Spinning in public for the first time

Well, I've done plenty of knitting in public -- when I first began knitting many years back, I used to take my projects onto the subway with me while commuting, and now I rarely go out without a knitting project, just in case I have some spare time. Now I've spun in public, too.

On October 4, I participated in the Art on the Avenue festival in Alexandria. I hadn't even heard of Art on the Avenue until I responded to a post on Ravelry looking for volunteers for a fiber arts demonstration. So I packed up my spinning wheel and a bag full of fiber, and headed out on Saturday morning. What fun! It was a gloriously beautiful fall day, sunny and warm without being hot. The demonstration included spinning on wheels and spindles, fiber carding, knitting, and weaving. In the beginning, I had some fairly quiet spinning time, just answering questions as I spun. But then I started letting the kids try the wheel, and we both had a really fun time. They were fascinated, and loved working the treadles (although some of them couldn’t reach them without help). And many of them were so excited when I offered to let them take home the yarn they’d help me spin – it was really sweet! It was tricky at first figuring out how to actually produce yarn with them, but eventually I got the knack of letting them treadle while I drafted the fiber.

Two hours flew past, and then we were finished. At the end, though, I found out that some of the other participants were members of a spinning group that meets twice a month – they invited me to join them, and I’m looking forward to spinning with them in calmer circumstances! And not only that, I got invited to another spinning demo the following weekend.

So this past Saturday, it was off to the Torpedo Factory Art Center for the annual Art Safari. This time I was prepared for the kids, and brought a basket of really soft blue faced Leicester fiber for them to spin with, and some pretty red and yellow wool. I also brought some drop spindles, to see if that would make it easier to work with them. Once we got going, there was barely a moment to catch my breath! We had spinning, and knitting, and carding, and weaving, just like the weekend before. This time, though, someone brought a drum carder to let the kids make up their own special, sparkly batts to spin. In the beginning, I focused on using spindles – I’d draft the wool while the kids kept the spindle spinning for me. Then for a while, we used the wheel – this group loved sitting and treadling as much as last week’s kids. It was especially fun when they had their own little handfuls of fiber to spin into a special yarn to take home.

I’ve only got one regret after these wonderful weekends – I forgot to bring a camera, so I haven’t got any photos! I guess I’ll have to learn to tuck a camera into my traveling spinner’s kit in the future.

A Crafty Fourth of July

Notwithstanding the cloudy and often rainy weather, I had quite a good holiday weekend – basically three days of making things, and what could be more fun than that?! I started out with sewing, working my way through more of the projects and techniques in Alabama Stitch. I finished this “3-D appliqué” t-shirt:

Made myself this headband:

Then I started on another shirt, which still needs to have some leaves stenciled on and beaded, I think.

Along the way, I took a detour to make this needle book from Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts. I’d been wanting to make one since I saw it in the book, and was spurred to finally do it after struggling to pull some new hand-sewing needles out of their plastic packaging – I wanted to get them into an easier to use case. This was my first time using computer-printable fabric sheets – pretty cool, although the ink did bleed a little bit.


On Monday, I spent the day spinning. I had a number of partly-done spinning projects that I was beginning to feel guilty about, so before starting anything new, I finished up a big hank of tailspun kid mohair:

finished corespinning my “pixie meadowbrite” locks from HollyEQQ:

and finished off a bag of “drunken sailor” batts from hobbledehoy:

I still need to finish off my “neapolitan” roving and a bag of suri alpaca locks, but I decided to let myself start something new anyway … some English Leicester locks from HollyEQQ to corespin:

What a letdown having to go back to the day job (sigh).

More yarn, and some sewing

Here are my two latest yarns. The first is corespun suri alpaca, in a colorway called "Rosewood Orchid." It's every bit as soft as it looks, and then some! The second is a simple thick and thin merino, in a colorway called "Drunken Sailor."


I also took a break from spinning this weekend to finally try a project from a book I bought a few months ago, Alabama Stitch. This is a "reverse applique" cover, designed to dress up a basic composition book from Staples. I love making covers for these inexpensive notebooks.

My first corespun yarns

Still high on inspiration from Camp Pluckyfluff, I pulled out some beautifully dyed locks this week to try some core spinning. What fun! I used a commercial mohair yarn for the cores -- the fuzziness of the mohair grips onto the wrapping fiber really easily. On Monday, I took out some cotswold locks from HollyEQQ, in a colorway called "pixie meadowbrite," and made this:

I liked the results so much that on Tuesday, I took out some more cotswold locks -- this time from Homestead Wool, in a colorway called "hydrangea," and spun up 50 yards of this:

I suppose that one of these days I should try knitting up some of these handspun yarns, but for now I'm having so much fun making them that it's interfering with my knitting projects!

Post-Pluckyfluff spinning

While I was at Camp Pluckyfluff, I bought some beautiful hand-dyed blue-faced leicester fiber, in a colorway called "neapolitan." Given its ice cream-y name, it just had to be spun up into something swirly, right? So here's Neapolitan Soft Swirl:

Camp Pluckyfluff!

Last weekend was 48 hours of spinning fun -- I got to go to Camp Pluckyfluff in Vermont! We met at The Spun Monkey's studio for two days of spinning instruction from Lexi Boeger of Pluckyfluff. Lexi taught us lots of fantastic techniques for spinning novelty and art yarns. Many of them are discussed in her latest book, Intertwined -- if you haven't seen this book, you should look for it the next time you go to the bookstore. If you're a spinner, it will inspire you to spin. And if you're not a spinner, it could well inspire you to start.

Unfortunately, I haven't got any photos of camp, because my camera battery died when I got there. Lexi's got some great ones on her blog, though. And I've got photos of my yarns. Here's my favorite:

I started this yarn with a base of green wool, with some bits of of orange thrown in as well. Then following Lexi's technique, I spun in some orange silk poppies (bought at Michael's, and plucked off their stems), some tulle, lace, fabric scraps, little flowers, and even a green zipper. Maybe I'd better take another photo that actually shows the zipper.



I spun lots of other yarns, as well.





This one, plied with a textured green thread, has beehive coils, granny stacks, and some spiky bits.








Then there's one with contrasting crescents (left), and one with pre-made felt bits added (right).




























This one was spun from a crazy-carded batt -- we just grabbed bits of wool, sparkle, threads, and whatever else we had around. Then our random fibers were run through a drum carder, and spun up rather randomly as well -- thin where the fiber was smooth, thick where it was clumpy.

This technique, along with the others we tried, convinced me to order a drum carder of my very own when I got home.







... and this wild spiky skein was made by plying a heavily over-twisted single with a red thread.









And finally, this was the last yarn of the weekend, still on the bobbin because I didn't have time to spin very much it of. Gorgeous jade green locks tail-spun onto a core of commercial green mohair yarn. Soft, fluffy, and exotic-looking -- I can't wait to spin more of this one!


Thanks to Lexi, our host Shannon, and to my fellow campers for a fabulous spinning weekend!