Three Bags Full
I have three bags of roving sitting, waiting, to be spun. They've been waiting for about six years. I decided to start with the silver/gray 4# bag. Very greasy. Hard to draft. I struggled and managed to spin 180 yards. Not acceptable. I washed a handful but found that it felts easily and I just don't want to fiddle with 4#s of roving. I measured out about 6 yds of roving and stuck it into the microwave knowing that heat would loosen up the grease and make drafting easy. It works! I am trying to spin it up bulky but the fleece prefers worsted weight. I can't remember how to spin bulky weight yarn. I took a class from Peggy (?) Casey at SOAR, but it was a number of years ago and my memory is, well, not great. But, she had me spinning bulky and it was easy-peasy.
Blogless Kim gave me 400 grams of Polworth-Mohair a few years ago. It is luminous. The roving graduated from navy to a wonderful copper, with bits of natural brown here and there. I now have just under 1200 yds of plied goodness.
The newest warp is on the Union. At this rate I'm going to have wall to wall rag rugs.
Now to publish this and get to winding 10 yards x 30" for the other loom.
posted by Marie | 7:33 AM
5 Comments:
Maggie Casey, I should think.
If you are spinning short draw, your forward hand is likely to be pinching off the twist with your fingers just on the *yarn*. I find that to spin bulky, I adjust that so that I control the twist by pinching more on the fibre supply. This gives a slightly broader "base" to draft from. I was thinking about doing a blog post on this very subject soon - I am spinning some corriedale thicker than my usual.
Helpful? Or just interfering :-)?
See, I knew you would do it justice, where I would turn it into razorwire. Looks lovely.
I'm surprised that roving has so much grease - no fun. I should think the the processor didn't do their job or earn their money - unfortunate. Six years is a long time for grease to settle in - hope I don't need to use your microwave "trick" but glad to know it just in case.
Six years??? OK. Now I don't feel so badly about some of the things I have sitting around waiting to be spun.
Hi Marie - stop by blog. I have something for yo uto pick up.
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