good-natured ribbing

Well, I’ve been spinning off and on since Christmas (well, Boxing Day) and I think I have the hang of it. You’ve seen some of my early “interesting” yarn but I’d like to share some of the nicer ones. I’ve been working on a large batch of Ruby Twist colonial-merino. It is mostly ruby red, with, green/teal, magenta, yellow and other highlights. Altoghether, I purchased 2.5lbs of it but the first .5 (2 skeins) were pretty much practice and a lot bulkier than the rest. I’ll have enough for a sweater when I’m done.

In case anyone is interested, I’ve been buying my roving from Copper Moose Spinning and Fiber.

OK, here come the pictures…

This is the wheel that was given to me from my Gran-in-law. It is about 20 years old – hand crafted some time in the 80′s. It works pretty well (as far as I can tell, anyway), but it has a pretty nasty squeak I can’t get rid of. Oh yes, and that handsome little devil is Marty.

These pictures shows 1) the wool roving entering the orifice and winding onto the bobbin and 2) a close-up of a full bobbin. That is the view of the wheel from the spinners view, by the way.

When it is time to take the new yarn off the wheel you use a niddy noddy to make the skein. My niddy noddy is home made out of wooden dowels. Check out that close-up – pretty darn consistent, eh?! No thick/thin yarn here ;) Once it is full, you tie the yarn on each side to keep it tidy and then just slip it off. To set the twist, the yarn needs to get wet then hung to dry (like blocking).

The ball was one of the early ones – you can see that it is pretty chunky. The skein is an example of what most of the yarn looks like. Each skein is about 4oz and at least 140 yards.

Here is a swatch knitted up (but never blocked). I used the bulkier one for this and size US 7 needles. This was a little too tight when the yarn was thicker, toward the top of the photo. Note that the number of holes (yo, k2tog) represents the size needle I used. This will help when I go back some day to start working with the yarn.

And finally, the comic relief: Ava thinks the niddy noddy is a bike and rides it around as such shouting, “BIKEY!!!” Who needs training wheels; she hasn’t fallen off once :)