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Wednesday 7 April 2010

Spinning

As promised, here is my first spinning session with my new e-spinner.  
Here it is, just got started

and here you can see the alpaca on the bobbin. 


Once you have spun two bobbins of yarn, it is usually plied, which is twisting two lots of 'singles' yarn together. This is done by spinning in the opposite direction.  Usually the singles yarn is spun clockwise, then plied anti-clockwise. 
The two bobbins of singles yarn are put on a lazy kate, and plied together onto a single bobbin on the spinner.



 Once that is done, you wind the yarn off onto a Niddy Noddy. 
You then tie it in several places to hold the skein together, take it off and wash it
Here is the skein straight off the niddy noddy,
and here it is washed, lovely and soft and fluffy.

I don't knit and I'm not very hot on measuring and gauging my wool so I don't know exactly what thickness it is.  I'd guess around double knitting, but it's not very even. I'm really not a perfectionist and I like that homespun can be a bit rough and uneven.  It weaves well and alpaca makes gorgeous warm scarves. 
Here is one of my alpaca scarves, on sale in my Folksy shop. This scarf was made with lovely white and natural brown alpaca, and I used some pink and green wool as a colour accent.

 

4 comments:

Jo Clarke said...

The process looks fascinating and I love alpaca wool!
Jo

sue wright said...

Good to see your first spin on your e-spinner,
Best wishes Sue

KataCat said...

Look at you and your lovely machines! : ) I really appreciated your pictures, as I know almost absolutely nothing about spinning. Enchanted by idea of a Lazy Kate and a Niddy Noddy.

So sorry I hadn't followed you before - I thought and assumed I had, but clicked on your folksy link and thought, 'hey ho, I haven't been here before...' Am now looking forward to getting your new posts on my dashboard!

Cat

little brick house ceramics said...

I love that spinner it's beautiful even before any spinning gets done, just beautiful function, have you ever spun newspaper to make paper thread?
Love your blog, am now a follower
xx

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