Archive for July, 2008
Telling some “yarns”
Well, the Tour de Fleece is over now, and a considerable amount of fiber has been spun. Although the volume of yarn produced was not immense, the spinning was so good for me. Lots of insights into my way of being…what is important, and what is merely busy-ness. The good news is that this process promises to change my routines, and I think that I will once again be spinning at least a little bit every day.
Right at the beginning, I found that I had not broken my habit of putting spinning off until I have done all the things that I wanted/needed to accomplish in any given day. I have never learned to schedule peaceful times into the day; it seems that I feel that spinning and knitting are pleasures that I have to earn. So I often found myself spinning last thing in the evening.
I spun from fiber that I had in the house, and didn’t even get into the bin of this & that in the wool storage room. I did find that my stash was larger than I had thought…but no real surprise there. Usually I have enough of our own Shetland to keep me spinning (my personal Shetland stash is not small either!) So most of what I hoard are “other-brand” fibers, and now I am picking away at these tantalizing goodies. Many hours of spinning to be done….
I am very pleased that I did get through 3 colors of the roving that I bought last year from Liz Lovick at Northern Lace…made from the wool of our sheep’s cousins, the North Ronaldsays. These are other Northern Short-tail sheep whose claim to fame is that for much of the year, their diets consist of seaweed blown onto the shores of North Ronaldsay Island in the Orkneys.
Their wool is principally double-coated, but in processing, the longer stronger fibers are removed, resulting in a soft fine roving. This moorit roving JUST fit on the bobbin of my Jensen wheel. I pushed it a bit, and crammed every possible last wisp of fiber on.
I had already spun a medium grey, and double plied it, but these three Tour de Fleece colors wanted to be spun as a thick and thin singles….so I honored the fiber’s notion of how it should be spun. Whatever the case, I am happy with the results. One of the lighter skeins is a silver grey, the other a light fawn (although this doesn’t show up well in the photo).
Most recently I found myself spinning this multi-stripe mohair roving. It is a newer addition to my stash, but indeed it qualified as “stash” and intrigued me…I wanted to see how the colors flowed:
The fiber came as rolags, each one containing 6 colors, and were to be predrafted, with the intent of the producer that the resulting yarn would be distinctly striped. But I found that my predrafted balls of roving didn’t open as well as I would have liked, and there was some mixing if colors. Maybe I should have drafted the roving thinner, but I believe that if I had it to do again, I would spin directly from the rolags.
The colors were not entirely distinct, perhaps due to my less than obsessive predrafting, and so I spun a singles yarn to give the best chance of stripes.
I love the jewel-like tones, very similar to the colors in the sari silk yarn. Since I seldom spin toward a given project, I will enjoy just looking at the yarns for a while; eventually a knitting or weaving project will seem just right.
Spinning Meditation
I need some solace in my life, and that Katherine Matthews has created the 2008 Tour de Fleece is perfect for me now. (Thank you Nancy for pointing me in this direction.) Spinning from the zillion projects that call to me. An hour is quite a lot of time in a busy summertime day, but this is my challenge. And what I need right now, time committed to doing something I love. And I believe that this will serve me better than having a specific goal for my spinning….
Thich Nhat Hanh once said “Don’t just do something, sit there”. Sitting (and spinning) allows me to go deeply into who I am. To do this one thing. No thoughts, no pressures, no expectations of outcome.
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