spinning out on me...

We saw the Daughter off on Saturday. She's gone back to Baltimore for the rest of the school year. Then, she'll be home for the Summer.

Not a lot of knitting happened this weekend, although I did pass the halfway mark on the second Calorimetry. I also sewed some panels of fabric for work—we are recovering a partition and couldn't find fabric that we liked that was wide enough. I also wound my Monsoon yarn into two balls in preparation for knitting the socks from the Rockin' Sock Club and wound the Rio yarn for the Fauxbios Shawl.

Mostly, I played with my spinning, in one way or another. Several months ago I had purchased a wool roving from a closeout bin in a local yarn store. It was inexpensive and I figured it would be good to use for practice. I've gotten tired of spinning the sample-size rovings and wanted to try something larger. I pulled out my bargain and started spinning it.

My goal was to spin this thinner than my previous attempts. So far I've achieved a 2-ply bulky (5) weight yarn, something bordering on Medium (4), and I'd like to work my way to Light (3) weight, or finer. Over the course of the weekend, I spun half of the roving, and prepped the other half for spinning. Here are the results of my weekend:


(Yes, that's a plastic straw. it was the perfect size to slip my spun fiber off the spindle without having to unwind it.)

In between, I researched various homemade "Lazy Kate"s on the web. I came across this entry that showed a Lazy Kate using a plastic basket. I already had the basket, the needles, and the point protectors. I rigged it up and plied the two singles that I had spun earlier in the week.


Now, I don't have bobbins, just spun fiber on plastic straws, and it was not a great deal of yarn to ply. However, I could see why you want to tension stuff after plying the yarns. So, I went off to Michael's with my 40% off coupon in hand. A visit to the wood aisle got me four toy wheels and four candle cups; a visit to the knitting aisle got me two 14-inch size 3 needles that would fit though the holes of the toy wheels and the candle cups plus a set of larger point protectors.

Back home, I glued the wheels to the candle cups; cut off the tips of two point protectors; and found some elastic in my stash. Here is my assembled Lazy Kate:


When I finish spinning the second half of the roving, I'll try it out!