Spin, span, spun

Spinning again

For those of you who follow along on my sporadic spinning journey, you will all know that I pick it up and put it down rather too frequently. The last time I actually sat at my wheel and span some yarn was April of last year. 

In my defence we were in the middle of renovations at the house and moving from the apartment up to the house before we were really ready to, I packed my spinning stuff away into 2 compact bags and moved it to a corner of the living room in the house where it has sat for 8 months. 

Last week I was in the studio and I found 4kg of lovely fibre to dye, which instantly made me want to sit at my e-spinner and get some bobbins freed up. For those of you who don't know, my wheel is a Daedalus Starling v2, a 3D printed e-spinner, it has been a great little wheel to spin with, and during the time we were living in our apartment it tidied away to such a small size it was perfect. 

Here are some of the fibres that I dyed last week, adorable right?

So the current project on my wheel (pictured at the top of this post) is not my own fibre... it was something I saw online and had to have (yes, even as a yarn dyer I fall hard in love with yarns and fibres and have to have them). I really want to spin up one of my newly dyed up fibres, I kept 460g of fluff to one side from the dye-day and want to make enough yarn for a vest out of it, but to free up all the bobbins I need to finish off the current spin. 

This spin is my attempt at a 3-ply fingering weight yarn, I'm spinning it in a 'fractal' style. What is a fractal style I hear you ask? Well as best as I can describe it, it's a way of spinning a variegated fibre top so you don't get colours 'muddying' together when you ply. It goes like this..

I have split the yarn into thirds, and so far have split one third into 8, spun it onto one bobbin, the next was split into 4 and spun onto a second bobbin, and the final third, which I'm spinning now, is only split into 2. This means the colour repeats will be shortest in the third split into 8, longer in the third split into 4 and the longest in the third only split into 2, with me? 

So when these three bobbins get plied together there won't be too many repeats, or sections where the colours are all the same for long stretches, it should give a very nice gentle transition throughout the skein, well that is the theory at least, we shall see. 

I'm treating this spin as a practice for the 460g I've got waiting to become a vest, hopefully I won't pack away my e-spinner quite so soon and will spin a little every day to make slow and steady progress on the yarn.

If you're a spinner too, why not head over to the shop and check out the new fibres I've dyed up, they're really lovely fibre types, the Shetland base is particularly great to spin, check them out here, and watch this space for more progress on my current spin.