A Different Spin On Things

A few years ago, back in my early days as a spinner, I happened to bump into another string wrangler whilst yarn shopping.  This was before I discovered that there was an on-line community of spinners out there with whom I might connect and the opportunity to pick someone's brain, even if it was a total stranger, was kind of nice.  She, a veteran spinner, proudly showed off her scarf and told me that it was the result of her time at the wheel.  It was the skinniest little bit of string I'd ever seen and I admired her skill.  As a newbie, I was in the rope-producing stage of the process and couldn't even begin to imagine getting to the place where I might be able to spin anything so fine.

What she said next has stuck with me for all these years.  She told me that she was no longer able to spin anything other than laceweight at that point.  No matter what she did, the yarn came out as thin as spider webbing.  I think she might have been rather proud of this.  Frankly, anyone who could spin yarn so thin had my admiration.  And it clearly made her happy.  If you are only going to produce one thing, you might as well make something magical, right?

But, I have to admit, I didn't want to be limited in my own spinning.  Not that I saw this as an immediate problem.  Like I said, I was new.  The yarns, they were hefty.  Yarns of substance, you might say.  Still, I promised myself that I would always remember how to spin a variety of yarn weights.

As time went by, my own yarns became thinner and more even.  I progressed very quickly to a DK weight and even came up with something that sort of looked like fingering weight in places.  Finally, I found myself within a fiber's breadth of that holy grail of spinners: laceweight.  And then I made it!  I can now spin single as fine as that lady who I met amongst the yarn shelves all those years ago.

And I realized that I wasn't sure I could spin anything else.  Ack!!!!

That's not strictly true.  The laceweight yarn I've produced has come from commercially prepared rovings.  And let's face it:  that's easier to do.  But, even thinking back to some of the less processed fibers with which I've worked over the past year, I could only recall one time I'd come out with worsted weight yarn.  And most of it has been on the skinny end of that scale.  I'd worked so hard at producing perfect, skinny yarns that I'd forgotten how to just let the wool go a bit and be something more poofy.  

Time to change things up.

After finishing up with the merino/silk blend and letting that lovely laceweight yarn soak for a bit, then hang to dry, I rooted through the stash for something that might make for a chunkier spin.  I landed in a pile of Shetland.  Not really a pile, I suppose.  More like a box of beautiful bits 'n bobs.  But Shetland nonetheless.  Last year, Cathy sent me a fabulous sampler box of all sorts of goodies, including a nice mix of Shetland.  One caught my eye: a lamb/silk blend in a lovely willow shade.  It had been processed, but not so much as to make it too easy for me.  Not like a commercial roving that would just slide accommodatingly through my fingers.  It looked like just the thing for re-learning how to have fun with the wool.  Maybe even remind me that a semi-woolen prep, where you just trust that the wool will behave rather than tightly control the twist as I do when I'm doing a worsted sort of spin, can be beautiful.  

Ahhh...this was it!   And soft?  Good heavens, it was like petting a cloud!  I put a nice, big whorl on the wheel and, with a generous chunk of the stuff in hand, began to spin.

Thicker yarn spins up a bit more quickly, wouldn't you say?  

It is a bit lumpier than I'm used to.  But I am stubbornly refusing to impart any more control over it.  There is a definite lack of consistency in this yarn and parts of it will be obviously underspun.  That's OK.  Heck, I may even throw caution to the wind here and not ply.  I may just knit with it as singles, all willy nilly!  I'm living on the edge, here!!!  I'll admit that I've caught myself on several occasions trying to hold back the amount of fiber that is traveling into the Land Of Twist.  But, I've been getting better about that.  And it's been great fun!  In fact, I would say that there has really only been one down side to the process.

All this spinning seems to be cutting drastically into my knitting time...

SA