La Tricoteuse Bretonne

Spinning for Knitting

Spinning.

Spinning has fascinated me almost as soon as I've been knitting. Knitting opens a load of possibilities : choosing your wool and colour, the pattern, you get so much more choice and even freedom when you start knitting your own garment.

But spinning? It opens up such a door of freedom, that you can even choose to know the name of the sheep you're spinning the wool from.

Truth is, though all these years of fascination, I haven't been spinning much. My first tries with a top-whorl spindle and Liz' fibers were amusing, and in the end I managed to make some bits of okay-yarn. The fiber was beautifull, and so it helped making the process pleasant, but learning alone isn't that much fun.

Then, a bit pushed to this by dear friends, I went to a day course in wheel-spinning, at Herba Lana, near Brussels. Let's say I wasn't thrilled. The course was great in itself, but we had worked on raw fleece, spinning it directly, and even though we had continued on clean fibers in the afternoon, the smell & feel stayed with me the whole day...

So it took me another long time before I decided to buy a spinning wheel, and only because it was a true "occasion". And this one was not be missed : waiting for me since the mid-eighties in its box (the newspapers around the wheel parts were from october 1986), this Ashford traditional was a real bargain.

These last months, I have been experimenting now and then, a bit more than before : the ouessant wool, some coarser local sheep, little bits of Manx Loaghtan. I realized it can be a pleasure to spin on a wheel, and even I can make some yarn with it. Then I realized I had all these bits of yarn, but no real project for them, and I thought that it would be nice if I could knit something from my spinning, but what?

So I made a plunge, and back in november, I started spinning one of the nicest fibers I had. Now it's been spun, and plied, and I've started knitting my First project from my handspun. And it is soooooft.

Now on the wheel? Some wool & silk fiber happiness (from Fybespates) in a color reminding me of peaches and roses, which might very well be the name of their colourway, I do not know.
I have decided that I'll keep it single, as after making a little try plying it I much prefer the single that shows the colours and shine better, or I thought so.

Posted by Stephanie at April 30, 2009 11:00 AM