Spinning in the New Year

 Happy New Year!














This year, I was actually awake for the turning of the year. I was leaving my friends' house at midnight exactly, just in time for the class-c neighborhood firework show (even those puny little class-c ones are illegal in the city). I don't really have any special feeling for New Year's as a holiday; for me, it's just an arbitrary marking on the calendar. But I might be feeling that way because I maybe feel a bit of a wincing need for repentance, seeing as how I spent some New Year's Eves in my youth ... egads. What fun, though. You can't learn from your mistakes if you don't make any, right?

I didn't make any knitting/spinning resolutions. I have discovered that if I swear off buying more fiber, it means I will be online at Etsy within hours, ordering merino or alpaca or a pound of Corriedale "just in case." I LOVE Corriedale. It's like the workhorse of the sheep world, sturdy, easy to ply, and easy to dye. I can spin it as finely as a thread and it holds together, but it's not rough or wiry like other wools that bind well (Rambouillet, Polworth, Lincoln). 

I won't say this is a resolution, but I might try to be a bit more vigilant about finishing WIPs and ignoring start-itis ... and speaking of WIPs, here is what I have been solely working on since right after Christmas:

The Multnomah, named for a county in Oregon. Here  is the link to the pattern. I am 100% certain mine will not turn out that perfectly! I am running low on this yarn, and since I spun it myself, it is going to be a pain if I run out before it's done. It wasn't difficult to spin, I just don't want to have to order 4 more ounces of it when I need only about a half ounce to finish.














Aside from knitting on Ms. Multnomah, I have been spinning some nice merino I bought at last years' MS&W. The label did not include the vendor, so I cannot provide that. Here it is after I pulled half of the bump apart:

Spun into singles ...

On the lazy kate, getting tangled up while I prepare to ply ... 

And, a finished skein. I counted twice -- it comes in at about 5,810 inches, or 161 yards. I'm not sure that the final yardage is correct, but I counted twice, and came out with 83 loops on the niddy noddy. I've never managed to spin that much on one bobbin before. I still think I somehow added twenty loops while counting.  Twice.

I'm not really happy with the way this skein came out. Merino is so fragile, I didn't want to handle it much, so I didn't draft it well, and it came out poorly. It drifted apart many times when I plied. I need more practice with the finer fibers, but they frustrate me when spinning. 

Well, happy new year to everyone!