Spin-out!

Don't worry, I'm not talking about the kind that happens in your car on icy streets -- although if I had taken my car out today, that could very easily have been the situation.

No, friends, I'm talking about spinning out with fiber. The extra time I've gained by not being able to leave the house safely allows me to catch up on posting about some of my spinning.

First, here is some finished yarn spun from fiber I purchased from Knitted Wit at Oregon Flock and Fiber (OFFF) this year. It's BFL (blue-faced Leicester) in the color "Third Grade." BFL (we call it "biffle") spins up so easily! I decided to keep the colors together, so I did a Navajo ply, creating about 92 yards of 3-ply yarn. I put in quite a tight twist and I like how it came out. Now I have to figure out something to knit with it.

Next, I plied the Merino/Tencel blend that I purchased from Abstract Fibers at OFFF. This is the Caribbean colorway. It was a little slick to spin, due to the Tencel, and thus ended up with a few thick/thin spots. But I think it plied up nicely in 2-ply form and I got about 134 yards of very usable yarn.

And then there's that Christmas spin-a-long from Uniquely Yours that I talked about in my post yesterday. I already showed you the batts and the singles and mentioned that I plied it with some Bamboodle I had in the stash. Well, last night I took it off the bobbin and set the twist. Today it was still a little damp, but I put it on the swift and wound it into a ball anyway to help ease out the over-plied areas. Then I re-skeined it and now it's hanging to dry the rest of the way and looking quite pretty.

Wanna see??? Of course you do! (You know the drill -- click to make bigger.)


This is half of the spun singles and is approximately 292 yards worth of yarn! The colors really pop with the white and the sparkle here and there is quite pretty (you can see that a little if you make the pics bigger).

Things I learned:

• Spinning mixed fiber bats is a lot of fun, especially when there's some sparkle involved.
• Bamboo shrinks a little when wet, but stretches out again as it dries -- or at least Bamboodle does.
• Bamboo, when wet, breaks very easily. What would otherwise be one continuous strand of yarn now has several knots in it. A small price to pay for the pretty, though.
• If you put in some areas of overtwist when plying, it can all work out in the wash. Well, actually with this one, after the wash, it was still pretty twisted. When the bamboo dried out some and "relaxed," there was less overtwisting. I evened the rest of it out by winding the skein into a ball and then reskeining it. Had me worried for a minute, though!

In the next couple of days, I'm hoping to get time to ply the other bobbin. Then I'll have to decide what to make with this pretty stuff. :)