You spin me right round....

Yay for a cheesy blog post title ;)

Anyway, I think its obvious the topic of this post is spinning. I am of course knitting, but spinning seems to have grabbed me a bit this week so I have actually been making some progress there and my knitting has been crawling a little. But to be expected. Its helping me stay away from the baby knitting till after the scan. Which is even harder to do now I have a baby bump!

So, spinning. Of course the silk brick is a looooong, slooooooow project, but I actually did spin some this week.

The big mover has been the fact I finished a yarn! Woohoo! Been a while since I did that ;) Some of your will remember from my January 'what's on the spindles' post that I was spinning some BFL/silk that I won as a prize in the Tour de Fleece last year.You can see some of the fibre above. I did split the roving down the length and spin into two singles with the hope of aligning the colour but... yeah, the best laid plans of mice and men. One ply was thinner than the other and the colours did not line up the way I had planned. However, I do still think its a beautiful yarn:



Its 122g, 650m of 2 ply light fingering weight yarn, actually a really nice yardage. Not sure what I will do with it yet, but some ideas are floating round my head. The way it plied the reds dominate the yarn with some colour variations as you can see, but very pretty.

So I have cracked on with another project.  This one is about intentional spinning for me. Basically I have been spinning a tonne of lace recently, and even the previous yarn was on the lighter side of where I planned it. So, trying for a thicker single, looking for definitely fingering weight or heavier when the yarn is self plied. What is the fibre? This giant batt from KnittyAndColor. (The brit in me rebels at not putting a u in colour but that is correct).



This is 4.3 oz of pure sparkly fun in one giant batt. The colour is off by the way, the green is a lime neon, but my camera washed it out. Made from BFL, Falkland, Merino, Firestar, and Angelina I am not spinning with any intent, merely tearing off random handfuls and focussing on the thickness of the singles, and sitting back and enjoying the hell out of it. I'm using my TexasJeans spindle for this one as its one of my heavier spindles and is very content not spinning superfine singles. Here's a small cop, but I have already spun a fair bit more than that. Winding off into a centre pull ball for easy self plying.



In other spinning news, I have had a couple of new spindles join the family this year. Firstly a 35g ThreadsThruTime medium Turkish spindle in cobalt blue.This one I acquired through a destash from the US, mainly because I wanted to try another type of spindle out, as thus far I am a top whorl drop spindle spinner. I have given it a try, and its not the neatest winding, but I am getting the hang of it:



I do find it significantly slower than my top whorl spindles though, so I think I shall remain favouring the top whorl for some time to come yet.

And the most recent addition to my collection came just this very morning. Already been out for a spin, this one is a top whorl in the mushroom style - a new one for me, from Katherine Kowalski, or daystar07 on Etsy. 22g, made from dyed hardwood with a holly shaft:



Utterly beautiful wood turning in the most amazing dyed woods for striking whorls on her spindles. I can be honest and confess I have been bowled over by her designs before, but managed to hold firm. Till she listed a few with holly shafts. For some reason I have a weakness for that pale, pale wood. Its a beautiful little thing, and after test driving it earlier with some merino/silk I had lying around... the other half of the tuft you can see spun on the turkish in fact, its a superb little spinner, spins with ease, fast spinner and I am a very happy customer. Now to keep myself from buying a matching distaff and nostepine...

So that is where I am at, playing with pretty spinny tools and shiny fibre and having a good time ;)

What are you all creating at the moment?