Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Spinning!

Well Granny Tan sucked me into something else... and I'm not talking about the wine drinking until 3 am on Sat night... (Tan's dog, Clancy finally konked out while waiting for us to go to bed)
Yikes! I'm talking about spinning my own yarn. Because the knitting has Tim so turned on - I had to add to it.... We went to the spinning class at London-Wul on Saturday afternoon. It's official, I'm the worse student on the planet. I have no patience for class time. Although the information was really interesting. Even if I never spin again, it was good to learn about the different fleece and where it comes from and how it is processed. As someone with allergies to everything, this is important information. Although I did nearly have a cow when we realized we had wool oil on our hands (lanolin) which I am allergic too.... But understanding where different types of yarn comes from is half of my battle.

I was having a hard time in class. I'm rush through things. Our teacher, Heidi, picked up on this right away. At home I take my time and it is working better for me. Here are the different wools we did in class. The top is a 2 ply of carded wool and combed wool. I found the pulworth (the white wool) hard to work with. The bottom is the mohair. I loved working with it.
I had bought some New Zealand combed wool earlier in the week in anticipation of the class. It's beautiful but I won't touch it until I feel comfortable that I can make it into a nice yarn. I'm not there yet.
I picked up some Icelandic combed wool before I left London-Wul to practice with. It's got nice short, rough fibers so it winds up into yarn nicely (I think I just screwed up every bit of vocabulary I just learned... oy vey!). I also picked up some more mohair.
I'm spinning the Icelandic when I have time. (Currently I'm trying to finish my brother's other wool sock for Feb. 1st - and it has to be mailed to him in Ontario!) It's coming up thick in spots but I'm okay with that because I'm going to knit my first mittens with it and probably felt them with a fancy fun yarn cuff. I loved how the Icelandic wool felted for the slippers I made so I'm kind of addicted.
Ah, the world of knitting... it's very therapeutic isn't it. It seems to nourish the soul.


2 comments:

Tanya said...

Definitely nourishment for the soul. It's like Vitamin K or maybe F or S...

AnnKnits said...

Hey CJ, you have to be kidding about your age, NO WAY!! I on the other hand was telling too much of the truth about mine. My oldest son will be 32 next month and is getting married this coming July. I also have a son who will be 21 next month. He is not married or getting married but that's okay by me. I love all things fibre and I think the class was a blast. Your photos show that you are doing just great with you spinning. Thanks for visiting my Blog. Hope to craft with you again sometime.

Ann