Spinning: Rain City Fiber Arts

I have been barely spinning, but I finally finished a skein of something!  The first thing I’ve finished in months!  This started out as 4 oz of 70% Superwash Merino/30% SeaCell.  Remember these guys?:

I bought them when I went to the Convergence festival with Michele.  I’ve only spun up the bottom one so far.  To be honest, I thought they were a little ugly, but was curious about how they would spin up.  I loved the feel of the fiber.  It was a fun blend and ended up a little bit shiny.  I spun two bobbins of singles and planned on just randomly plying them together (basic 2-ply) with no plans of how it would line up.  But it ended up looking horrible!  I like barber poleing, but only to a certain extent, not when the whole skein is like that!  If I remember I’ll edit this and add in a picture of how that was looking.

I had made it a little bit into plying and just decided that it was not working.  I ended up navajo-plying the singles into a 3-ply.  This way it kind of kept the colored sections together.  I’m not going to end up with real stripes but at least it won’t be a muddy mess.  There is the chance this will still knit up really weird and splotchy!

Because I didn’t want to waste any fiber, I went back and actually unspun the part I had already plied!  That actually took a long time.  I put it through the wheel again, this time unplying the two singles (turning the wheel the same way I did when initially spinning, opposite of plying twist).  Then I had to wind the separate plies off onto a stick (my niddy noddy), then wind them on a ball winder and navajo-ply them to match the rest.  Phew!  The result is a heavy worsted/aran weight skein that I forgot to get a yardage count for!  I’m not sure how soon I will knit it up, but I am very curious about how it will turn out.

There has been plenty of crafting being done at my house, but not much to show for it.  Maybe I will do a progress post just to have something to write about!

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