Whirling

I am plying last year's tencel.  I took 8 ounces of dyed fiber and turned it into about 1500 yards of thread.  Each yard represents one spin of the spindle, one drop and one winding - one "make".  I spun, dropped, and wound, over and over, until I had a spindle of thread.  This I wound on a niddy-noddy, bobbing and tiring my arm, to make a skein.  Then I repeated the process.

This weekend I took the two skeins and I ran them together through the ball winder, spiraling their long, color-changing lengths around an eccentricly rotating hub of Japanese plastic.  One skein resisted, turning into a multi-hued snarl that had to be rewound on a toilet paper tube, yard by tangled yard.

Now I am plying from this ball of parallel strands, twisting them around each other to make the resulting yarn lie calm and relaxed.  I spin, drop, and wind, over and over.  I am impatient for the camisole I will one day knit from the fruit of my labors, but each step is important.  I am plying, calm and relaxed, my breath rising and falling with the whirl of the spindle.

Comments

[beth]

This sounds wonderful. I've only tried hand-spinning once and found it very difficult but mesmerizing - maybe someday I'll try it again. As a knitter I'd like to make some yarn or thread of my own, at least once!

[David]

Please stop. You foster addiction.

[Rana]

*mwuah hah hah*

Beth, I do hope that you give it another try. It does get easier with practice, as the fingers and eyes learn what they're doing. It can get rather addicting, as David suggests - but it's a good way to soothe the monkey mind, too.

If you want, I can dig up a link or two on spindle technique...