchased two similarly dyed bumps of wool from Woolgatherings but due to the different fiber types I thought it would be best to card them together. One bump was Merino/Silk and the second was Polwarth/Silk. This was my first experience with carding, creating rolags, and spinning from them. I learned how to do this thanks to LongdrawJames who had an excellent youtube video on how to do this



I took several photos a long the way to record the process. I had a lot of fun and it became so much easier to do over time. I'm really impressed with how well I took to it and how much I enjoyed working on this project. I'm waiting for the finished yarn to dry and then I'll start knitting with it.





When spinning this I wanted to make it a bit thicker than the yarn for the other cowl so I went to the largest groove on the flyer drive whorl. Also because I was spinning from rolags this made the yarn semi-wollen causing it to be more airy and poof than it would be normally. This resulted in the yarn being more poofy and I was able to obtain 1,003 yards out of the 8.3 oz of fiber.

Settings for Singles
Bobbin Drive - groove 1
Flyer Drive - groove 2 on lace whorl
Tension 25%

Settings for Navajo Plying
Bobbin Drive - groove 1
Flyer Drive - groove 2 on regular whorl
Tension 25%








This yarn should hopefully be dry tomorrow and then I'll get to start knitting this into a cowl. It's a belated present for my Mom. I was hoping to get it done earlier in the winter season but was having a hard time finding just the right wool to spin it out of. It's going to be so luxurious.

This Saturday I'm hoping to make it to the Eastside Spinners Guild. Will be my first time going to a regular spinning meet up here. I'm looking forward to meeting lots of new creative people. 

In a blog to come I hope to share with you all a special project I'm hoping to accomplish this year that involves photography and fiber arts. :)

EWM

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Updating and Fixing Blog

Hi everyone!! Last December I noticed a lot of my images went missing and I still haven't gotten around to fixing this. I dearly apologize for this and I'm working on alleviating this issue and hope to update you all on stuff I've been working on lately and future plans that are super exciting :)

Evanita

**Update**
All broken images have been fixed.