Skein-let

My second and third attempts at spinning, were a little more successful. I wasn't quite as scared of the fiber, and was able to draft better and get a relatively thinner single. Not to be confused with 'uniformly' thinner, no siree. Very thick and thin.

Here (above) you can see my little nests of pre-drafted fiber. I split the roving into fairly thin strips and then pre-drafted each strip. Aren't they cute?

Then I spun two small singles. Since I have only one spindle, I wound off the first one into a very tiny ball (sorry, no picture of the ball). Then did the second single, and wound it off too. The book I'm following said to put the balls into bowls or mugs to control them as you ply them together.

Uh, that totally did not work! I had a big tangled mess, the little balls kept jumping out of the bowls, then they wouldn't unwind, or they would unwind too much and twist back on each other, or just untwist! Gah!

I was trying to control this mess as my husband was playing his mandolin on the couch. I yelled "I need help!" And he came over and held onto the spindle and the already plyed (plied?) length of yarn, while I tried to untwist and untangle the singles from each other. At one point we looked like a strange alternative to a game of Twister. Unfortunately (or fortunately!), Shepherd doesn't know how to operate the camera, so no pictures of that scene!

Anyway, after some piddling I just held them both in my hand and plyed from there. That worked much better, however, remember I'm working with a small amount of fiber here. Not gonna work on actual 'yardage.' But I got it plyed (plied?...really, which is it?)...woosh!

I think for the next try I'm definitely gonna rig up some kind of lazy kate and wind off on dowel rods or something. I saw a homemade kate on a blog, now I just need to remember which one.

Then I wound it off into a skein (skein-let). Washed it to set the twist and let it dry. Voila! Yarn (very thick and think... and slubby...and unbalanced, but yarn)!! I'm so proud.

I have named it "blueberry pie" and I'm thinking of framing it. Seriously.