SpinnySpinny

Every time I intend to sit down and do something textile, real life intrudes. But finally, with The Boyfriend off for the weekend, I can do something. I’m not particularly inspired to spin, so fiber prep it is. And with nobody to complain, out comes the music…

L’amour est enfant de Bohême,
il n’a jamais, jamais connu de loi,
si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime,
si je t’aime, prends garde à toi!

No, la Carmencita makes cigarettes, not textiles. But it’s nice to listen to, anyway. And then I’ll visit with Mimì and Susanna and maybe even Turandot.

I previously sorted the short and excessively crimpy part of the Romney fleece and started picking it to later card. I’m contemplating blending it with what’s left of the Dorset. But that is filthy and has to be combed out with the dog brush to get out all the trash. They are similar in length but the Dorset is more bouncy, together it should make a light gray. I don’t know what I’m going to do with any of it, so why not.

I did the same dog brush number to some of the Merino lamb, to see what I think about it drum carded. I tried some combed and that was nice, but I thought I’d give it a try. I’ve got enough of it. But I might have to find somebody with a fine fiber carder because I have my doubts about the standard one I normally have available. If the fiber is too fine, it doesn’t stay in the teeth of the carder but floats on top in clumps. I know a lot of people with drum carders, but some are more convenient to visit than others.

The past few days have been spent dealing with a mountain of fleece. No, I didn’t buy it at Spinners day at the Winery. (I’m negotiating that for later.) Long, long ago, like in February, I asked The Boyfriend’s uncle if he could get a little bit of wool from his neighbors. He lives in 4H land, and I was looking for meat sheep fleeces for the woolen stuff. I didn’t hear anything, so I went and found my own. Well, this week I get a cryptic email about Dorset fleeces. I go to the mailbox and there is a huge box containing two Dorset fleeces. Yikes. They are stinky and dirty and smell more like barnyard than sheep. They are also full of hay, burrs, dirt and all kinds of things. I went through both to see what I could use and out of two large garbage bags I got one small one of stuff I might be willing to do something with later. The fiber itself isn’t bad, it would be good for sock yarn or cold weather sweaters or things. But I have plenty of other fiber that doesn’t need nearly as much work. It’s very kind of him to go through the trouble to locate and mail me the fleeces. And at the time I did need such things. But Oh Boy.

In the middle of all that, I’m still trying to get yarn done. It’s getting to the point where I’m sick of pretty much everything and I want it to all be over with. I needed to ply the cotton for the fine two-ply, so I took a look at how much a nightmare that might be. Earlier attempts were a mess, so I decided to let it sit on the bobbins a while. It’s only a little better now. I finally wound the two singles together on a bobbin so I can ply without also fighting snarled, tangled yarn. It only broke about a dozen times in the process because I went r e a l l y s l o w l y. It took hours just to wind the bobbin and I still have to actually twist it.

I’ve decided to do the spinning wheel skein as the single from the Andean weaving yarn. It’s tiny, but it’s fast and it’s something I can do without much thought. I started flicking more Suffolk to do the spindle wheel yarn, I will drum card it if I can but there are several other things ahead of it in the queue. I am still avoiding the small supported spindle. I should just get the large supported spindle thing over with, but I don’t know what I want to do with that yet. Maybe more Suffolk. Whatever it is, it will be large. And I’m not doing it with the long “Navajo” spindle, either. I don’t like them for soft yarns because the part that spirals up the shaft gets mashed while you are spinning. I have other large spindles, or I can take that same huge whorl and put it on a shorter shaft. Any bottom whorl spindle becomes a supported spindle by setting it down. Nothing fancy about it at all.