Nano2 Arrival

My little Nano2 spinning wheel from Dreaming Robots has arrived. I backed the Kickstarter for it with no hesitation whatsoever since the inventor, Maurice Ribble, has such an excellent track record with his Kickstarter funded projects.   

I've individualized mine with a few vibrant green 3D parts printed locally by "Got Wood Customs".

Here is what it looked like before the customization:

Each tiny bobbin only holds 2 ounces, so I will continue to use my EEW6 for plying. 

My first skein is 2.65 ounces (76 grams) of Gotland wool spun to a 2ply laceweight. 

Too Busy for Updates

 I've been lagging behind in photo updates of the ongoing spinning for the Tour de Fleece. As pledged, I have been spinning every day of the tour. This is what I've accomplished so far:

6 skeins of BFL in the "Crayon Box" colourway, from 4 oz. braids hand dyed by Jude of Ewesful Creations. The two on the left were spun and plyed as a fractual. The remaining four were chain plyed. I think I'll use all of them together in a Saori weaving.

These three skeins are also BFL wool from 4 oz. braids hand dyed by Jude and then spun and chain plyed by me.

I've now started in on a lovely wool/tencel blend. No pictures of that one yet.

Back With the Yak

The yak I mentioned spinning on my charkha the other day is now a tiny 3 ply skein.

I should have thought to include some sort of size reference in the photo. In the photo the yarn looks like it is thick, but that's just a matter of perspective. The skein itself is very small. Only 0.72 of an ounce, and still 32 yards of 3 ply. It's very soft and squishy but I won't be looking to spin more yak in the future. It's not that it was terribly difficult, it just didn’t want to draft as easily as the cotton and turned out rather uneven with tufty bits as well. I'll happily return to the cotton.

Days 4, 5, 6, and 7

I spent a good chunk of Day Four of the Tour de Fleece spinning a denim coloured superwash merino in preparation for plying into a boucle yarn.

On Day Five I attempted the boucle (on the left in the picture below). Hmm, not really my favourite type of plying, but sure to be fun texture for a weaving some day.

On the right is the remainder of the previous days spinning chain plyed into a 3 ply yarn. Meh. The denim like grey blue colour isn't doing much for me.

Day Six was much more fun. Not that my chosen fibre for spinning was all that nice, it was a very coarse, dirty alpaca. The finished yarn will have to be used for something other than wearables. It is very scratchy, which is unusual for alpaca I think. I've heard that the fibre gets coarser as the animals age.

The fun of that day came in allowing my granddaughters to play at my wheel! My coarse alpaca fibre, plyed with thread, is the two skeins on either end of the next photo. The centre skeins are two the girls did as their very first attempts at plying.

The eight year old's skein is on the centre left. She not only did the hand work to do the plying, she also did her own treadling. She found it difficult to keep the wheel spinning in the correct direction but persevered and was very proud of her little skein.

The six year old sat on my lap and did the hand work for plying her little pink and blue skein while I handled the treadling for her. Both girls also worked hard using my niddy noddy to skein their creations.

I don't normally weight my skeins, but all four of these turned out a little over plyed and needed the blocking.

And today, after a busy day of running about, I spent a relaxing 1/2 hour or more at the wheel with a vibrant pink merino/tencel blend. I love it! After a bit of a pre-draft it spun like a dream.

Tour de Fleece

This year I'm participating in the "Tour de Fleece", a spinner's event that parallels the Tour de France bike race.  Spinners choose a personal spinning related challenge and spin throughout the 21 day time frame of the Tour de France. For some it's to spin as much as possible. For others is might be to learn a new spinning style, try a new fibre, or spin using a spindle when they have been primarily a wheel spinner.

My chosen challenge is to spin for a minimum of 15 minutes for each of the 21 days of the tour. It might not seem like much to dedicated spinners, but I normally only spin 2 or 3 times per year. To spin 21 days in a row is really something. Now that I've started I have found that for 2 out of 3 of those days I have spun considerably more than that. This is my accomplishments so far.

Day One I spun for only 17 or so minutes and got this bobbin of singles:

On Day Two I added a bit to the bobbin of singles and then decided to ply it as well.

On Day Three I spun the singles for this small skein and then decided to go ahead and ply it as well.

It's photographed sitting on top of the HUGE reel of thread I purchased specifically for this type of plying. I found it for only a dollar at a thrift store.

Today I'm spinning from a bag full of fibre that I won as a door prize at a spin in last year.

4.5 Hours Plying

I sat down at the wheel the other day knowing I had a lot of plying ahead of me. By "a lot" I was thinking in the neighbourhood of 2 hours or so, after all, experience has shown me that plying laceweight takes a long, long time.



handspun, 2ply laceweight, 28 WPI, 50/50 camel/silk
205 grams/7.2 ounces - 1215 yards/1093 metres

I was shocked that it actually took closer to 4.5 hours and I still have some leftover on one of the bobbins. I'll get the WPI calculation for you when I ply the remaining bit.

Edited to add: I plyed the remaining 142 yards/128 metres this evening, and THIS time I remembered to measure the wraps per inch before I skeined it on a niddy noddy. At 28 WPI it is the finest 2 ply I have ever spun.

This is earmarked for a lace shawl, quite likely the Bee Fields Shawl.
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