Inspiration

Spinning blogs are slowly taking over my RSS reader post by post. Thankfully, they play nice with all the knitting, art, comics, recipes, cute animal photos, quick laughs, and architectural glamour shots that also clamor for my attention.

I’ve given up on the idea of visiting Reader everyday and knocking the unread count down to 0. With the current count at 909 items that is never going to happen short of just marking all as read. Instead, I’ve been just been reading and taking the time to enjoy good posts and good photos without worrying about the X number of blogs to read today. It freed up my mind to be inspired by and act on the things I saw instead of just filing ideas away for later. 

I read this post by the Yarn Harlot where she writes about tearing roving apart between color repeats to make self striping yarn. It totally blew my mind because I had never thought about using roving that way. So, I had to try it out. Photos will be forthcoming. 

On a new to me blog, Weekend Knitter, I read a post about the author knitting with some of her hand spun 3-ply. She described the yarn as plump and full. I’ve spun a lot of 2-ply but no 3-ply yarn and I wanted to try it out. Does 3-ply knit up differently than a 2-ply? How would processing the roving be different than for a 2-ply? How much longer would it take to spin a 3-ply?

So, I took the plunge. 3.5 oz of combed top was separated into 3 equal parts and those 3 parts were divided lengthwise 4 more times. Then a bit of pre-drafting was in order for a thinner single. The only thing that changed in the processing was how I split the roving and a greater amount of pre-drafting (aiming for a worsted or heavy worsted weight yarn). 

I’ve just finished spinning the second single and it’s taken a bit longer than spinning for a 2-ply. Is it because I’m spinning finer singles on a lighter spindle? Maybe. Probably. Only more experimentation will tell.