Spinning! Well, really, plying.

Today I meant to have a picture for you of the Babel fish commission I just completed. However, once it had dried, I promptly wrapped it up, boxed it, and dropped it off at the post office. All without even remembering to take a single picture!! (*insert facepalm here*)

Next time!!

If you have no idea what I am talking about, you can look at a Babel fish here and possibly get one for your very own!!

The upshot of my missing out on photos, is that you get photos of my recent spinning instead. Or, as the title says, plying. Which is a form (or stage) of spinning, yes, so technically it is spinning still, but it’s unlike from spinning from roving, etc, so you could argue it is different.

Hum. I think I will leave this debate up to the spinning philosophers and just stick with my own classification of spinning and plying. Makes life simpler.

Regardless, over this week I’ve been slowly working at plying this yarn. I purchased the original roving at a local fiber festival in the fall of 2013. And, being super slow at spinning, it’s taken me a bit to get it all into singles and off my Dodec wheel. But I did finally make it into the plying stage, which I prefer to do on my drop spindle.

I originally was going to make it into a beaded art yarn, but that didn’t turn out to well.

Why? Well, let’s just say that after spending all afternoon stringing 3oz of beads onto a commercial cotton yarn to ply it with, within the first hour of spinning I’d already tangled the entire thing. And I couldn’t undo it.

Which meant that I just got 100 yards of pretty beaded art yarn. And the rest is going to be a regular 2 ply.

You can see the art yarn in the picture at the top of the post and the regular plying down here.

So far it looks like it will end up as a DK weight. At least according to my handy WPI tool from hipstrings. (Seriously, I love this thing! I would recommend it to any spinner as it is great to keep with your wheel or spindle!)

I’ve also been working on spinning up some grey gradient roving that I purchased at the same 2013 fiber festival. I don’t have pictures of that, but I’ll try to get some soon. And talk a bit about that experience!

Otherwise, have a great Thursday!