Spring is for Spinning, Part 1
Spring has sprung, bringing with it the ever changing rain-sun-rain-sun-hail-rain again cycle that is one of the things I love most about living in the Willamette Valley. My crafty desires have been following the path of the weather, changing on a whim. I have nine knitting projects in progress right now and as they all move slowly along I crave the instant gratification that comes from small spinning projects.
To kick off my spinning binge I finished spinning up some 90% pygora 10% silk blend batts from Rainbow Yarns Northwest. Terry and Susan, the women behind the pygoras, are absolutely fabulous and I couldn't resist these amazing, cloudlike puffs at last fall's Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival.
I broke out my awesome fast flyer for my spinning wheel and spun the singles at a ratio of 16:1 (for non spinners, that means that for every one turn of the wheel the flyer turns 16 times) to put a good deal of twist into the singles to hold the very fine pygora together in thin singles.
From there, I plied them at the same ratio, and the result is 600 yards of squishy and shiny laceweight yarn, that is being knit (slowly) into Romi Hill's Bitterroot Shawl from Knitty Winter 2009.
It's not the most fluffy yarn I've ever spun, and I probably could have gotten away with less twist, to make a softer yarn, but I'm relatively pleased with it. More spinning projects to come!