Thursday 27 February 2014

So the worsted spinning is coming along fine. I just need to wait until tomorrow to ply it.
But today I want to talk about my big adventure! Last night I did some core spinning. It was the first time EVER!! I had watched youtube videos and had some idea of what I was doing but as it turned out I had no idea at all!
I had a little bit of fluff left over from my worsted spinning that was every which way and so I couldn't add it to my worsted spin. Perfect for a bit of core spinning practice I thought. I had some commercial brown yarn in my stash, so, using it as the core I started. First mistake - I attached the core not the fluff to my wheel. Then I spun merrily away. I had the tension all wrong on my wheel and the yarn became very twisty. Still I had got the fluff sort of spun up.
Then today I thought I'd try again with some Hebridean fleece that I'd combed out, and, second mistake -some string as the core. Well I'm very glad I used the white string because boy did it show up my errors. This time I attached the fluff to the wheel first, good girl, and let it run on at the end, thus fixing the string into the yarn, so I had learnt something! Then to compound my errors I plied the two together. That's where I really came unstuck. The yarn on the string began sliding up and down thus revealing the core. To make matters worse I tried to attach some keys and stones to the yarn too. These things were attached to long silk threads and actually spun into the yarn OK, but all around the fluff came undone.
Oh well. At least now when I take another look at the videos it will make more sense to me.
The next time I will use a toning core so that it doesn't show up my mistakes and I will not add things at the same time. Just try to get a proper core-spun yarn first then do the fancy bits later! Hmm, a steep learning curve methinks.

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