OK so it's not quite the New Year yet, but my early New Year resolution is to write regularly about my spinning, dyeing, knitting and tapestry exploits, if for no other reason than to remind myself of what I have done and what I am planning to do! Today's post is the latter.
One of my younger daughters has been asking for a pair of Very Warm gloves. In an attempt to meet her needs for cosy little hands, I have spun up some fibre to meet her requirements. Being the child of a spinner she knows by now that she can have whatever fibres she wants, no matter how luxurious! Consequently she chose cashmere (of course!), angora and merino, all of which I purchased in the form of wool tops from World of Wool.
This project is emerging in stages, the first of which was to learn how to spin a yarn thicker than my normal thin fingering weight yarn. I was not planning on knitting these on size 1.25 needles!! [Maybe for a future project though this could be fun...think of all the possibilities for design work...mmmm....]
I began by spinning the angora and merino top (a 50/50 blend)into 1 ply. Initially I spun it on my Schacht Matchless wheel using the 11:1 ratio but it was far too twisted for my requirements. I wanted to accentuate the softness so I switched to the 19:1 ratio. At first the yarn tended to drift apart, but by ensuring that just a little more twist got through I ended up with the singles I was hoping for.
Next I spun the cashmere and merino fibre (a 30/70 blend) using the same ratio of 9:1. After that I plied the 2 together on the same ratio adjusting the position of my Lazy Kate so that it was to my left rather than my right as I had always done before watching 'The Gentle Art of Plying' by Judith MacKenzie. It took a bit of getting used to a different position, but after a few yards it all ran smoothly. Very smoothly in fact. While I always Love spinning angora and cashmere, the act of plying the 2 together has to be the last word in spinning luxury. I can only imagine what it must feel like to ply 100% of each together...paradise?!
In the end I spun 2 skeins with the following meterage:
Skein #1 : 171 metres = 50gms = 342m / 100gms
Skein #2 :129 metres = 40gms = 320m / 100gms
--A slight variation in grist, but not enough to put me out as I am not planning to use this yarn on its own but as part of a stranded knitting design.
