I *finally* finished spinning my wool late Monday night(I had 1/2 oz left, and wanted to finish, dammit!) And, it turns out that what *I* thought was Finn, turns out to be Falkland wool. Oopsie!
I ended up with 264 yards of laceweight yarn from the 2 oz top I had bought, of which I am very very pleased. Once I ply it with itself, I'll (hopefully) end up with about 132 yards of wool of fingering - DK weight, which I think I'll be doing my first 2-color project with it and another yarn.
I'm debating on whether to dye it a nice dark blue or keep it the lovely natural ivory white. Hmm. Decisions, decision.
I also attempted to spin a sampling of mulberry silk on the lighter spindle. I have not had really great experience with the "slippery" fibers as of yet, and this was really no exception. I went through half the sample, then wound what I had onto an empty thread bobbin and put the un-spun half away. Ick.
I might just stick with wool or wool blends.
Tonite, I did try out the new-to-me-crockpot dye technique, while I made dinner.
I had about 1 1/8 oz of generic pencil wool roving I had (unknown sheep). I used a little bit of Jacquard blue, and set the thing to "HIGH". I'm deathly afraid of felting wool during the dye process, so I figured this was a good test run.
By the time dinner was done, the wool was pretty much done, so I let it rest while I ate dinner, then rinsed it out. Now it's hanging, and is just this lovely lovely sky blue. It's got slightly darker blue patches here and there with bits of white and light blue.
I can't wait for it to dry and see how it spins out. I know dye can make something a bit more difficult to spin, so I want to see how this pans out. I know I'll probably have to draft it out more than its previous cousins whom I spun THEN dyed.
Also, I made myself a small distaff from some of the practice spinning I had done a few months earlier. I had a small skein at about 50 or so yards, which makes for a perfect size distaff. I'm hoping that it makes using the drop spindle a wee bit easier.
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