Snail Spirals

I finally got around to taking the pictures I've been meaning to take for a month, regarding my spindling. Remember the silk hankies and cotton punis?



On the top is the cotton yarn, 1.1 oz, 280 yds, of 30 wpi 2-ply. On the bottom is the yarn from the silk hankies, 0.7 oz, 350 yds of 65 wpi 2-ply.

The silk yarn is entirely spindle-spun and spindle-plied, but the cotton is spindle-spun and wheel-plied. I've decided that I really don't like plying on a spindle. And I'm fine with that. Maybe if I wound the paired singles into one ball to ply from it would be OK, but spindle plying from two bobbins is not. fun. at. all.

The twist is somewhat variable, but overall I'm very proud of these yarns. Spindling is a great take along project. Just give me my wheel to ply.

Speaking of which, here's the next project I started:



Some tussah silk top, spun two weeks ago while watching Shaun compete in the Black Diamond Half Ironman triathlon, in Enumclaw, Washington. Go Shaun! I'm immensely proud of him for finishing this race; the longest tri he's ever done, and a warmup for the full-length Ironman Canada triathlon next August. Actually, I think he's nuts for wanting to do an Ironman, but to each his own. :-) A seven hour race (~14 hr next year?! He is nuts!) leaves a lot of free time for the spectators, and I spun up an entire spindleful between wrangling Emma and moving from point to point to watch Shaun zoom by.

One last set of pictures, to show a couple undocumented purchases. When Emma and I went up to Friday Harbor in July for the practice Sheep-to-Shawl, we stopped at Weaving Works again. I'd been having fun spinning the cotton punis I bought, but wanted to try naturally colored cotton. I couldn't find colored cotton in prepared punis anywhere. Besides, where's the fun in buying them ready made?

In the interests of increasing my skills, I bought two 3-oz. balls of naturally colored cotton sliver. This is the Cinnamon color, a warm reddish brown.



The ball of "Seamist" cotton, an interesting greeny-tan, has already been turned into this:



As you can see, I also bought a pair of Schacht 208-point cotton cards. There's a bit of a learning curve in making punis, and carding in general, but once I got going I carded the whole 3-oz ball of sliver into punis in two evenings. The spinning is going well, though it's been stalled the past couple weeks. This cotton has a shorter staple than the white cotton, so it's been an adjustment, but the punis make it easy to get a nice thin thread.

Plus, it's very fun to spin from punis I made myself!