What does one, meaning me, do with a lovely hank of Silken when one, still meaning me, doesn't want another scarflette on the needles?
Other projects still on the needles, unfortunately slow going as finer weight yarn makes the fingers go numb :/. Fortunately spinning uses another set of muscles. On the fiber front. The postino brought some lovely soy silk yesterday from Funwithyarn.com.
The spindle happened to be cleared off when it arrived so of course I had to pull off a getting - to - know - you - handfull of the stuff and see how it spun up.
Damn if it doesn't explode. I think I was wearing half of what I'd pulled to test spin. After a couple meters, adjusting drafting speed, hit the sweet spot. Though it comes from soy, still has a very artificial feel to it. 7.7 oz to be visited later, just hope I can spin it without "beans beans the magical fruit the more you eat..." constantly going thru my head.
The dogana (customs office) here still puzzles me. Why some packages are held for ransom and others are not still remains a mystery. Last week an order from Traveling Rhinos arrived. I had to go pay an insane amount of ransom to liberate the fibers. Is 51% not insane?! Yes, yes it is. I came across Travelling Rhinos when browsing Etsy in search of a) hand painted fibers b) international shipping c) cormo for Kiddo. Could NOT find any cormo, which Kiddo declared to be the best sheeps she every spun but did find some pretty merino in colors of the sea that I knew she'd like. Didn't manage to get a photo of it today, she's hiding it, somewhere with the rest of Her Stash. Along with her merino I also got a merino/tencel in deep blues. I have a wip otn using merino/tencel which I love love love and wanted to try spinning it.
And a mouthwatering berry colored Welsh wool that happened to be on sale. The colors, not something I'd normally spin but it just looked so yummy, had to get it too. I started with the Welsh one, since it was the smallest. Very easy spin, doesn't like a lot of twist and has hairs poking out every which way. Kiddo laughed when she saw the yarn forming "that is one crazy sheep!" I had to agree, I thought a fine single of merino to ply it with would tame it a bit. A little cream on all those berries. Didn't quite tame it.
I did the Welsh at 10wpi then overspun the merino single at 28 wpi. When plying the Welsh it relaxed a so much I was worried it would fall apart when I washed the hank. Didn't lose much but wow it bloomed a LOT. Still need to spin a bit more of the merino to finish up the rest of the Welsh. Will be knitting this with a tight gauge, once it's knit, to be sure, unless it gets sacrificed to the BCoD, that is.
There is a magic formula out there that helps one determine how many meters/yards of something you need to spin when plying it with another fiber of a different wpi yes? At least getting you in the ball park? The Welsh wool was approx 200 yards in single form. Say I did an average of 3 twists per inch (no idea what it actually is and not getting up to measure it). How many meters/yards of a 28wpi single would I need to spin to ply with it? Too impatient to try to actually figure it out, I have just been spinning and plying until I don't need to spin more of the merino, but it would be cool to have a clue. Maybe there's a book out there that has all that info.
Now off to be productive.
PS does the election process have to be so $#%#$^%&^ long? Somebody,at Casa Zib who isn't me, has been playing Obama speeches waaaaaaay too often and driving me batty and there be months and months to go. Bless the person who came up with headphones!
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