Spinning again

It's October.

October is a good month because it's Socktoberfest! Which, means, a lot of sales for yarn and fibre stuff are going on! I purchased a several skeins of yarn from Knit it up recommended by Amy, and added a grab bag for samples for her spinning fibres. Yea, I think I got somewhat addicted to spinning.

There are 3 little skeins of delicious fibres in the grab bag: merino/tencel, merino/bamboo and merino/cashmere. To my surprise, all of them are unbelievably soft! I just cannot resist the temptation and started spinnign the merino/tencel top at the middle with colourway "stained glass".

Because of the tencel, it's so easy to draft and because of the limited amount of fibre, I decided to draft as thin as I can so as to obtain a decent yardage. After spinning up all the singles, I decided to try my first 2 ply. I roughly divide the fibre into 2 equal portions and wind it tightly to 2 balls to do the plying because I don't have a lazy kate. And, it works! It's lovely!

Since the singles are a little bit too fine and possibly I didn't give enough twist at some locations, the yarn broke for a few times during the plying. Despite of all these, the final products are so lovely. I didn't weigh the fibre and the yarn but I estimated there should be 0.5 oz out of the total weight of 1.5oz in the grab bag. A total of 136 yards of laceweight yarn was obtained. And I was wondering what I can do with that amount of yarn?

I make yarn!

Yay! Finally I make yarn! This is the roving bought from squoosh fibres with 50/50 merino/silk. I really do not have much idea in spinning so I just do whatever I want to.


The singles come out to be lace weight, and then I navajo plied it and it becomes a 3-ply stuff (of course!) and it becomes a fingering weight yarn! Yes! yarn!!



And a close up!

It comes out to be approximately 370metres using the whole 4 oz roving. It's of a longer yardage than normal fingering yarn, which makes the yarn so squishy and lovely! I was pretty surprised of the outcome. Although there are spots of uneven spinning or unbalanced plying, it's still lovely! :) I am so proud of this!

Hanami (cont'd)

I am still working on my hanami shawl and in a good progress.

I read the chart and thought that I am 60 rows away from the end of the cheery blossom pattern, and worked more than happily towards the milestone. I am always happy and got my turbo on at the final ten or twenty rows and worked like running the final 100 metres in a
marathon. (well of course it's just imaginary, I have never done one) I got my turbo on, and worked so continously and neglected the need of going to bed beforethe national day holiday. Yes, I am going to complete the repeat!

Wait, why are there charts on the following page? Were I blind? So there are forty rows to go! Arghhhh!!!!

Ok, I went back to my bed. I will finish it this weekend. :)