Happy Thursday

Yesterday I decided to make some inroads on the spinning fiber backlog. In the spring I bought a Louet Julia spinning wheel (second wheel for me) and I was never as happy with it as I hoped I would be. Finally, I sent it in to Louet America and they did find a few things to fix. It does run more smoothly than it did, but honestly, I'm not sure I'm ever going to love this wheel. The bobbin vibrates a lot while I spin. The shaft is only supported at one end and there's a lot of play in the bearing that mounts it to the upright. I told this to the Louet people, but I don't think any of the stuff they fixed had to do with this area. Anyway, the technician there proclaimed it "spinning fine now" and sent it back. So, it came back earlier this week and I decided to give it a trial run.


I had some alpaca roving that was frustrating me and decided to give myself permission to not carry on with it as it was. It was kind of sticky, and clumpy, and there were sections of short cuts. I just couldn't get in a rhythm with that fiber. I decided to blend it with some wool from Brown Sheep mill ends I bought a few years ago. My mill ends are a thick rope of natural white roving with a thinner rope of black running along with it. I stripped off some of the white, to balance the ratios more toward The Dark Side and blended it with the charcoal grey alpaca. The resulting batts were a joy to spin.


This is a 50 gram-ish sample skein of my yarn. I'm guessing sport weight. I still need to wash it and let it hang. And do all the quantifying. But I like it. I think it'll be a nice soft watch cap for Mr. SABLE.