Spinning Friday - 2016 Recap

As I'm trying to get back into the groove of blogging more frequently, I thought I'd revisit my Spinning Fridays with this post on the final Friday of 2016.

Some of you might know that I participated in the 2016 Spin the Bin Challenge over on Ravelry.  I had earmarked a total of 125 oz of fiber to spin and while I did spin a few other braids this year, that 125 oz was what I mainly focused on.

If you are interested in all the various and sundry rovings and fibers that I picked for the challenge, you can visit my Ravelry project page for that here.

Most of what I spun were 4-oz increments, but there were a few 8-oz'ers and a few 4-ozs that I paired together for a larger combospin.  I had a couple of smaller batches too, but not many of those.

Here's all the skeins spun up and ready to have grown-up lives as yarn!

There are individual project pages on Ravelry under my Handspun tab if you want to find out any details about them.  The total yards spun from the bin were 9553 yards, which I'm pretty daggone proud of.  More than half were fingering-weight yarns, with just a few sport to DK thrown in there, and only 2 worsted I think.  (I didn't include the odd other braids I spun in that yardage total, but I know it was over 10K yards with those included for the year.)

I've already used 2 of the yarns to knit up items (1 pair of socks, 1 hat), but I can see a lot of other fun projects waiting to be started here.

I'm not going to participate in the 2017 challenge.  I decided I wanted a little less pressure on my spinning time, but I do plan to continue working on my stash next year.  There are still a lot of pretty things to be spun up!

Spinning Friday: March 4, 2016

I've kind of lost track where I am in showing my spinning projects after the week-plus hiatus to and from Stitches West, so I'm just going to jump in with my most recently finished project (and if you want to see where I am in the crazy 52 spins in 52 weeks project, you can always go here.)

This week, I worked on a Spin the Bin fiber from deep stash.  This was 4 oz of mixed BFL from Funky Carolina in the custom colorway "Adler".  A moody-broody blend of dark pine green and a deep plum and herby greens.  The original roving looked like:

I split the braid in half, and then split each of those halves again lengthwise - one half I split into 4 pieces and the other into 8.  I then spun each of those halves into singles, and then plied them together for a 2-ply heavy DK weight yarn with 224 yards in the skein.

My grist was a little bit wonky on this one - I spun it in small bits of time this week (like 15-minute sessions) and it was much harder to keep a consistent size for my singles.  I also purposefully spun this with a light twist, trying to keep the BFL loftier, as I think it's slated for either mittens or a hat, and I wanted it a bit soft and squishy (and normally my BFL winds up being very worsted-spun with a tighter smooth twist).

Next up, I'm starting a spin with 2 coordinating braids of Finn from Three Waters Farm for a challenge in their group.

Spinning Friday: February 5, 2016

I've got 2 finished spins to share with you today!

First up is the December FatCatKnits club fiber, which was a swirl merino (dark and light merino blended together) in the Scarlett and Rhett colorways, the final installment in the Famous Couples Club offering this go-round.

The original roving consisted of two 2.5 oz braids.  The bright one is Scarlett (lots of red, royal blue, emerald green and purple) and the more muted one is Rhett (charcoal, black and a gray-blue).

I spun each of the colorways up into singles and then plied them together to yield a fingering-weight 2-ply with 530 yards/5 oz of yarn.

While I haven't decided for sure the grand plan for this yarn, I do have enough yardage for a decently sized shawl, and I'm eyeing Romi Hill's Artesian as a possibility.  This one will marinate a while while I decide on a final project to try with it.

I also spun up 4 oz of BFL from Three Waters Farm as part of the CTA first-quarter SAL in the CTA Ravelry group.  The colorways Mary Ann dyed up were inspired by 1930s artwork and this colorway is Mirror Lake.  The original braid looked like:

I decided at the front end I wanted to use this colorway for an asymmetrical triangular shawl, something like the Quaker Yarn Stretcher or the like.  When I unbraided the roving, I found I had 3 basically equal sets of color runs so I pulled the braid apart into thirds.  Then I split one of the thirds in half and spun each half into singles, followed by the other third so that I had a shorter run of the colors and a longer run of the colors repeated twice over the length of the singles.  I then plied the 2 plies together to produce a 285 yard/4 oz skein of sportweight. 

The theory is that since this type of shawl starts with shorter rows and increases to longer ones the color blocks will stay more proportionately the same over the course of the increasing/shaping of the shawl.  We'll see if this actually works out in the final project when I get there!

Currently on the wheel, I'm spinning an 8 oz combo spin of some of my oldest fibers - two braids of BFL from FatCatKnits that I'm spinning a ply of each and then will ply these together.  I've gotten the first 4 oz of singles spun so far, and will update progress next week!

Spinning Friday: January 22, 2016

This week, I spun up the Wooly Wonka Fibers January fiber club - Starry Night.  All of the club colorways this year are based on great works of art and January's club is based on Van Gogh's Starry Night painting.

The fiber is 100% Falkland wool, which is a great multi-use fiber, IMHO.  Not as soft as merino, but still plenty soft for most applications, and it does wear a bit better as the staple length is slightly longer.  Here's the roving before I spun it up.

One of the Ravelry groups I'm in (the Spin 16 in 2016 group) has a challenge for January to spin singles, so I decided I'd do that.  I don't spin singles and leave them unplied very often, but I did so for this braid.

I spun up 262 yards/4 oz of a DK-weight yarn that looks like:

I think my plan for the yarn is to work up a pair of loosely knit mittens and then felt them down to fit, to make a nice, densely warm pair of mittens.

I've started my next spin already too - more FatCatKnits club fibers.  This time it's a merino swirl (white and dark wool) from the December club package themed on Scarlett and Rhett.  I've finished the first half of singles and started on the second half which I'm hoping to finish this weekend and then ply the yarn up during the upcoming week. 

Spinning Friday: The Strawberry Thief

I signed up for 2 months of Hilltop Cloud's Time Traveler's Club - love that theme!  The August fiber was a lovely custom blend of merino and silk, with a theme of William Morris's popular print The Strawberry Thief.  The original roving looked like:

I had 200 grams to work with (I ordered a double dose) - and I knew I wanted to spin this fairly finely for a fingering weight yarn.  I finally finished this up this week and LOVE how it came out.

Yarn Specs:
Roving:  25% Corriedale/12.5% Mulberry Silk/62.5% Merino custom blend from Hilltop Cloud. August 2015 Time Traveller's Club fiber.
Ply:  2-ply.
Weight:  Fingering weight.
Yardage: 661 yards/6.6 oz.

I have no specific plans for this as of yet, but I'm definitely leaning towards a shawl since the drape is lovely and it's a great almost-solid/tweedy yarn.

Spinning Friday: August 14, 2015

This week, I decided to dig into deep deep stash and pulled out a set of batts from a club from 2009.  These are from Northwoods Dye Works, and are themed on the bald eagle.  Each 1-oz batt (total of 3 oz) was carded with superfine merino wool in a dark brown with light blue-gray silk noil and then a layer of natural (cream-colored) alpaca.

I really had a hard time deciding what to do with these.  I didn't want to get a barberpole-y yarn and I worried with the really high contrast between the 2 fibers, that's what I'd get.  I had thought about recarding, but then I worried the silk noil was going to cause neps with all the other superfine fibers - and honestly... handcarding these didn't sound like a whole lot of fun.  So I opted to split the batts and pulled off the alpaca section and separated the two colors.

I spun both of the fibers (I had 1.9 oz of the brown and 1 oz of the white) as a 2-ply fingering weight, semi-woolen technique.   Here's the brown with the silk noil.

And the white alpaca.

Technical Specs:
Fiber: Three 1-oz batts from Northwoods Dye Works (club fiber from 2009) with 55% wool, 40% alpaca, 5% silk.
Ply: 2-ply.
Weight: Fingering weight.
Yardage/Oz:  154 yards/1.9 oz of brown and 101 yards/1 oz of white.

The yarn is super soft and very drapey.  Since I don't have a ton of yardage from it, I'm thinking about knitting a simple striped cowl, like this one, to try to make the most of what I do have.

Up next week is a club fiber from the Wooly Wonka Mythical Creatures club: Dryad.

Spinning Friday: August 7, 2015

This past week, I've been spinning up a well-marinated stash braid from Two If By Hand.  The original roving was Shetland wool in the "Whip My Hair" colorway.  I originally thought the braid was just normally handpainted, but when I unbraided it, I realized there were no repeats of the color blocks, so I decided it might work as a gradiant.

I split the 4 oz of roving lengthwise into two equal portions (and had to do a little bit of fudging and pull off some narrow bits to get the two halves to match in terms of weight on my postal scale.)  I then spun each half, end to end, to get long color sections.

I then plied the 2 sets of singles, keeping an eye out to be sure the colors were matching up.  I did have one small section in the very center where one of the greens didn't want to play nicely, so I just broke off the 4 or 5 yards it wasn't matching up and then reattached that single and kept plying.

Technical Specs:
Roving:  4 oz of shetland wool roving from Two If By Hand, colorway "Whip My Hair".
Ply: 2-ply.
Weight:  Sportweight.
Yardage/Weight: 327 yards/4 oz.

This is a FUN yarn.  The colors move from hot pink to gold, to an herby green and then into a dark blue.  I think it'd be perfect for a cowl or maybe a small crescent shawl to really show off the colors!

Spinning Friday: July 31, 2015

Are you sick of spinning content yet?  I hope not, since it's Friday!

For my last project for the Tour, I started two 4-oz braids of a mixed BFL in the "Quest" colorway from FatCatKnits.  While I did get the singles spun up during the tour, I didn't have time to get them plied, but I finished that task up this week.

I spun this up semi-woolen to keep it fairly light and fluffy, and to match the dark brown/black natural-colored roving I had spun up previously.

Technical Specs: 
Roving:  8 oz of mixed BFL from FatCatKnits, in the "Quest" colorway.
Ply: 2-ply.
Weight: Worsted.
Yardage: 364 yards/7.8 oz.

I love the forest-y colors in this!  I think it will work great with the dark brown I spun up, but I don't have enough yardage from those total 13 oz to quite get a sweater for myself knit.

So... I'm thinking I will add a few other solid colors in stripes or as colorwork against the dark brown in a yoke.  Maybe some herb greens and a golden brown?  Still pondering my options on this, but I'm excited to have this much of a potential sweater already spun up and ready to go!

Tour de Fleece 2015: Day 5

It'll be a fairly boring group of photos for the next wee while, I'm afraid.  Since I've decided to spin up the Dragons roving fairly thinly, having just an hour to devote towards it nightly doesn't equal a lot of progress.

But here's where I am at the end of day 5's spinning for me.

In looking ahead - and yes, I'm using that as a carrot to keep myself focused on these skinny singles - I've got 3 other batches of fiber earmarked for the next several weeks.  Of those three, I had planned to spin 2 of them fairly finely as well.  One is a batt, and I'd like to also use that for a light fingering to laceweight yarn, and the other is a blend of baby camel and silk, and I suspect is going to require a short forward draft to be spun nicely, which is a slow technique for me.  My final choice is a shetland/silk 75/25 roving blend from FatCatKnits, colorway Grotto.

I think that may be the next up and likely a fractal spin to help keep some of the colors cleaner and less barberpole-y, so I may do some prep on that as well to get it ready to hit the wheel.

Tour de Fleece 2015: Day 4

While I had some extra time to spin over the weekend, I'm not being quite as productive during the work week.  I am meeting my goal of an hour of spinning a day, and today, Day 4 of the Tour, I worked on spinning singles from the Wooly Wonka Fibers "Dragons" blended roving.  This is a mix of BFL, silk and a bit of glitter in deep reds and a bit of black.

I took the ends of the two runs I had done for this custom blend to keep for myself, so I've actually got a full 5 oz to work with.  I'm shooting for a light fingering weight yarn to use for something lacey with this.  Probably a shawl, but we'll see how the yardage shakes out.

Slow going with the fine singles and reduced spinning time, but I'm feeling pretty good about getting started on my third fiber I've got earmarked for the Tour already with two 4-oz braids already spun up!

Tour de Fleece 2015: Day 3

For Day 3, I sat down and plied up the Two If By Hand Polwarth I had finished up the singles of.

Technical Specs:
Roving:  4 oz of  Two If By Hand Polwarth wool roving, in the "Cello Shots" colorway.
Ply:  2-ply.
Weight:  Aran/worsted.
Yardage:  175 yards.

This did turn out lovely and squishy!  The plies are a bit inconsistent, however, so I definitely need to work on that at this grist.  All in all, I'm not unhappy with the yarn - it's soft and cheerful colors, and will knit up into something warm.  Mittens?  A hat?  Nothing specific chosen for it yet.

My next spin will take me a bit longer, I suspect, since I want to spin it up as a 2-ply laceweight.

The next one up is another blended roving from the Wooly Wonka Fibers Mythical Creatures Club, Dragons.

I did start the singles after I finished plying the Polwarth so this one is underway!

Tour de Fleece 2015: Day 2

I managed to get the Mermaids singles plied up today and off the bobbins.

I'm so pleased with this yarn!  It came out lovely, bouncy but drapey all at the same time.  The white soy gives it a bit of a shimmery quality and it is SOFT.

Technical Specs:
Roving:  4 oz of Wooly Wonka Fibers blended roving, 60/40 merino/soy, in the Mermaids colorway.
Ply: 2-ply.
Weight:  Fingering.
Yardage: 416 yards

I then pulled out the next spin I've got queued up.  This one is from Two if By Hand.  The fiber is Polwarth, and the colorway is Cello Shots.

This is one of the fibers I prepped last weekend.  I'm planning to do this as a fractal spin and looking for a nice bouncy DK to worsted weight for this one.

Tour De Fleece 2015: Day 1

I'm going to try to keep up with posting daily during the Tour de Fleece, but I'll likely be a day behind, so here's day 1

I decided to start with my Wooly Wonka Fibers Mermaids roving, which was the May Mythical Creatures Club offering. It's a blend of blue and sea-green merino and a white soy (about a 60/40 mix).

I divided the braid in half and then spun up each half separately for a 2-ply yarn.

At the end of day 1, I had finished all 4 oz of singles and they are ready to be plied.  Super easy spin - lovely and soft fiber and I had no prep work to do on it - I just split the braid and started spinning.

Today's task is plying these up and I may try to get started on the next braid in my basket as well.

Spinning Friday: May 8, 2015

I have a finished spin this week!  I showed you the original roving last Friday, which was a 4-oz braid of shetland wool from Two If By Hand.

I finished up my singles and got it plied this week:

Technical Specs:
Roving: 4. oz of shetland wool roving in the "Dr. Unicorn" colorway from Two If By Hand.
Ply: 2-ply.
Weight:  Sport.
Yardage: 354 yards/4. oz.

This fiber prep really was stellar - I didn't do much manipulation of it beyond splitting the roving into long thin strips to help break the colors up a bit.

I'm currently working on another Spin the Bin/Stashdown fiber, also from Two if By Hand, so I'll have some photos of that next week.