Spinning!

A couple of years ago I bought a beginners drop spindle at Rhinebeck. I spun up a really bad and lumpy bulky skein on it then promptly put it aside for something else. Then a little later I picked it back up and started spinning Fur from our American Eskimo Cayenne. It was difficult since I had no way to properly prepare it, and the staple length was short and the spindle was heavy, so I didn't do it too often and for very long.

Then the other day while I as cleaning out my stash I found a bag of unlabeled bats that I had bought long ago on e-bay, and decided to pull out the spindle again.

The wool wasn't very well prepared, there were a lot of little matted lumps in it, tons of vegetable matter, and it was a little sticky from all the leftover lanolin. But it was all I had and I wanted to spin! I decided that if I was really going to take up spinning seriously I wanted lace and sock weight. So that's what I aimed for.

Here it is on the spindle before I took it off to ply:


And after plying:



With penny:


stats: about 102 yards, 17-20 wpi, unknown breed of wool.

It's not perfect by a long shot, there are a lot of too thick and under spun bits from the beginning but towards the end I was getting really happy with my consistency, but it kept breaking and pulling apart if I got as thin as I wanted. From my research I guess that was because my spindle was just too heavy. So I think I'm going to get a new spindle - I was looking at these specifically the Tsunami in purpleheart.

When we go into town today, I'm also planning on going to the library to take out some books on spinning. Ohh I'm so excited!