Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Turquoise, I think

Last summer I went through what I realized, in retrospect, was most decidedly a green phase. I think I've entered a turquoise phase, although it's not quite as beat-me-over-the-head obvious as the green phase was. But it does add up.

Back in September my husband surprised me with this skein of Araucania Itata in Ocean:

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Then around the same time I bought this skein of Alina Shea Creations Crescent Moon (my very favorite base of hers!) in Turquoise:

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At first glance, the fiber that Spike and I dyed up the day we waited for my wheel to arrive doesn't look like it's going to fit in this lineup. (Apologies for the blurry picture - I had already started spinning it by the time I realized my picture was not crisp!)

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Things are mellowing a bit here on the bobbin of singles:

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And here is my final yarn - 31g/49 yards, spun into a continuous single and my first real attempt at chain plying.

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Chain plying (also called Navajo plying) is an exercise in mild insanity for me, since (like I just said) this was my first real go at it and it's a little more complicated than regular old plying. Considering I got my wheel on November 5th of this year and you're reading this on the 16th at the earliest, you can safely assume I am no expert at it. The Yarn Harlot explains chain plying a bit in this post, but if you can crochet a chain it's basically that. But with really long loops, and using your hands to hook the spun single through each loop and using the wheel at the same time to create twist and pull the yarn onto the bobbin.

It's not incredibly balanced, or really all that even... but I still like it!

2 comments:

  1. Back when I started spinning on the spindle I decided that handspun wouldn't count since there really couldn't be all that much of it (and up until last week, the total for the year was like 38 yards ....)

    Now, I'm just going to have to draw the line somewhere and here it will be. Handspun doesn't count.

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