At least once a day, I find myself reaching for a spindle to try a bit of this or that. Maybe it is some fiber I have blended and want to see how it spins up. Last week, while spinning at a local fair, I bought a bag of beautiful grey alpaca fleece. It hadn’t been touched but was fairly clean and mostly free of vm. I pulled a spindle from my bag and spun a small sample to "see" it. Lovely. I tried a 2 ply, then a 3 ply….
When I got back home I tried carding it, alone and with some merino and silk.
wow!
2,3,4 ply and a thicker softer 2 ply
Tuesday, a small package arrived containing a note holding a bit of flax and some hemp. Out came a spindle.
Here’s the hemp as a 2 ply. It is coarse. Of course. I use twine in the garden, sisal probably. Hemp is much
finer, not nearly as hard. My first thought was to use the single with a lucet to make a bit of braided rope. The lucet wasn’t handy so I Andean plied. It’s not soft enough to want to do a lot of it that way, wrapped around the soft parts of my hand.
Comments
6 responses to “I am a spindler”
What a great post…I love the title…so simple, so full of possibility and promise.
You get such beautiful results with your spindle even with yarns that aren’t the easiest to work with. That you love doing it, shows.
Your yarn looks lovely! You always make me want to pick up my spindle and give it a whirl! No pun intended.
Beautiful! and I love the title too! You ARE a spindler—and a very good one!
I’m taking a flax spinning class through my guild in a month and I was wondering this morning what I would ever use the linen yarn for, since I’m not a weaver. Any suggestions?
wonderful and educational. as always.