Phoenix Knitting Forums

And... this morning I saw Lucy (Bearium - http://bearium.folksy.com ) and bought two plaits of fibre from her - one Falkland and one BFL. I also plan to take my wheel over to hers at some point once life is back to 'normal' to practise and get some tips from her

Brilliant plans



eta - Blue Marbles look very tempting .. and Dusky Autumn Rose is gorgeous

Excellent, you can get so much more from another spinner's experience & each little tip helps to improve your spinning I've found.

But please don't tempt me with more fibre, I've already got so much to spin up, trouble is they're all in fleece at the mo, so need to prep first which is time consuming, but I've promised myself no more fibre until I've got some of this stuff spun up

The weather is scuppering my plans to get to grips with my wheel as both girls' schools are closed and hubby's working at home rather than going into his office

How are you doing Christine?
I'd really recommend BFL for your first spin as it has a really long staple
If you find the fibre slipping through your fingers too much (which is what I get as I have very, very dry and cold hands), moisturise them with a non-greasy cream such as Palmer's Cocoa Butter - it gives you far more control, I find.

It's going slowly, but I've borrowed a couple of books from the library (including the Ashford one) and a friend's lent me A Fine Fleece and Spin To Knit (I think it's that one) to read through. All 4 are now on my Amazon wish-list

So far I've spun a small amount of what could probably be considered super-chunky 'art' yarn! It's thick 'n' thin, but after I plyed it, it didn't look too bad. I'm sure I'll get there, but the only opportunity I've had recently for spinning is at the end of the day, when I'm tired, which isn't the best time to start trying to co-ordinate legs and fingers to do different things

Sounds like it's going well! You only need to do a little bit each day or every other day. - I always say if you can drive you can spin (or if you've ever been a drummer!). It's just getting the legs and hands to work independently as well as getting the drafting sorted! Enjoy the thick n thin yarn you're making - once you get well-practised and are making finer yarn you won't be able to do that chunky stuff easily again (I didn't believe this but it has turned out to be true!).
I have Spin to Knit and the Ashford book of Spinning (which I got for Christmas) - they are both very useful and helpful. There's always YouTube, and I don't know where you live (can't see your avatar from this box) but look out for spinning courses - a day or evening at your local college (I went to Alston Hall in Preston for one day class and it was really helpful even though I didn't get a wheel til at least 6 months later). Also if there are any guilds nearby you could go along if you fancied.. It really is just down to practise and experience at the end of the day.

So, I've been PC-less for ten days (not fun when it's the school holidays!) and have only got back online this morning, thanks to hubby making the time from his busy work schedule to do whatever it was he did with the AV software to make it work properly (with the threat to DD1 that if she ever goes on the games website that caused the problems she'll be banned from using the PC for life ). However, as a result of being netless, I've been spinning every day for a little while and have approx 150 metres of what I think is knittable yarn! The skein I've made weighs 59g, so if my maths is correct it's between 4ply and DK, although it looks thinner to my eye than DK. I've got another single that weighs 18g on one bobbin and am spinning up another 20g of fibre to ply with that, so by the time I've finished the whole batch of Corriedale I'm using at the moment, I'm hoping I'll get a scarf (maybe another Baktus) out of it. I had 170g of fibre in total as I used some of it when I was first playing at How To Spin! The first skein is a bit overspun, so I've slowed down my treadling for the second batch and am hoping the difference won't show too much in the finished scarf - not that I'll care anyway as I'll have made myself a scarf from my own hand-spun yarn