AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

nary a picture

Thursday night I was working on the Elegant Shrug (I'll have pictures of that probably sometime this weekend along with everything else I've been working on) for a bit, but I decided before I started work on it that I was going to take this tiny scrap of yarn I had spun up and knit it right then and there. 

I was abandoning it, because I had spun it in the opposite direction of what I had been taught to do (necessitating a careful amount of thought each time I went back to it on what I was doing and which direction to spin).  I also wanted to see what my singles knit like.

The answer was:  Funky.

Because I don't have a real handle on spinning evenly yet (not surprising.  I am a beginner at this after all), there were areas that were almost wire thin and some that were pretty slubby.  I also had a lot of twist left in the yarn.  I'm not sure how far to draft before doing more spinning, but this was obviously not it.  Without plying there was no pretense at balance in the resulting yarn. 

So, I brought my spindle and the fiber in question (gorgeous superwash merino, because apparently I don't care about whether it will be easy or not when I'm learning) to work this morning.  It was only partly intentional (aka I don't know what I was thinking), but I sat in the cafeteria at work and did a bit of spinning.  Spinning makes me feel like I'm channeling Sandry. 

This weekend is supposed to be pretty ugly weather-wise, so I'll work on the shrug and do some spinning.  And maybe, just maybe, I'll have something to show for it at the end of the weekend.  So, how long does it take to spindle spin an ounce of fiber anyways?

Spinning in the dark

When I was having my lesson on Saturday, Lucy mentioned that she had taught a couple of people who were legally blind, and that they were taught as if they couldn't see all of the twist in the yarn.  This morning when I spent a few minutes spinning, I figured I would try using my fingers as my primary method of determining whether or not to continue park and draft or if I should spin the spindle again.  With the exception of a couple of times when my impatience resulted in either very slubby or very thin areas (because unintentional thick and thin is super easy), this was much easier to follow.  When there is plenty of twist left for the yarn to grow into, the yarn right around the hook feels like little pebbles on a string (actually it is everywhere, but it felt like it left the area above the hook last). 

I did about 30 minutes of spinning before going back to my knitting. 

I'll probably knit up my little bit of superwash from the weekend.  When I was starting it, I twisted it in the wrong direction and it will be a bit irritating to remember to spin the entire thing counter clockwise.  Instead, swatch!