Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Lots and lots of new things! :)

Plume is done! 250 yards of superwash goodness:



I love that end view. :)







But on top of that, I've also got a few other things I've been working on... First, the April Challenge, "Celebrate!"





The Celebrate yarn is my first foray into Supercoils. Supercoils are apparently easier to do on a wheel than they are on a spindle, but I can say from experience you can do it on spindles... It just takes a lot of hand-eye coordination! You can see three spindles in that picture. The first is the one that hangs down at the bottom. The second is the coil ply, and that one sits over my shoulder. The third one is the core yarn, and that one goes over the left side of my left hand while the finished yarn spindle goes over the right side of my left hand.

The easiest way I can think to describe it is that I'm doing a combination of park and spin on each of the spindles. I park the finished one and the ply one, and add a whole lot of z-twist to the core yarn. Then I hold onto the core spindle, drop the finished spindle, and while the finished spindle is trying to re-balance itself, I'm holding the coil ply just above the last bit of coiled finished yarn, and periodically pushing the yarn down on top of the previous coils. It's slow going, but it's working! This yarn sucks up singles like you wouldn't believe! I would believe that by the time I'm done, I'll have used five to six times the amount of coil ply as I will have of core yarn!

I'm also working on a little something on the side... When I won second prize in the Quarterly Spinning Contest earlier this year, I got a shipment of sample yarns from Woolbunny, and among them was a baby blue organic 15.5 micron sample of baby merino fiber, with a touch of glitz thrown in. I've been playing with it a bit at work when I need a break:





I'm thinking if I spin enough, it may make baby booties for my soon-to-be niece! I'll be an auntie come July! :)