October 14, 2007

Spinning

It's been a while since I wrote that I had ordered a new wheel. Well, I thought it was about time to show off a bit of what I've done with it.

First it's the yarn I spun from the wool that came as "practise wool" along with the wheel.
You can really tell from the picture that this is not the best yarn in the world. But towards the end of using this wool I had gotten a hang of how my Louet works.

spinnvilt white handspun 2-ply

After using up all the white wool I dug straight into a big bag of gray mystery wool I got from a lady I took spinningclasses with. She had received two bags of the stuff from a girl at our S'n'B, and thought it was too much for her alone.

The wool is rich in lanoline, smells strongly of sheep, but is very nice to spin and I really like the result I'm getting.

gray handspun

gray handspun

gray handspun

That last picture shows three skeins, there are four. The last one was outside drying when I took the photo. Each skein is about 100 grams. There is still quite a bit of wool left too. I'm hoping I will have enough for a sweater or short sleeved cardigan in the end. Something from Fitted Knits (S. Japel) I hope. The yarn seems to be knittable into the same gauge as Cascade 220, but I will not know that for sure until I knit a swatch. I'll also try to remember measuring the wpi of the yarn.

Last, but not least, there is this skein of pink yarn.

pink-mix handspun

pink-mix handspun

I spun this up when I was starting to get a bit tired of gray. The bright pink stuff is labelled "Nepal wool" and is quite rough, short stapled and almost seems felted. When I carded it together with some baby pink merino it spun up quite well. I did not manage to spin either wool by itself. It kept breaking on me. The finished yarn is very soft and squishy.
Marie wants me to knit her a hat from this, spesifically the Diary Queen hat (Three spiral hat) by E. Zimmermann (from the Opinionated Knitter book). I really like that idea!

There will be more spinning posts to come, I'm sure...

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Your spinning is coming along very nicely! You're a quick study.

Bezzie said...

Wow, you've been busy and like Elizabeth said you picked it up quick!