My plan to post shortly after our return from travels was delayed by a good 14 days thanks to Spinzilla: “a monster of a spin event”. This event is organized by the National Needlearts Association’s (TNNA) Spinning and Weaving Group and a lot of fun. The goal is to keep one week free of all activities to spin the largest amount possible. There are teams with up to 25 members and rogue spinners who compete for a mention as the most prolific spinner. Seeing the winner in the rogue category spinning more than 20,000 yards in one week I am amazed and now know that it was a good idea to spin rogue (by myself) for my first try. I had planned to join TeamGeorgia in Vancouver remotely, but may have not been such a good support with my 2,935 yards in one week. I seriously want to work on my speed. Some pointers like select and prepare all your fiber before the spinning week starts and decline any activities for 7 days I took lightly. Not touching my email (besides one or two important ones) or any housework worked really well, but there is a limit on how much I will neglect time spent with my husband and exploring Abu Dhabi. I planned for that by having one spindle-spun project to work on in the car or while waiting, but deciding on my Turkish lace spindle made for slower progress than working with a larger one. I think that theory will be tested for next year.
Let me guide you through my process. The basic plan was to reduce my stash and have an idea (before spinning) what to make out of the yarn. I had just returned from an amazing two days at my friend’s house in Germany and saw her gorgeous three-ply yarn built out of hues of yellow with white and a green. Seeing those different fibers and colours of the singles combined to create a beautifully interesting looking yarn made me want to be a bit more relaxed and adventurous about my yarn and allow my intuition and creativity to go beyond my usual “planned” colours. Plus, I realized that with a lot of spinning I might be able to end up with enough for a sweater. That would be a first for me, too!
Since my three braids of roving from Kinfolk Yarn and Fibre added up to about 340 gm of fiber and a sweater would most likely need at least around 400 – 450 gm I decided to add 30 gm of light blue Falkland fiber and 50 gm of a white-blue indigo dyed Corriedale fiber by Kristan MacIntyre. This decision happened on the evening before Spinzilla started and there was no time to blend the fibres by carding. So I thought “Why not try combination drafting?” Rachel Smith described it in her blog Welfordpurls and it did not sound too difficult. Knowing that I was ignoring the fact that drafting of two different fibres will not go smoothly or as consistently as a properly carded blend.
My finished yarn was to be a 3-ply created by plying together my three different colours of combination drafted singles. Before spinning I split all three rovings into half and then halfed them again to spin a quarter of the original onto a bobbin of my Victoria Louet travel wheel. Each of the three single bobbins held about 50-60% of its capacity making it the perfect amount to be plied onto my Majacraft Suzie Pro bobbin.
Singles were S-spun and Z-plied. I set my Louet to 1:8 for the singles and the Suzie to 1:10 for the plying. Resulting in a slightly overtwisted yarn before finishing it with a hot-cold-hot rinse cycle and a thorough snap before drying. Once dried the yarn was balanced and amazed me with an overall blue-green first impression dotted with interesting highlights of light blue, purple and light green. A small sample turned out to look quite green, but it only showcases about 10 m of the yarn. Other parts have areas where blues dominate.
The heathered effect shows well in the knit sample on 3.5 mm needles and yields a dense, but still soft fabric. During Spinzilla 568m in 3 skeins were spun. The fourth skein with 165m was finished in the following weeks resulting in 733m of a DK-weight yarn. Just enough to knit a version of the Garter stitch swingy sweater by Jenn Pellerin. I will swatch in garter stitch to see if I like the look of my yarn or I may need to either adapt the pattern.
In the past two weeks I finished a baby hat (no photo as it was gifted right away), the knit-along scarf and my Stormwatch sweater.
I will try and post a better photo of the sweater in another post. It looks funny with the skinny sleeves on the blocking board but fits well hugging the arms and swings around my body.
Thank you, for reading my blog! Maike
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