Tuesday 27 May 2014

'Compost'

I often use fibre blended on my drum carder for felting projects.. and if I have any fibre left over it goes in my 'compost' bin - fibre compost that is :).  I let all the odds and sods build up, then use them usually making a crazy batt or 2 and felting them.   

This time I decided to spin them!

The bin had actually filled to over flowing.. after sorting and taking out the coarser fibres this is what I was left with..  I didn't card it, just worked with what was already there.

Ready to begin..
my 'compost' bin :)
I started about a week ago.. whenever I had a few quiet moments just spinning a little more.  I really enjoyed it, spinning is so therapeutic!  The only sorting I did was to roughly divide the colours into lights and darks.. apart from that it was completely random, whatever I pulled out of the basket was the next bit used.

I love chunky, textural yarns.. so spun my singles in a very relaxed manner, there are thicker and thinner bits and that's fine.. it's what I wanted.  Once I'd filled a bobbin I Navajo plied it into a 3 ply yarn..  with Navajo ply if you are careful to spin nice and evenly, and carefully control your plying it's hard to tell that it's been Navajo (chain) plied.. but since I like texture I just kind of go wild with it :)

4 nice skeins..
all together 200g of yarn
My favourite is the dark yarns..
When I have enough I shall crochet them into something nice :)  My happy little spinning wheel is going to stay downstairs for a while.. I enjoyed this far too much to stop just now.  I will definitely do this again in the future, I really like how random it was just taking a lucky dip into the basket and spinning whatever came out.

7 comments:

Ali said...

OOOh how exciting - just what I like!
Ali x

FeltersJourney said...

Thanks Ali :) It was a nice surprise looking at the plied yarn seeing what colour combos I'd got :)
x

Ruthie Redden said...

How lovely, it's great that every wee bit of fibre is used, and i would imagine it's exciting waiting to see how the yarn turns out too

FeltersJourney said...

It was an exciting way to spin Ruthie :) I HATE waste and always save my scraps.. but I do enjoy using them up.
x

Lyn said...

I envy you. You've spun some lovely yarn. My daughter can spin (we have our own wheel) but I've given up on it as I'm too ham-fisted with the process!

Kelly said...

I love spinning! I find it so hard to balance the time I want to felt with the time I want to spin and then to finally weave....sigh....your yarn is lovely and I have no doubt you will make something beautiful with it! I'm looking forward to seeing more of your hand spun!

FeltersJourney said...

Thanks girls :)

Lyn, it's just time and practice trial and error.. The best advice I got when learning was to sing 'row row row your boat, gently down the stream' over and over treadling in time. It helped me slow down and pace myself.. x

Oh Kelly I know.. I just love spinning but rarely get the time. I have kept my happy little wheel in the living room since spinning these, I planned to card some batts and spin more.. but it hasn't happened yet :( xx