The Details

1.85oz of Romney

13wpi/Fingering Weight

approx 115yds

It is bitterly cold here. On my commute yesterdy morning the warmest temp my car recorded was 0deg Farenheit. This is by no means strange for MI in Feb but that fact doesn’t make it any easier to bear. We’re all desperately craving a little bit of spring after the months of cold and darkness, yet Mother Nature’s reprieve is still at least 4wks away. So as I play with my dyepot I find myself drawn to warm, sunny colors, and as I was prepping the fiber my mind kept wandering to my daffodil bulbs. Right now they are buried under 18 or so inches of snow, but they will be here soon to make me smile, even if they are surrounded by an early April snowfall.

I specifically dyed and prepped this Romney because I wanted to test a few combing and spinning methods before I jumped into spinning my gradient project. After dyeing I teased the intact locks, combed them with my now-defunct comb and hackle, pulled them into fiber clouds with my DIY diz, and successfully spun some nice, lace-weight singles. I really enjoyed it, because top that has been freshly combed is far more cooperative than top that has been dyed, then braided, and sat on a shelf for a while. In fact, it damn near spins itself.

Because this skein was an experiment, and therefore a bit on the light side, I wanted to ply in such a way that I’d get as much yardage as possible. My go-to for most thin singles is navajo plying, but that essentially cuts your yardage by 2/3, so instead I tried plying from a center pull ball.

Video by the awesome Mary Pavis Egbert – go check out her new Spinning Boxes!

I liked it. It definitely takes some getting used to because one hand has to control the twist while the other has to manage singles that desperately want to knot up all over each other, but by the end I had figured out my rhythym and was spinning some pretty solid 2ply fingering yarn.