Monday, March 26, 2007

Spinning

I spent the weekend spinning wool and I think I've gotten even better with it. I'm starting to be able to get some lace weight stuff out of it. The part I'm having the most trouble with right now is keeping the spindle spinning. I think that has a lot to do with the handcrafted nature. Once you get a little bit of fibre on under the whorl it loses any balance it had. So I'm contemplating ponying up and buying a better spindle (I'll have to convince the Hub that is a good idea and thus far he still thinks the whole make your own wool thing is crazy. He's already told me in no uncertain terms that our backyard will not ever be made into a sheep enclosure or be alpaca friendly. I've told him he just has to view it creatively and since we live in a city then we can charge admission and make it a petting zoo). Spindles in the area I'm at cost upwards of $45 dollars and they also seem handcrafted although they feel better balanced.

Is it normal to have an attachment to the wool you've spun? I was asked what I was going to make with the wool that I plied/plyed and I looked at the person (apparently with a murderous expression) and said "That wool is not for knitting". Which is kind of funny since I had planned all along to make a nice hat out of it. Now I want to put it tenderly away in a ziploc bag and keep it forever. I hope this reaction is just because it's my first effort but the worry is that I started spinning up some BFL that I bought and I'm already envisioning a skein put away lovingly when I'm done when it was really supposed to make some pretty mittens. Maybe this whole spinning thing was suggested to me by the evergrowing blob that I like to call The Stash. It wants more fibre.

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