Sunday, May 31, 2009

A breath of summer

May typically is the month of transition around here. The temperatures rise, the rain eases back, and the gardens explode in a parade of blooms and green growth. I have some daylilies that have seeded themselves under one side of the stairs of my front porch. Their stalks create walls of greenery that my cat Sammy loves to sit between and watch the world.

I mentioned last week that the Summer of Spinning challenge had begun. At work, I've been busy with a handspindle. The fiber is merino in shades of orange that I had picked up at Black Sheep Gathering last year. I dub it the canteloupe. I'm spinning up a fingering weight on a 21 gmhandspindle that I then transfer onto quills for future plying.

This week I finished spinning the singles of the first 4 ozs of Dicentra Designs Merino/Silk Eowyn and started the second 4 ozs. The first I split in half lengthwise and spun each section of color the length of the pieces with each half on a bobbin. The second hank has been broken up into its component colors with each color being spun up into long color streams. This will be plied with the singles made from the first 4 ozs. I'm looking forward to seing how this turns out.

1 comment:

Tallguy said...

Some interesting spinning you are doing! I'm anxious to see your colour plying as well. I've done some; it was interesting to do, but a lot more like work, but I can see some great potential.

Why don't you put your quill on the spindle, then wind the singles directly on it, and simply slide off the quill? Then you handle your yarn much less that way. You surely don't want to be re-winding some delicate fine singles!