Plied Yarn

I put my lazy kate on it's side, hoping that the friction between the bobbins and arms would provide some tension for plying.  I'm not sure it worked, but I was able to ply.  

Here is the first bobbin of yarn next to the upright lazy kate. I managed to get two bobbins of three ply before I ran out of the pink mohair.  Then I got another almost full bobbin of two ply brown.  Yay!  

Goodies

Stephanie's yarn, I'm knitting her a cool dropped stitch scarf.  

My beautiful yarn!  So pretty I don't know what to knit with it.  I'm sure I'll figure something out.  

And my beautiful roving.  I'm waiting to spin it up until I've plied the brown and pink roving I've been spinning.  I need to see if my spinning style needs adjustment before I play with this so pretty.   

Brownish Noro Cash Island a cashmere blend from Japan.  

Greenish Noro Cash Island.  

Purple-ish Noro Cash Island.  

Peanut Gets a Bath

I've run out of clean Peanut, time to wash another batch.  I never took pictures of the process last time, so here goes.  

Very dirty wool, full of hay and poop.

I put on my "poop gloves," a pair of yellow dish washing gloves, now dedicated solely to wool cleaning.  Then I pulled hay and debris out of enough wool to fill a turkey roasting pan that is also dedicated to wool cleaning.

You can see the dirty wool in the pan, contrasted with the clean spun wool on the bobbin.    

This is the wool in it's second bath (already a whole lot cleaner) next to the gross water from the first bath.  

And the third bath, next to the second bath water.  

The fourth, and probably final, bath.  You can see my poop gloves as well.  Peanut is now much much cleaner.  I'll let her soak for a bit more, then I'll take her out and let her dry on a towel before starting to spin her up into more singles.  

    

Playing With My Wheel

I finished spinning the ball of brown roving I was working on.  I have another ball partly spun up on a drop spindle, and a ball of pink/purple to go with it.  

Then I started in on Peanut.  This photo is  a little deceiving because I transferred what was on the drop spindle to the bobbin and continued spinning.  But I did get a fair amount done tonight.  I'm almost out of cleaned Peanut.

More Spinning, and the Kureyon

I started working on the brown wool again. You can see I spun a lot more this time. I have to figure out what to do with the portion already on my drop spindle. This is so much faster, it's great!

Yesterday I also ripped out my Kureyon wrap and cast on for gloves. I wasn't sure that I had enough yarn to make a wrap the size and shape I wanted. And I had read that it wouldn't soften up as much as I was hoping. So I ordered another yarn from the same company that contains a hefty percentage of cashmere. I will make the wrap with that and I will make fingerless gloves from the Kureyon. I am calling them my iPhone gloves (you need your finger tips for iPhone manipulation).

The Kureyon wrap, before destruction.

The new Kureyon gloves, in progresss.


Sandy just said that these are very "Fame!"

First Yarn on the Wheel

Tonight I oiled the wheel like crazy and grabbed some leftover "practice" roving from my class this sumer.  

My first single, the maroon is a "regular" wool (I forget the breed name) and the peach is merino.  The merino was much harder to spin.  You can kinda see that it's thicker than the maroon strands.  

Actually it was all pretty hard to spin because I've only used a wheel for about 45 minutes, and that was months ago.  Once I got used to the maroon, no more breaking or getting all twisty, then I was out of it and had to get used to the peach.  Practice makes perfect, I'm planning on grabbing some inexpensive roving to play with, then on to peanut and some superfine merino that I have two pounds of!  

Remember Peanut?!

This is Sandy (of the fleecy goodness hook-up), touching the nose of the infamous Peanut.


You're becoming beautiful yarn Peanut!