Many years ago, Eric and I went on what we lovingly refer to as our “quasi honeymoon.” It was about 6 month after we got married and we went to England and France. Since we also tied the trip in with visiting an old friend of mine and my sister, we couldn’t really consider it very honeymoon-ish. However, we did get to spend a very lovely day in Paris for Valentines’ Day!
While on this trip, we drove through Dartmoor National Park. We stopped at this one pull out, where there were hundred of ponies gathered, most were cheekily trying to steal ice cream from the tourists! Just as we were getting back in our car, I looked across the street and there stood this lone pony. She seemed to be staring at us. I snapped a quick photo and then we were off. This photo remains one of my favourites to date and is a 30″x40″ print in our living room. “Quiet Solitude” was the inspiration for May club!
This month, I decided to try my hand at creating rolags, using hand dyed 100% Corriedale top. When I looked at the photograph, I wanted to try and capture the beauty of all the natural colours in the image and switch things up a little from all the bright colours we’ve been using so far. I love how they look all rolled up!
I knew when I was making the rolags, that they were going to be a perfect prep to practice my woolen long draw. I’m actually a little embarrassed to admit that in the three years I’ve been spinning, I’ve only attempted long draw a couple of times, and they were complete disasters. So the “perfectionist” in me simply kept going back to short forward or short backward, because I could more easily control the resulting yarn. It was comfortable. However, I’ve come to realize that if I want to grow as a spinner, I need to expand outside my comfort zone and let go of my worry about perfect, even yarn.
I decided that the simplest way to spin the rolags would be to put them all onto one bobbin. I didn’t want to chain ply the yarn, and I didn’t want a completely barber polled yarn either. So I spun half my rolags from the white to the grey and then switched to spin the other half from the grey to the white. I then wound a center pull ball using my Nostepinne.
And this was my resulting yarn before finishing. Just under 100 yards of 2 ply Aran weight yarn. I have some of the colours matching up but lots of barber polling too.
It’s far from perfect, but I’m really pleased with how it turned out! It felt good to just spin and to try something new!!
I’m still waiting for it to dry, but the finishing definitely seems to have evened it up a little! I can’t wait to play with more woolen spinning!
Till next time, Happy Spinning!
Katrina
Thank you Katrina. I love the colours of May’s fibre club and was wondering how to handle it. You have given me some ideas and helped me to narrow the options. Your yarn is beautiful.
Thank you so much Marjorie. I’m glad you found the post helpful and I can’t wait to see what you do!