The fiber that almost ended it all....

So my year didn't go real well last year.  Too much spinning resulted in achilles tendonitis in both feet and several months of physical therapy.  But I'm back at my wheel and spinning and I thought I should get back to blogging a bit, too.  To celebrate my latest attempt at blogging I thought I'd share a story about the fiber that almost ended my spinning career.




Back in 1993 I took a spinning class on a whim.  I didn't know anything about yarn.  I didn't know anything about why I might want to spin.  Mostly I was at home, working part time, thinking about graduate school, and bored.  So I signed up for a spinning class.  And I fell in love.

Christmas 1995 brought some money and no one was terribly surprised when I made a detour into the spinning shop in Shipshewana, IN, and bought a wheel with that money.  January 1996 brought a huge box to my landlady's doorstep and that winter found me dutifully sanding and (when it was warm enough to open the window) staining my new baby.  Susan was assembled and ready to go well before the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival in May.  I plotted.  I planned.  I searched maps to make sure I knew where I was going.

For someone who has no idea what's what, the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival is pretty overwhelming.  (Actually, even for people who have a clue, the festival is pretty overwhelming.)  I walked through all the booths.  Then I walked through them again.  Then I walked through them again....

Those who know me have heard the story of my first Sheep & Wool Festival where I used a credit card at a booth and forgot my card there and the woman at the booth very nicely contacted the card company and cancelled the card for me.  But I don't normally tell of my other purchases that weekend.  In addition to the fleece I bought some very nice brown roving.  I have recollection of the sheep breed or anything other than the fact that I bought some nice brown roving.  I also bought some dyed roving.

I remember wandering from booth to booth thinking I really didn't want anything too pastel-y.  And money was tight, so I didn't want anything too expensive.  And I wanted to buy enough that I would be able to spin for awhile, so I was figuring a pound of more of fiber.

This is what I bought.

It was exactly what I was looking for.  18oz, great colors, a Border Leicester/Romney blend that I figured would be easy to spin.

I didn't try to spin it straight away.  I worked two jobs and was busy and tired a lot.  But I would pull the fiber out sometimes and admire it.  I bought a chair that I thought would be perfect to sit in while I spun.  And then one day I finally sat down to spin it.

It was a nightmare.  The fiber was miserable to draft and either came out so thin I was afraid it would break or it was super thick.  I knew I was a beginner and that some variation was to be expected.  But this was misery.  I tried adjusting the tension.  I tried adjusting the drive band.  I tried switching to a different whorl.  Misery.  Every step of the way.

I remember sitting there one night, looking at the measly two skeins I'd managed to spin and at the pile of roving still waiting to be spun and I just cried.  I cried because the magic was gone.  I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.

And I cried because I was sitting there in front of this beautiful spinning wheel that I had labored over thinking to myself, "Did I really spend all that money on something that I'm never going to use and that I will always hate?"

I finally plied the last little bit of yarn I had on the bobbins and I walked away.  I tucked my spinning wheel in a corner and left it.  I needed time to think about it.  I needed time to figure out what to do.  So I walked away.

But still I remembered how much I'd loved spinning when I took that class.  So one day I opened up the bag of brown roving and I sat down and started to spin.  And the magic was back.  The fiber drafted beautifully.  The resulting yarn wasn't perhaps the sort of thing they write songs about, but it was consistent and reasonably well spun and it made me happy.  And May 1997 found me back at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival buying some carders and a couple of fleeces.

I dug out that first roving recently.  I have no idea all of what is wrong with it.  Some of the problem is that it has lots of second cuts and slubs in it.  It will never be a smooth yarn.  But there's something else wrong with it, too.  It's sticky.  I don't know if the wool itself wasn't washed well or if there was something wrong with the dye.  But it's sticky.  I can feel it on my hands when I'm spinning and after.  It's just nasty feeling.  The yarn I spun all those years ago, though, washed up fairly nicely, so I'm attempting once again to spin this roving.  This time I'm prepared, though.  This time I know what I'm getting into.  And this time I have other projects to work on when the frustration level gets too high.  I will conquer this wool and it will be out of my stash and I will know that it was unable to prevent my love affair from flourishing.

Oh, but it was a close call.

the end result

I think one of the hard parts about being a crafter who blogs is that, while I'd love to share the process of my work, every minute I spend blogging is a minute away from my spinning.  When push comes to shove, what I want to do is spin.

In other words, I may not have been blogging much these last couple of weeks, but I have gotten some spinning done.  The end result of my challenge was 8 skeins of yarn:

In addition I had about four bobbins full and just needed to finish a second bobbin in order to be able to ply.  The two days of the festival I did some spinning in the evening and yesterday I plied three more skeins:

So the end result is I could have been a little more productive, but I'm pretty pleased with what I accomplished.  Of course, I just had to be masochistic and add to my stash at the festival.  So I guess I better get spinning because there's a whole pile of stuff waiting in the wings to get done.

Off to a good start...

So I haven't been posting much.  I'd like to say it's because I've been spinning non-stop, but that would be a lie.  I've been busy.  Some spinning, but also some just general "Pretending To Be A Grown Up" stuff.  But I knew that when I started and all things considered I think I'm doing well.


After getting off to a darker start I decided to lighten things up a bit.  And of course, I wouldn't be me if I couldn't sneak in a bit more green.  Then, because I'm trying to be good and add some pink to my life, I did a little pink.

I was staring to run a little low on available bobbins at that point, so I decided to finish another project that was in the wings and now I have two more skeins done.

So that freed up a couple of bobbins but a package arriving in the mail distracted me from my challenge pile.  I couldn't resist spinning up some Wensleydale real quick.  (Lucky for me, Wensleydale spins pretty quick.)  I also finished a second bobbin of the pale green to tonight I am planning to do some plying.  By the end of the evening I will hopefully have three more skeins, four if I play my cards right.

And now to my Wensleydale....

Annnnnnnnnnnd they're off!!!

Or I'm off.  Or something.

So I got off to a pretty good start, I think.  After posting last night I spun for about another hour and filled a bobbin:

Today found me contemplating my bobbins.  I had an empty one, but I also had a few projects in process that I would like to finish:

So I decided I'd finish the easy one, that only needed plying.

Ha!  One skein done.  (Is that cheating?)

Then for today.  I decided to start on the wool that has intrigued me since the first time I saw it for sale: "Party in a Bag."  Basically the seller just stuffs bits and pieces of stuff, mostly black wool, into a big bag.  You can buy it by the ounce or (as I did) by the pound.

It is turning out not to be an easy spin.  I could have carded it first, but I thought that would take away from the character and spirit of the wool.  So I'm running into lumps and bumps and curls and slubs.  I filled the better part of a bobbin, but now I'm not sure what I want to do.  Part of me thinks that maybe I should leave it as a single ply.  (Someone I know is jumping up and down in excitement at that statement.)  But there is plenty of sections that have been easy enough to spin and have ended up being quite thin.  I'm always a little nervous about the stability of a single ply.  So I will have to think about it.

Luckily I have plenty of other things to work on in the meantime.

The pile, the challenge

So here's the deal.  I was chatting with someone at work yesterday.  "Are you ready?" she asked.  "The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is going to be here before you know it."  Oh hell, yeah, I'm always ready.  But then she said, "I haven't quite finished with all the sock yarn I bought last year."

Finished?  Whoa, wait.  We're supposed to finish things?  I thought I was just supposed to buy and buy and buy until my stash took over the house, named itself and evicted me so it could watch Animal Planet and drink brandy uninterrupted for all time.

I got to thinking about it and realized that maybe I should be finishing some stuff before I actually brought more home.  So I went down into the basement and stared at my stash.  I selected two bags and brought them upstairs.

So here's the challenge.  I know there's no way that I can possibly spin this much yarn between now and the first weekend in May.  But damn, I'm going to give it my best shot.  I've taken pictures of the wool I brought up to work on.  You can see it all here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregoryroad/sets/72157626438305682/

I will try to take pictures and post regularly as to my progress.

Here's to a significant reduction in stash and a guilt free MSWF 2011! *raises brandy glass*