Saturday 6 August 2011

Bluebells

I credit my Eureka moment when I was learning to spin to some lovely fibre I bought from HilltopCloud (WARNING if you visit this shop you will want to buy everything in it, the colour combinations are gorgeous). It is called Bluebell Wood and it is merino, shetland and sparkle (I'm not a massive fan of sparkle generally but this isn't overwhelming, very subtle and just right) and it is a beautiful mix of mainly blue with a bit of yellow and brown mixed in too.

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This what the shop says about the technique used to produce these bumps of fibre:

A hand blended length of roving. I hand blend the selected fibres on a hackle, and then pull the blend off in to roving.
There is some variation in each little bump of roving, but this will create an unique yarn when spun. This way of creating roving makes drafting a dream.


It really does make drafting so easy and thats what finally allowed me to produce something resembling yarn. I spun about 30g of it before I went to my Spinning Class at Knit Nation, after my class I was able to produce a single that was much more consistent and much finer than I had been spinning before. I plied what I had already spun and this is the result:

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I think it's about 30 meters and it's probably bulky/super-bulky weight. I'm going to use it in a King of Confidence cardigan.

This is the same fibre spun after my class:

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It's much much finer. I'll probably use this for a shawl - possibly combined with something else, maybe striped, maybe not, I haven't decided.....

5 comments:

  1. Beautiful! Looks like the class helped you a lot.

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  2. Super neat! Do you like using the drop spindle or spinning wheel more?

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  3. Looks amazing, I love the colour x

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  4. Wow that is so amazing! The fibre is a wonderful colour and your spinning is great!

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