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Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Plural for singular

I sat down at the spinning wheel after work today and after a little while of spinning a fluffy, bulky mess something finally clicked and I'm finally spinning something that looks like the singles I've been getting off the drop spindle for a while now.

bfl singles

It's by no means a full bobbin but I thought I'd stop before the slight muscle strain developed into the dreaded "spinners limp". I'm not at all sure how it happened but I've managed to get from having to draft everything in advance and then treadling to spin it and get it onto the bobbin to a place where I can draft as I spin and the fibre just seems to flow through my fingers.

It's a very satisfying feeling and I can tell that, once I've got a bit better, this is going to be just as addictive as spinning witha drop spindle.

I've also learnt that wearing a black t-shirt whilst spinning is not really advisable due to "the fluff of white wool which settles all over the spinning woman and tends to give her the appearance of a person who has slept in her clothes" (according to Dorothy L. Sayers in Five Red Herrings).


Despite the fact that I've been knitting hard all weekend I don't have much in the knitting line to show off as I seem to have been in hard training for the knit and rip event in the Ravelympics.

What I do have is a swatch for a raglan baby cardigan.

swatch

Yarn: Rowan Cashsoft DK
Needles: 3.25mm (border), 3.5mm main piece
Tension: 24 stitches and 32 rows = 4 inches

I rather like the picot edge but my sister, who has commissioned the piece, isn't so keen (I'll be saving that design feature for my own stripy sweater) so it'll be a plain raglan with ribbed edge rather like (in fact exactly like) this one, only for a 1 year old:

Top-down baby raglan

The deadline is September so I'd better sit down and get started on the maths.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

\o/

Anonymous said...

Great spinning, I'm glad it's all starting to click.