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April 16, 2009
Grape Jelly
I'm finding the real limit on how much spinning I can get done is how much pain I want to put my left shoulder through. I hold the fiber in my left hand for drafting, and end up raising that arm above my head a lot. However, I have a wee bit of a tweak in my left shoulder, from a rugby injury in college, and raising that arm over my head repeatedly sets it off.
So now I'm investigating the possibility of a wheel more seriously.
Anyway, tonight I finished the singles for this two-ply yarn I am calling Grape Jelly. It doesn't look like it much in these photos, taken in really bad light, but the fiber I'm using has a set of colours very much like grape jelly. Also, I wish I knew what breed sheep it comes from, because it doesn't twig my allergies at all.
Here we are all spun up, ready to be spooled off the spindle to prepare for plying (the perils of only one spindle!). I spent a lot of energy working on making a nice, tidy cop this time. I think it came out OK.
And wound onto a skewer spool.
I'll make myself a spool rack from a cardboard box sometime after I stop being quite so busy, and use that for plying onto the spindle. Can I wait to see what this yarn looks like? No. But I must, anyway.
Technorati Tags: crafts, spinning, yarn
Posted by ayse on 04/16/09 at 12:43 AM
You might wanna learn to do the walking it up on your hands thing, which makes for a lot more flexibility in terms of shoulder strain. I have it in my newer youtube video, har.
VERY interesting that this wool didn't trigger your allergies. How badly do you usually react to lanolin in skin creams and stuff? I ask because it occurs to me there's a possibility your allergy is made worse by detergents commonly used in commercial scouring processes, or other substances in large-mill processing. If that's the case, you may have more options than you knew about.
I'll check out your video. I'd been meaning to, anyway.
As for lanolin, I thought for years it was that, but the last allergist I saw said nope, I wasn't reacting to it at all in patch tests, but I was probably reacting to another protein from the wool. Then I stupidly put on a sweater I made in college, merino, all hand processed and so forth, and it didn't bother me at all until I realized I was wearing it and had a psychosomatic reaction. :P So I know some wools don't bother me, but it's hard to figure out what will work or not.
So that made me think it might be a processing agent (but I still react to old sweaters I made pretty strongly), or an adulterant (I'm terribly, dangerously allergic to rabbits, and there could be pieces of rabbit fur in some of the wool from store contact), or possibly a breed thing.
So I started collecting bits of wool from assorted breeds, unprocessed, and trying them out, but now I think that might be problematic because I'm also allergic to a lot of pollen, and who knows what sheep get applied to them in the field. Anyway, I need to do more research into sheep processing and handling, when my interlibrary loan books arrive.
Hmm, so I'm not sure that walking it up will help much. I should post a picture of what I mean about shoulder strain.
And I failed to explain the extent of this allergy, which has in the past involved an emergency room visit and a multi-hour makeout session with a nebulizer. No contact issues to speak of, although itchy wool is itchy, still. But major bigtime not breathing issues. I now take heavy-duty antihistamines when I'm going to be at fiber things. The nature of allergies, however, makes it hard to pinpoint what the allergy is really to. It had its first onset, accompanied by a fairly profound rash) when I was knitting a wool sweater, and then kept happening (minus rash) around wool, hence allergist #1's theory that it was the wool.