Wednesday, August 9

Confetti wool 3 ply

I took this picture (above) a couple of days ago. Reason No. 289 for the neighbors to think I'm crazy. If I want to take pictures in daylight I wander around the property to find a likely spot with decent light. I wonder what they think of all this sometimes. I mean, it obviously doesn't bother me too much to let the neighbors think I'm nuts - or the workers in the office building across the street from where I work, or the people that see me on my walks everyday... But I do wonder what they must think sometimes.

At the back you can see the colour progressing spindle (which is now full), in the center is the Confetti Wool which I've just finished - and in the foreground is another colour progression of silk on one of my Joy bobbins.

I was told that the Skipper (Schippertj) was really a wheel that was made for spinning a nice bulky yarn. I've gotten so far away from spinning a nice bulky yarn that it's not even funny. I don't know if y'all have noticed - but I've been doing a lot of spinning and putting together a lot of plies just lately - and it takes an awful long time to spin up fine yarn. And to get enough to ply together to make anything useful? Well, it takes about forever. So I've been on a bit of a mission to spin up a bulkier yarn since I got my new wheel.

I spun up about a half a bobbin of Confetti Wool - a soft wool with bits of silk thrums carded into the roving (another purchase from Copper Moose). It's a good deal, and I bought a lot of it about a year ago (it was on sale!). So when I got my purty little Skipper I decided to give it a go with the Confetti, hoping to get a bulky designer (newbie) type yarn.

I only spun the half a bobbin because I was getting a bit bored - and of course the bobbins on my new wheel are ginormous (which is so awesome!), and I have new scrummy stuff that I want to spin up, so I went ahead and wound this wool into a lovely little yarn cake on my ball winder, fully intending to ply from both ends of the center pull ball cake.

When it was time to start the plying my brain did an about turn and decided that I should Navajo ply instead. I started off with a nice chain 3 ply when I remembered that I don't really like Navajo plying. Darn. Now what?

I remembered that I'd spun up a couple of spindles of this confetti about oh, a year ago - and had just wound them up on storage bobbins until I could get an idea of what I wanted to do with them, so I went and rummaged around my Monstrosity of a Stash and found them. I had spun up one big honking spindleful, and another smaller spindleful - No way I was going to have enough to 3 ply the whole shebang together. But I decided to just start anyway - merrily plying away from three strands. Of course the smaller bobbin gave up the ghost pretty early on. No problem - I'll just grab the other end of the center pull ball and keep going. Even the fuller (more full? ) spindleful gave out pretty quickly - so I was back to Navajo plying.... Yep - this skein has been 3 plied every which way - and you know what? You can't really tell which parts are which in the skein. Though I could very possibly change my mind about that once I start knitting it up.

Here it is in all it's glory - 185 yards of very soft Confetti Wool - 3 plied in every direction. As you can see it's not as fine and even as most of my stuff - but that's a good thing! I have absolutely no idea what in the world it is going to be when it grows up - but that's ok too! This was some spinning for spinnings sake, and I'm sure a project will find it soon.

And now - for some random prettiness.



5 comments:

Pixiepurls said...

that top photograph is beutiful

Monika said...

Must be an uplifiting feeling making and knitting with yarn self spun. Your yarn looks quite nice. It's the ultimate knitting.

Lynn said...

Lovely, lovely, lovely. I've been looking at that confetti wool roving from Copper Moose, and now that I see it spun up, I think I'll order some!

April said...

You finally convinced me to spin some silk and I love it...but I've been noticing that I'm trying to spin EVERYTHING superfine now. lol Ah well, more practice I guess! I love the pictures you post on your blog. I think we should just let the "others" wonder. lol

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous pictures - lovely yarn! I still haven't had the patience to do a real 3-ply. I planned to with this whatsit stuff I'm working on, then decided to try a Navajo, didn't like it and 2-plied the rest.