Falling for the spindle

So I finally did it, I gave in to temptation and bought myself a drop spindle. So far I’ve focused on supported spinning, and for plenty of reasons I do think it’s the style of spindling that suits me best. But there’s nothing wrong with branching out and trying new things. And for months now, lovely little Turkish spindles from Sistermaide on Etsy have been calling out to me.

Here it is, spindle #229, it’s tiny and adorable, only 16.6 grams, with bands of pink inked onto the base.

One thing that drew me to these spindles was the heavy tip to the shaft, which looks something like a Russian spindle. I suspected that I’d be able to use it supported as well as suspended. And I was right. Here you can see my using it suspended, but at the end of drafting out the tip has reached the table and the spindles continues to spin happily supported.

I’m spinning some sari silk fibre here, different to what I’ve used before. This was from Raxor, and has an overall greyish colour, as well as the rainbow of course. It made for a strange kind of yarn, but fun to try out. I put the rest away to use in a blend sometime.

This is a Turkish spindle, a type of suspended spindle in which the whorl is composed of interlocking cross pieces. The cop is built up by winding the yarn over and under the cross pieces (over two, under one).

When you’re finished building the cop, the shaft is pulled out,

One cross piece is removed,

And then the other. Leaving a neat centre pull ball, ready to ply from.

Having such a little ball of single, I made a quick Andean bracelet of ply.

And here’s my finished yarn, very very strange yarn that it is. With the components of my little spindle, and my Royale Hare spindle which I used for plying.

Once I finished playing around with the sari silk, I started spinning this lovely Eri silk fibre from ecoyarns, another of the different varieties of silk available. This is a very rough preparation of Eri silk. Perfect for the short draw you use in suspended spindling. And my #229 is so small and light, it makes a lovely, fine, high twist single, ideal for silk.

Spinning Tasmanian Corriedale

Yesterday I showed you my new pu yok spindle from Malcolm Fielding, on which I’d already the sample of Tasmanian Corriedale fibre Malcolm packs all his spindles with.

This fibre is amazing to spin. It drafts like butter… if butter drafted, and makes for the perfect long-draw. Just flowing out of the fibre supply and into the yarn as the twist catches it. It would make the ideal beginner fibre, as well as being great for more experienced spinners who want a really peaceful, relaxing spinning experience :)

It’s available for Malcolm’s etsy store, and it’s amazingly well priced!

Today I have the finished mini-skein of Corriedale yarn to share with you.

And it’s truly a pleasure to share, this is such a soft, lovely, lustrous yarn, it feels like a cloud, like it might float away :)

Because I only had a small sample of fibre spun, I used the Andean plying technique to create my two-ply yarn. Here you wind an ‘Andean bracelet’ around your wrist and hand, which allows you to ply from both ends of a single, without tangles (I know it looks scary and messy, but trust me, it really does flow of your hand). I will do a tutorial on this technique at some point, but for now there are lots of resources available, particularly on youtube.

And look… naked nails, oh my!!! (That’s the staining that comes with always wearing nail polish, I could buff it out, but that would weaken the nails, and there’s no point when I’m just going to put more polish on.)

Here’s a more realistic image of Andean plying in motion… this kind of thing is very hard to take photos of yourself. With my Royale Hare spindle, and it’s heavy brass base, I don’t have to worry about supporting the spindle myself as a I ply.

And the finished yarn, in the sun, showing it’s lovely creamy colour, and beautiful lustre.

And in the shade, where you can see how much loft this fibre imparts in the yarn.

Pretty cashmere yarn

Cashmere, one of the most approachable of the luxury fibres, has been my focus lately. I have been spinning the cashmere fibre that I purchased from Belisa Cashmere at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair, using my little supported spindles from Hipstings.

Being such a fine, short staple length fibre, I decided to spin my cashmere from the cloud. A cloud simply a disorganised pile of fibre with lots of air and space incorporated.

To create the cloud I took my fibre bundle and held it in one hand, pinching a small number of fibres with the other.

And pulled those away from the bundle.

Repeating this, I ended up with a lovely soft pile of fibre, my cloud, ready to spin from.

A cloud is the perfect preparation for employing the long draw spinning technique, in which I keep my dominant hand on my spindle, and use my other hand to draw the fibre bundle away from the forming yarn. Here it’s the twist alone that draws new fibre into the yarn, there’s no pinching and drawing out as in the short draw.

I spun my cashmere to both of my Hipstrings spindles. My singles were fine, and not entirely regular, which was partly by design and partly because I was new to this fibre. I like embracing the irregularities, as I get better at spinning I’ll probably never be able to make this kind of yarn again.

I plied directly from my Hipstrings spindles onto my Royale Hare spindle. This is why I purchased two identical spindles, so that I could spin until they were both full then move straight only plying.

And I love my Royale Hare for plying. It’s heavy brass base supports the spindle so that once I set it spinning I can use both my hands however I want. It can also hold a lot of fibre, which is what you want when you’re plying two spindles full of singles together.

Here’s my finished yarn, so soft and lovely. It certainly has that handspun feel, but there’s nothing wrong with that :)

And it’s pretty fine, (as tends to be the result of spinning with a long draw on a small spindle,) somewhere between lace-weight (2-ply) and figuring-weight (4-ply).

I’ve noticed that spinners often to show give yarn next to coins, to give a sense of scale. The trouble is the only coins that mean anything to me are Australian, and that probably wont mean anything to most of you… which got me thinking, I need something that’s universal, that’s same size where ever in the world you are. A universal serial bus! Or USB. So there you have it, my yarn, against a USB, all fluffy and fine. I have no idea what I’ll do with it, but I’ll work something out