I'm in love with my Lendrum spinning wheel. Deep, serious, passionate love. Somewhere in the last few days, the spinning coordination thing kicked in and I started feeling more confident and looking less constipated (hopefully) when I spun. What helped immensely was all the unbelievably fantastic handpainted fiber that I got in the mail from etsy buys. I tried to get a variety of blends to experiment with. I ordered this vivid pink/fushia/orange/yellow merino corriedale blend from a seller called Copperpot Woolies and the roving was so incredibly soft and fluffy, it made spinning seem easier than it had ever seemed. I may even have told my husband, "I am the Spinmaster!" while I was spinning. (Okay, Dorkmaster is more like it, but it really was pretty exciting.) I spun up the whole four ounces on two
bobbins and you could even see my improvement from one bobbin to the next. Plying was a bit harder, but I really don't know what I'm doing in that arena, so I experimented a bit.
Obviously, I didn't get the plying as even as it should be, but like my spinning, I figure that it can only improve, right? Yeah, this skein might be a bit on the ugly bumpy side, but I love it and I'm proud of it. It's funny, though, because when I was spinning it, I thought I was spinning it very thin, but it seems so bulky when it's plied. The kid even said it looked really good, which is high praise from a 12 year old. I've started spinning up some of my other etsy purchases, a merino roving from Enchanted Knoll in a gorgeous colorway called "Wood Elves".
Yes, I know my photo is crappily out of focus, but trust me when I say that the colorway is well named. I look at it and want to frolic with Legolas and the other elves and perhaps a hobbit or two, when I see it. It's very pretty. This merino seems harder to spin somehow. Since I'm such a novice, I don't know why that is, whether it's because the roving was prepared differently (the Copperpot one seemed really combed out and easy to spin) or if it's the difference between 100% merino and a merino/corriedale blend. Any ideas?
Since I've caught the spinning bug big time, we took a road trip over to Lawrence, Kansas today to visit one of my favorite yarn shops, the Yarn Barn, today. The boys agreed to this trip because I agreed to go to the bike store in Lawrence and also the big Cabela's sporting goods store on the way home. I picked up more bobbins for my wheel, plus a niddy noddy, since winding the yarn around the back of the dining room chair got really old really fast. I may have picked up some more roving while I was there, too. The roving on the left is a multicolored merino and the natural roving on the right is 10 ounces of a New Zealand roving called Jacob. I was so dumb that I thought that was just the name of the colorway or something, but the lady ringing me up kindly informed me that it is a breed of sheep. Who knew?
The owner of the store was so nice, too. I bought my wheel secondhand from an individual (who actually initially purchased it new from the Yarn Barn) but he spent quite a bit of time with me showing me things on the store's demo Lendrum, like how oil it and all sorts of other questions that popped into my head at the time. I was very impressed. And lest you think that I'm all about the spinning and none about the knitting, I made a total knitting impulse purchase while I was there. The store had a mannequin up with a breathtaking hexagon swirl lace scarf called "Swirl Shawl" from Jojoland in a fingering weight superwash wool called Melody. It has long color changes, which is what adds to the shawls magic. I think it was brilliant marketing for the shop to have a sample displayed, because honestly, if I had just seen the pattern, I wouldn't have looked at it twice, but seeing it knit up, it was a total selling point. In fact, there were two other women there at the same time I was, buying this pattern and yarn. I'm anxious to start knitting this. But I'm also anxious to spin up some of my new roving. That's the only drawback of spinning that I can see so far, is that it competes for my knitting time.