Dear Masham,

Dear Masham,
I must confess I’m smitten. Sorry if that is a little strong after a first date, I promise the bunnies are safe.
I’ve not been long at this spinning game (6 months ish) and am still settling in with my wheel (6 weeks) but when these nice Ravelry people suggested you as this month’s fiber I had to dig the sample bag of you out of my stash. You looked so smooth and shiney in your bump, but the staple length, oh my. I’ve made good friends with merino, shetland, corriedale and oddly silk but with you I had no idea where to start. I knit lace, I knit socks but where would we find common ground? Was our first date to be one of awkward silences, stilted half started singles and a tangle of plying?

Luckily Beth Smith came to our rescue, introducing us and suggesting a good “first date venue”. Outfit chosen (wheel not spindle), date set (last night after a long day demo’ing spinning) and a suitable glass of wine poured and we were good to go. It was a jump into the unknown.

I was so worried about overspinning the singles that the first couple of grams kept drifting apart… not a good start. A quick re-read of Beth’s instructions though and I took my courage in my hands and started treddling faster. My wheel bless her is a slow old thing. I love her to bits but her 1:6.5 ratio makes for fun spinning lace. Two treddles for every 1.5-2” drafted short forwards draw though and we seemed to be getting on much better. Drafting was a dream though you still felt a little harsh on the bobbin to my untutored hands, but at least we were sticking together now. Then came the second course, plying. Ours was a short, get to know you type date so an Andean ply seemed the sensible way to go. Aside from me losing one end for about 10 mins it went swimmingly. A quick backply test, doused in suitably hot water to get a feel for what was needed and we were up and running.

All too soon your 44wpi singles were transformed into 40.6yds of 21wpi lace, set in a quick bath of warm Euclan water and dried lying across a rack in the airing cupboard. I hope you don’t mind but I took a quick picture.




Anyway I hope you had as much fun as me. Fancy a second date? I was thinking maybe from the fold or heading over to Wonderwool? Let me know what you think.

Yours still spinning,
K

Fiberholics - Disapointed

Before I start, I know this is a pretty crummy photo but it was the best my phone could manage (the camera's battery is currently flat and I'm not sure where the charger is... darned moving house!)

Since learning to spin I've been following the Phat Fiber boxes/blogs/Ravelry postings with no small amount of envy.  Each month they seem to post out little bundles of themed deliciousness but a) the chances of snagging a box are small and b) postage from the US can be long/expensive, so I thought I'd give the UK based Fiberholics a go instead.  Now as I buy my fiber almost exclusively from indi-dyers based in the UK I had high hopes but I've been left feeling rather uninspired, which is really disappointing.

Ok first up colour.  I was never expecting to get 5 out of 5 samples that I fell in love with, but a theme I suspect may have helped here.  We've got the Sunflower sample from HilltopClouds clashing horribly with MandaCrafts fushia offering.  The Crafty n Clothy braid is lovely but is made to look utterly washed out by the rest.  It wasn't a great look as I opened the parcel, which is sad because colour-wise actually I really like 3 of the 5 and one falls into my "that's not bad even if I've no idea what I'll use it for" category.

Next up is the fiber content.  Now my reason, and I suspect a lot of people's reason for buying samplers like this is just that, to sample new stuff be that colour or fiber.  Out of these five we have:

• 2 x 20g Falkland roving
• 20g Merino 64s roving
• 20g BFL roving
• and kudos to HilltopClouds 20g hackle blended BFL, Merino & Bamboo

In other words, one non-bog-standard type of fiber out of the five :(  Part of me gets that the staple for indi dyers is going to be the Falklands, Merinos and BFLs, that this is the stuff that they can get in bulk dye beautifully and make a decent profit on.  That I don't mind, heck I buy a lot of it.  But for a sampler pack?  I want to be enthused, I want to see something different.  If I want pink Falkland quite frankly I'll go to one of the big suppliers because I know it'll be a lot cheaper.

So overall:

• its confirmed that I still love the stuff that Katie from HilltopClouds produces, even when its not in a colour I would ever have picked.  I can't wait to spin up this sample but at the same time its one that has me really thinking how to get the best out of it.  Perfect :)
• ok for £11 plus P&P it didn't break the bank and it has introduced me to 2 dyers I didn't know about before (Crafty and Clothy and Cariad Fiber Arts)
• on the downside though most of the samples were pretty uninspiring and as a whole they hung together really badly.

I'm glad I ordered it at least this once but I think it will be just that, just this once.  The Fibreholics team do do a great job, but this one just isn't for me sadly.

Of plying and parcels

Today has to go down as a good day in spinning terms.  Last night at knit club I started spinning the final 25g of Nightfall, finishing it before I got to bed last night... and no it wasn't a crazily late finish either.  I have definitely got faster with my singles, and having finally learnt how to butterfly yarn up on my hands my plying has sped up too (though you would rather hope the amount of it I've been doing over the last couple of days!).  So this morning I wound the singles on to the second bobbin ready for plying leaving me with this:

Sadly I've made the mistake of starting the plying on the Ebony IST and I'm not at all sure it will all fit!

On a more positive note a couple of parcels I've been waiting for turned up (finally thank you Royal Mail).  The first was a book called the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook.  To say this looks stupidly good is an understatement, the only downside being that it is a hardback and weighs a ton for dragging round fibre fairs.  Having glanced through it though, the hastle of carrying it about will be more than worth it.  Wow, just wow.

My other squee moment was opening this parcel of amazingness:

I now have 400g of fibre purely to play with, guilt free if I make mistakes, just to get to know what the breeds are like and how to use different methods of spinning.  Heaven in eight little bags.