Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Spin City!

Things have been moving quite quickly around here. Still are, actually, so this will be a quick overview/update.

SOAR was last week in Sunriver. I got to be there for the 3-day workshops and had a marevelous time in Spinning 101 with Maggie Casey.

Maggie Casey2

We learned all kinds of things and enjoyed working with a washed Corriedale-cross fleece and a gorgeous Polwarth fleece, too. It was my first time experiencing Polwarth and boy, am I hooked!

THe joy of polwarth
Yes, it's just this luscious!

We did short draw, long draw (even with cotton), woolen, and worsted spinning. We learned Andean plying and although the wrap around my hand got pretty tight, I managed not to lose a finger doing it.

P1020731
My first worsted-spun, Andean-plied fiber.

Here are some of our sample skeins. We each got a little bit of multicolored fiber from Louet and took artistic license with how we spun and plied it. You can see some of the results here, along with some cotton and some of the Corriedale, too.

Spinning samples


On Tuesday morning, we awoke to a dusting of snow. It was beautiful.
View from our room on Tuesday morn

I had to leave on Wednesday afternoon for the next adventure of the week, so I missed the marketplace and the retreat sessions. From what I heard later, I also seem to have missed the H1N1 virus, which unfortunately hit a few of my friends. I'm glad I missed that, but still wish I could have been there the whole week.

Corriedale cross and polwarth fleeces
These two piles of fleece started out quite a bit larger.

However, I wouldn't have changed a thing, because on Thursday morning, I got to see my friend Scott and bring him home to be my new roommate. It's been almost five years since I saw him last, so this was a very good thing. :)

In the next couple of days, we got him moved into the spare room at the house and pretty much settled in. We're both still adjusting, but it's going well. He's spoiling me by cooking and cleaning -- stuff I don't do much. I maintain that I'm Oscar and he's Felix (of The Odd Couple fame).

Sunday, I had the luxury of spending the entire day spinning. While at SOAR, I finished another bobbin of the Corriedale-Finn-Ramboulet cross I've been spinning since the dawn of time for a while and plied it into a nice two-ply. I already had a three-ply of the same fiber with a strand of metallic nylon added to it. On Sunday, I ran both plied bobbins through the wheel again, adding more twist to each. Then I chain-plied them together, creating a pretty 13-wpi, 5-ply yarn.

5-ply chain-plied corriedale-fin-ramboullet with sparkle

There's about 375 yards, so I have some good options for what to make. Haven't decided yet what it will become. For now, it's just pretty. :)

Now it's back to our regularly scheduled programming of working while establishing new routines. It's been quite a long time since I shared a household with anyone, so there are definite adjustments to be made. So far, so good!

4 comments:

PNWBookGirl said...

Looks like you had a lot of fun! Definitely a good thing to miss the flu bug.

Very pretty yarn too!

Noticed a number of Lendrums in your class. ;-)

Little Ol' Liz said...

Tell me you'll loan out Scott on the weekends -- to you good friends, of course!

Shelly said...

Beautiful yarns, I'm glad to see the photos from SOAR. Sounds like a good roomy.

FiberQat said...

Yep, I got it and so far it's just a regular flu virus, though I'll make sure at the docs. It means that if I have enough energy I'll get to play with my new WooLee Winder.