Many of my spinning friends are doing the Tour de Fleece: a crazy tracking of the Tour de France but in spinning. I'm not, because I have too much on my plate, but yesterday I decided to see how much I could spin in an evening. (And then I ended up staying up until nearly 2am finishing the plying because I couldn't leave it be overnight.)
I had a wad of Dorset left over from a class, so I spun it all. And plied it. I do like spinning on the spindle, but I have to admit that spinning on a wheel is super fast when you can just sit down and zone out. This is 203 yards of 2-ply, from 1.7 ounces of fiber. It's fingering weight.
And the other fun piece of equipment I played with for the first time was a ball winder. When I got the Clemes and Clemes wheel, it came in the box of stuff. I've never really used one, because I can wind a decent center-pull ball on my hand, and I hate buying expensive stuff that takes up room when I have a ball winder with me at all times, anyway.
On the other hand, I will give it points for being obscenely fast at winding a ball. So I'm not getting rid of it any time soon.
As for what I'll make with this wool, maybe a scarf? This spinning thing is really testing my ability to come up with projects for small amounts of fat yarns (though with this skein, I've finally got a yarn in a weight I know how to use).
Next up, I will have more yarn to work with. I'm carding up batts from the 2lbs of alpaca I bought at the winery. I'll also be writing up a discussion of drum carders, as I have two on loan/rental. Until then, let me tell you that alpaca is great fun to brush until it is soft and smooth. Num.
