What does Spinning mean to you?

What does Spinning mean to you?

 

Some think it is a child turning round and round really fast, while playing, until they get dizzy and fall down.  Some may even think of a merry-go-round from their childhood, and how fast they could make it go, before they jumped on.When you type in spinning on the internet you get things like spinning bicycle wheels, tires, exercise bikes. 

However, to us Fiber Artists, it means twisting fiber, fleece, or wool roving, silk, alpaca, angora, mohair, flax, etc. into a continuous thread using either a spinning wheel or a drop spindle.  Spinners can spin their thread thick or thin, plied or un-plied, some will dye their yarns, while others leave it natural.

Fiber artists use their yarn for knitting, crocheting, or weaving projects.  I have seen people even use unspun fiber for knitting, crocheting, weaving and yes even felting.  I love seeing all these different ways of using fiber.

I love to spin my yarn into thin singles, 2 plied yarn and even a 3 ply yarn.  I knit a lot of different projects from my yarn, like socks, hats, scarves, boot cuffs, cowls and shawls.  I have even wove triangle shawls, scarves and overshot coverlet squares with my handspun yarn.  I have even dyed my own yarn too, its fun to watch the fiber absorb the dyes.

Spinning is a form of art and is done in a variety of ways, which makes it exciting, because no 2 yarns are the same.



Felting Alpaca is like doing a science experiement #knitting #spinning #New #Listing

On Wednesday, I finally finished a project I started for my mom back in the fall.  I was working on trying to felt it and since I've never felted alpaca before, it was going to be a science experiment for me.  I know that you can felt things in the washer and I've tried that, before with my old washer and found that the water doesn't get hot enough (it was one of those energy efficient washers).  I've felted thing in boiling hot water before and found that it works, only it takes a long time and you have to keep stirring and lifting up your item to see if its showing signs of felting.

Well, I thought that I'd trying the boiling technique first.  So I brought some water to boil with a little bit of detergent in it.  Then I put this Handspun - Dyed - Knitted - Alpaca - Bag into the boiling water.  I stirred and lifted for 30 minutes, I saw what looked like something was starting to happen, but the bag was still huge.  I added another 30 minutes and continued stirring and lifting, not much more was happening.  I continued repeating the process, for 3 more hours, some felting was happening but not enough to really make difference.

Then I thought, hey why not try putting it into the dryer (oh I know what your probably thinking), but it didn't do much of anything to it at all.  I was beginning to get discouraged!  So I took to https://www.youtube.com/ and looked up felting bags.  The only thing I found was something that talked about using the washing machine again.  I was very skeptical about giving this a try, but did and was very impressed that it was starting to work.  Then on Thursday morning I tried again and finally it to felt up, just the way I was wanting it too!  Well, here it is all dry and having its debut!

I hope/think my mom will like it!

With this project finished, I added a new one to my knitting queue.

I knitting from my last skein of Handspun Colonial Wool Blend (Wildberry) and I'm making Boot Cuffs using size 5 dpn's.

I'm getting closer now to having the third bobbin refilled,

It won't be long now and I'll be plying up the thirteenth skein of yarn from Bellagio's creamy white alpaca fleece.

I'm even starting to make progress on my mom's and brother's very late Christmas presents.

The leg on the mate is starting to get longer of my mom's socks, even the mate on my brother's socks is getting longer too!

Want to see my new listing?

http://www.spinningginny.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=31_149&products_id=565