My First Yarn

My yarn. Made by me.

Kittens? I'm in awe. Spinning is everything everyone told me it would be.

And more.

And I thought dyeing yarn was cool. There is nothing cooler than this. Making your own yarn. It's an elegant and timeless process that gives the spinner full license to be as creative as possible.

I couldn't hold out until tonight at work to get some roving. I just couldn't.

So I went yesterday afternoon and picked up a few things.













The light turquoise and lavendar one on top is 100% Merino wool and the multi-colored bit of bliss on the bottom is Soy Silk. I just love the colors!

Brandy advised me that I should start off using the Merino and save the silk until I got a good feel of how it works. That was good advice.

Let me just tell you something: that girl is full of good advice! Yesterday she gave me a bunch of great little tips on getting started, a GREAT tip about pre-drafting, and some other important bits. Brandy, thank you so much. I can't tell you how much that helped!

The next thing I picked up yesterday was this little beauty:













This little bag of silk hankies has maybe 18-20 individual little hankies in it, all in gorgeous shades of reds and coppery golds. Now the main reason Steven bought these to carry in the store is because you can not only spin with them, but you can also knit straight from the hanky. How cool is that? But, you know, I'll probably just spin it. ;)

Last night, I tore off a little over 6 inches of roving from the merino wool to try. I had a blast! I spun until my shoulders were sore and then I spun a little bit more. After it was done I wound off the Spindolyn onto my swift (oh yea, a niddy noddy is soooo in my future) and soaked it to set the twist. It hung over night and I was thrilled as could be this morning to find it dry and gorgeous!













Most of it is around sock weight, with a couple of areas straying to as thick as DK to as thin as lace weight.

I'm really happy with it. It was easy with the Spindolyn to control the spin and the draft and to be able to go as slow as I wanted to keep it even.













I will probably never ever knit with this tiny hank of yarn. I think I'll keep it and label it so I'll always be able to look back on my very first hand-spun yarn.