Posted on 7 Comments

Experimenting with a Turkish Spindle

In March, I picked up this lovely Turtle Made Turkish Spindle at Fibres West. That night I immediately got started on a 2oz braid of lovely Polwarth Silk from Sweet Georgia.

Every night before bed, I would spin for 5-10 minutes. It made the process very slow, but I liked the quiet reflection just before climbing into bed to go to sleep.

_KLM5992

Eventually I had two little turtles ready for plying. They weren’t pretty but they were functional. My friend, Diana wrote a great post about her turkish turtles. It’s a really interesting point of view!

_KLM5996

I had started each of my turtles in a different way. One with a leader of yarn, the other by putting the fibre into the base of the spindle and spinning a leader that way. I found that my yarn leader came off the spindle a little better but they both worked well.

_KLM6002

Then I started making my plying ball. I have a small felted ball that I use to wrap the fibre around. I find it makes the plying process much easier!

_KLM6006

_KLM6008

All done!

_KLM6009

Then I set off to ply. I used my Steampunk Spindle. I find that I can fit a lot of fibre on it. In the past, I’ve plyed an entire 4 oz braid on it… and still had room! I didn’t take any photos during the process, but here it is, all done.

DSC_8119

DSC_8120

DSC_8121

Finally, I was left with just under 200 yards of beautiful, fluffy two ply yarn. I found that the weight from the turkish spindle created a beautiful halo on my fibre and I’m thrilled with the final product. Now to decide what to make with it!

_KLM6016

_KLM6020

Happy Friday! I hope you have a wonderful weekend full of adventure and crafting ahead of you.

~Katrina

FibreFriday

7 thoughts on “Experimenting with a Turkish Spindle

  1. I’m just blown away at how this turned out. It is truly beautiful yarn. And the halo! I was shocked on Tuesday at guild. Also, I love that photo of the Steampunk standing in the wood. Also, how you wind when plying is really interesting – I’ve not seen that. Would love to learn more.

    1. Thanks Rachel. I’ll happily show you the wind on the next time we see each other!

  2. Really gorgeous Katrina!

    1. Thanks so much Chrissy!

  3. That yarn is so beautiful!! I am spinning up some Cormo on a drop spindle right now, I was planning it to be a singles yarn, but this makes me think about plying it! I would love to learn more about how you wrap to ply! Great post!

    1. Thank you so much! I’ll do a follow up post about the plying balls, it makes it so easy to ply on a spindle. I’ve not spun Cormo before, but I’ve heard that it’s lovely to spin!

  4. […] were a couple of questions on a previous post about my plying process on spindles, so I thought I would share that with you today as well. The […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *