niddy noddy | Jenjoyce Design

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I am experiencing a bit of a renaissance in hand-spinning. I never was that much of an intentional spinner, although I am attempting to be now…. perhaps I’ve grown up a little bit? With this alpaca that I brought out of the recesses of my loft closet, I worked it from raw fleece and in this post I show the carding & blending process. After spinning it up, here I am measuring & weighing the yarn to discover what gauge it is.

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Here is what I do: I run the yarn through a ‘winding station’, which measures yardage while winding off the skein on to a ball, then weigh the ball, and take notes.

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This is about an aran weight. Getting more savvy in substituting hand-spun and I am itching to ‘paint’ again with fiber on my blending board. Recycled sari silk (yes, made from silk cloth of saris), bamboo, rose fiber… the works, and Oh! This was my most recent creation over the weekend, taking some very coarse Lincoln-Corriedale I’ve had for 30 years (from my sheep Hazel, plus another part fleece I have long forgotten where it came) , and blended it up together into a bat of 50/50 dark & white, which the white was extremely slubby (thats having little bits of wool puffs) I used that blend to layer with some ultra nice dyed corriedale roving I recently bought, in colors amber, mulberry, and ruby, and also a little Huacaya Alpaca , and made tasty little wool sausages….

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And, over the weekend, here is what I spun up…. slubby, exotic woolen spun blend

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Meanwhile, the general news…

Emma is in her last days of having to endure The Cone, for the surgery she had a week ago already (to remove a low-grade sarcoma on her front leg, she will be alright, no reason to be alarmed). My nieces have started school already, Miss Seventeen is a senior this year, and Miss Fourteen is now in 9th grade! I’m very busy presently working up two patterns to be available in a double download, and prototyped in the hand-spun alpaca! And we’re having some gorgeous cool foggy mornings at last! Life is good.

Emma 2 days after surgery.

This is just what I asked myself when I was finished spinning up this Suri Alpaca , as I ended up with only about three-quarters of a bobbin full when all plied. What a gross miscalculation. You see, I only used half of what I had stashed of roving, ready to be spun up in this post here , thinking that would be well enough for a nice fat skein. I was kidding myself ! All that dying , all that spinning, all that fuss… for a wee 180 yd skein of very purple, and very fine weight of alpaca.

So, here it is. Cute . Spirited. Very purple indeed.

I panicked. I thought, how can I give a very special knitter a very special gift of such a small single skein of 180 yards? I thought , well, maybe quick get something to accompany it, um, like one of those “One Skein Wonder” books. Yeah! Well, so I just ordered one last night, and with expedited shipping, thinking I’d have the whole thing to bundle up and send off by the end of the week. Great ! My “What was I thinking?” situation solved nicely.

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So now that I’m waiting for the book to arrive, my thoughts drift. They become “ I really could spin up some of that odd left-over tussah silk roving I have stashed. ” Except that Nora’s Mom asked for purple, and there’s no denying , this silk roving was dyed roses and maroon. I dyed it myself a few years ago. (It’s the very same silk which I spun, in fact, and is featured in the banner of this blog.) Well, I happen to have a box load of dyes, and I ended up overdyeing an already dyed bunch of roving. Adding separately and blended, navy and crimson, I managed to get a nice deep purply wine… really needed a lot of rinsing though. Though not quite purple, more cabernet, I think it will accompany the alpaca well, and what could be better than a nice book and a skein of yarn? Two skeins of yarn ! I dyed, dried, and then set into spinning like wildfire.

Ready for a good washing and rinsing, here she is, just wound off of the bobbin.