Making progress

Slowly but surely, my spinning is getting better. Here's the last little skeinlet I spun out of my "Phlox" fiber from The Fiber Denn. I was so psyched when I put the yarn into a skein and found out that it's completely balanced:


Look, Ma! No twisting! Yay for balanced yarn!

I already started spinning up the next batch of fiber, which is some Corriedale in the "Coleus" colorway, again from The Fiber Denn. It's amazingly soft. In fact, it was surprising to pull off a bit of it and start separating it into strips to predraft--the fiber is so fine that it almost falls apart into strips by itself. It's spinning up much more finely than the Phlox fiber, which I think was Shetland wool.


Aren't those colors beautiful?

This spinning thing is totally addictive. I've finally moved beyond the park-and-draft method into real drop-spindling, and I've been spinning this Coleus every evening this week, to the detriment of my holiday knitting! On Monday I spun up a little skeinlet of this Coleus fiber and, for the first time, washed the yarn to set the spin. (I didn't bother with the beginning skeinlets because they were so uneven, although maybe I'll go back now and do them all.) The first Coleus skeinlet seemed pretty reasonable off the spindle, so I thought I'd see what happens when you wash the yarn.

Wow! A dunk in some water really helps even out the spin! I was so encouraged by that first skeinlet that I decided to try try spinning the Coleus for yardage instead of making more little skeinlets to measure my progress. So far I've spun almost half of it. It's not perfectly consistent, but it's a lot better than my first few attempts, and it's also much more finely spun. I'm going to try to finish spinning it up this week so I can get some photos on the weekend.

I'm justifying all the spinning this week to myself by telling myself that I can knit a holiday gift out of the spun yarn once I'm done. There should be enough for at least a hat or some wristwarmers/fingerless gloves. Of course, now I want to make handspun, handknit gifts for everyone! Sigh . . . I'm never going to finish my holiday gifts this year!