After yesterday’s Day of Grey, I felt like a bit of sunshine – which is today’s #teamwow challenge, to spin outside. A glance outside revealed fog, so not doing that! Still, it’s only 8am, and misty summer mornings in Ireland often turn to blistering blue skies by around 10, so I will possess my soul in patience till then.
But I still don’t feel like continuing with the Herdwick, at least not immediately. So I am going to attempt to spin a set of rolags I got from Etsy seller, DorIdeas, called Poppy Fields:
Poppies are my favourite flower. There’s something in their rush towards the sun, their translucent vividness, and their brevity that grabs me. Can’t grow them to save my life, but at least I now live in a house where a previous occupant dotted big clumps of these wonderful flowers around the garden, so I get to admire them. If I’m quick!
This will be a challenge for me. Most of my spinning to date has been worsted-spun, or worsted-adjacent – I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’ve mostly produced thin, smooth singles. But rolags are a woollen prep, which I’ve never knowingly done. After viewing a couple of JillianEve Youtube videos, I think I’m supposed to do a long draw on a slow treadle… I’ll figure it out! But I have only 80g of this fibre and that makes me want to cry. I always have problems thinking what to do with multicoloured yarns, but so little? and woollen-spun? Even if I leave it as singles, that’s not enough for a pair of socks, assuming I can spin it as fingering…
10am.
Well phooey. Overcast, windy, and promising rain. That’s the thing about foggy Irish mornings – sometimes they LIE. All you can do is wait and see.
I have spun my first rolag, the darkest one at the top left of the pic. It has frequent flashes of green and fewer of red on a black base. I think the red and green are sari silk slubs because they are extremely shiny but don’t want to draft. My fumble-handedness doesn’t help, with sensation in only 6 out of 10 digits. I should really talk to my GP about this… Too late today, I’ll have to call tomorrow morning. My first woollen long draw was less than successful. I don’t think I got beyond about 10cm/4in “long” before the draft started falling apart, and the result is thick-and-thin even where there are no slubs. I’ve also decided to spin each rolag separately, with a view to making a pair of 2-at-a-time gloves/mitts using the start of the yarn for one glove and the end for the other, IYSWIM. I think a pair of poppy gloves would be very pretty, don’t you??
Now I’m going to put contact lenses in, I’ve had enough of these stupid varifocals for today.
8pm.
I spun a second rolag, during which An Caitín Deasa came to berate me for not sitting on the sofa, where she likes to snuggle round my bum:
Fortunately, she didn’t discover all the lovely soft floofy wool or it would now be hers, too – though given her fondness for rolling around on my son’s sweaty socks, I don’t think any of the floof here is stinky enough for her.
Shortly afterwards I had one of my energy crashes, and just about stayed awake long enough to fall into bed. I woke around 6pm, but I haven’t the energy to do much, and I appear to have pulled a muscle in my back whilst asleep… So this is the sum total of what I’ve achieved today:
It’s lumpy and bumpy, sewing-thread thin in parts and super-bulky slubs in others, so I don’t know how it would average out or if it’s worth plying. Ho hum…
Allons-y!
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