The Great Experiment

I didn't spin at all on Saturday. Even though my arm and shoulder didn't hurt, I gave them a day of rest. Today I started up again. The big ball of roving sits in a wooden bowl now, on a dish towel to keep it from contact with the bare wood.





I've got a couple hours spinning invested on this spindle. The roving, as the lady said, is quite easy to spin. I am able to draft it very easily, and I found that today my drafting skills got a little better. Once the arm starts getting tired, though, the drafting starts to suffer. I tried spinning while standing; while sitting on a tall stool, and while walking around outside. I finally ended up sitting on the couch until the arm started protesting.

This is the single I am trying to consistently spin. I would say that I was successful well more than half the time. It seemed like I had a lot of twist on it, but in the end I don't think it will be as much as I think it is.

Egad, my hands are really dry!! That's what low humidity and hard water will do to you.

Aach, I can't stand it any longer!! I have to ply up what I've got here! I wound up what I had onto my Lazy Kate and plied the yarn in between starting dinner and checking on same. The singles, which up to now had been feeling pretty stiff and scratchy, suddenly started feeling pretty squooshy once they were plied. I kept checking the yarn on the spindle and the squooshiness just kept growing.

Once I had it all plied, I wrapped it around a cookie sheet and tied the skein with a couple bits of the leftover singles. It appears to be around thirty five yards.

Is my skein balanced?

I took this last picture before washing the skein and hanging it outside with a plastic clothes hanger weighing it down. The singles are still pretty uneven in spots, but a lot of it came out looking like REAL YARN, at least to me. I can't wait until it dries. I don't care if it's uneven, I'm going to knit with it anyways.

I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight.