This time of year is always difficult for me, the joy of the holidays is over and Minnesota winters are still dark. The subzero (F) temps arrive with the new year and while I LOVE living in a place with four seasons and appreciate the beauty of winter this is the time of the year when I struggle with the lack of light, the cold, the long wait for spring. This is the time of year when I have a hard time feeling creative and where spinning and mindless knitting are the projects I gravitate towards.
I always have long term spinning projects going on and currently I am spinning 7 lbs of Corriedale x Romney roving into three ply knitting yarn. I am about halfway through and it's a great, mindless enjoyable spin but is not bringing my any joy when I sit down to it. To brighten my spinning time I have instead been focusing on things which bring a smile to my face when I start spinning. One project is a set of Batts I carded after returning from SOAR21, inspired by the 'Spinner's Palette' class I took with Maggie Casey. I was particularly enamored with the heathered batts I learned to card and once home I combined much of my 'bits and pieces' bag of small bits of fleece, top, and roving on my drumcarder and carded them into a complex heathered blend. I added hemp to half the batts and left the other just wool and recently pulled out the all wool batts to spin during a weekly zoom happy hour I have with friends. I am spinning it longdraw on spindles to maximize the pleasure and am SO enjoying it. It is just default spinning, but the smoothly carded batts flow through my fingers almost effortlessly and the complex colors are satisfying to watch. I do not have the photography skills to capture the blend of colors, everything is looking very washed out in these photos.
4 comments:
I'm just slowly working my way through a pile (maybe 3.5 pounds?) of greeny-gray and greeny-blue BFL. I have a vague idea of weaving something that looks like lichen with it some day, but if that doesn't happen, that's fine. And boy, do I hear you on the dreariness of February in a northern climate.
Oh, when life is rough then my spinning always goes from purposeful to simply supportive. When I need a lift from spinning, it's just about the process and the endorphins I get from playing with and handling the wool. The yarn the is just a side effect from spinning's antidepressant and centering function, and that's okay. There are seasons for end product and project spinning and seasons for pure process spinning. Aren't we lucky that the wool really doesn't mind?!
Talk about "late to the party", I'm chiming in 9 months after this blog post. For me, comfort spinning in winter always means prepping fleece by hand, and it seems that handling the raw, then washed, fleece is the start of the comforting part. The project on the wheel right now is a black Dorset lamb fleece. This fleece comes from the UMass/Amherst Dorset flock. The manager/shepherd got permission to keep the black ewe lamb to offer to handspinners we have responded. I grabbed up this lamb fleece on shearing day in 2021 and this year a spinner drove up from CT to get the same ewe's fleece, now slightly grayed. The yarn is fluffy, bouncy, crisp, and lightweight. I'm going to three-ply it and spin some white Dorset for a contrast color, then blend some of this black with some of the white for two shades of grey. I'll swatch to see how it presents cables, but I expect the dark color will hide them, so perhaps a simple saddle-shoulder, placket-neck sweater with white and grey stripes in the bottom ribbing, cuffs, and collar will be best. We'll see. It should be ready to enter in the hand-made garment division at the Mass Sheep and Woolcraft Fair in the village of Cummington, MA next May. That will get me through Jan and Feb easily.
Thank you for this blog. I always enjoy reading it and taking inspiration. Keep writing, please, Devin, I love your articles.
Just read your piece in SpinOff. Tips about socks and purl bumps—I purl the soles and then the bumps are in the outside, not against my foot.
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