Category: spinning

An in-progress knitting swatch. There is a ruler on top of the swatch with the yarn wrapped around it, showing ten wraps per inch.

In Which the Pirate Swatches.

Remember the Unicorn Spit? I wound up one skein of it for swatching, because the Pirate Socks are still in time-out and I didn’t want to disturb them. Here’s where things get weird: I’m getting 10-11 wraps per inch on this yarn, so it should be a heavy DK or light worsted weight yarn. But it was a little tight to knit on size...

Three-ply plyback test, next to a strand of commercial sock yarn as a comparison.

In Which the Pirate Idly Spins.

The absolute last thing I needed was to start a new project, except for the part where I’ve been having some downtime at work and there’s an empty spinning wheel next to my desk. This work-from-home thing is pretty awesome. The desk that Michael and I built is nearly perfect: eight feet long, painted teal and yellow, room for my personal computer, my work...

Six full bobbins of singles sit inside a plywood box.

In Which the Pirate Plies.

I have seven bobbins for Persistence, the Schacht-Reeves wheel, so after I’d fully filled six of them with Fleece 412 singles, I used the seventh to ply. And, very exciting, I used the prototype version of a box-style lazy kate that Michael helped me build! It needs some refinement, but it does function. The idea was to have a workaround for the annoyance of...

An almost-full bobbin of fine brown single-ply yarn, still on the spinning wheel.

In Which the Pirate Spins for the Tour.

Much to the dismay of all my knuckles (which are rebelling, either due to July’s heat and humidity, or to the annoyance of holding my hands in a particular position for too long) I’ve been spinning daily for the Tour de Fleece, and I’m up to three bobbins of singles! Some parts of the fibre are drafting a lot easier than others. Even though...

A cabled swatch knitted from brown yarn with a chunk of carded fleece.

In Which the Pirate Begins a Spin.

It’s time. It’s finally time to spin Fleece Four-Twelve, the one that Carrie and I bought at MDSW a few years ago. I was going to wait until the start of the Tour de Fleece on the 27th, but why wait to begin such an exciting project? I spun up a quick sample, aiming for a DK-weight three-ply yarn, and I think that’s what...

A ball of "Zauberball Crazy" in greens and teals.

In Which the Pirate is Gifted Yarn.

It’s rare that I go to a yarn shop and don’t sigh over a pile of Zauberball Crazy in all the colours, and now at last I have one of my very own! Friend Monica returned from a trip with this beauty as a souvenir for me: a ball of Zauberball in the “Tiefe Wasser” colourway, which coordinates perfectly with at least 75% of...

Six completed skeins of yarn with a bundle of unspun fibre perched on top.

In Which the Pirate is Almost There.

I have just one last skein of the Unicorn Spit fibre to spin! 840 yards of finished (though unwashed) three-ply yarn and just over a hundred grams left to go. It’s really neat to see how the big stripes of colour in the fibre get so blended into the yarn, which is exactly the heathery desaturated colour that I was hoping for when I...

Two braids of merino and silk spinning fibre. One is green-blue, the other mostly blue.

In Which the Pirate Acquires.

An Etsy gift card, combined with a sale on some of the (discontinued) Ashland Bay multi-coloured top, combined with a little egging on from a friend, combined with the need to have a little bit of retail therapy, all came together and thwacked me over the head, resulting in a delivery of spinning fibre arriving at my house. I bought these two braids of...

Samples of two-ply and three-ply yarn, spun from the same singles.

In Which the Pirate Samples.

“World of Wool Custom Blend” was too boring for a project name, so I was going to pick something more descriptive and fun. Every time I look at these colours combed together, all I can think is “Unicorn Spit”… so I guess that’s what it is. Not too dignified, but certainly descriptive! Since I haven’t done a project this ambitious before, I thought it...

skein of two-ply yarn in a gradient from pink to purple to blue

In Which the Pirate Clears the Bobbins.

In preparation for the Great Sweater Spin (the custom blend of fibre I ordered from World of Wool) I busied myself by finishing the spinning project I already had going and knocking out a new one as well. Michael’s mom gave me four ounces of this yak-silk blend from Greenwood Fiberworks a few years ago, and after a lot of waffling over whether I’d...