The Stashbuckler

Still going!

March was a BIG month for spinning.  At the end of February I showed you a bobbin – the first of 6 that I was working on for a big project. Well I’m done!

I spun this big pile of fiber:

And ended up with this:

~1100 yards of beautiful silky wool destined to be a sweater. I should add that the 11oo yards wasn’t quite enough for the sweater I wanted to knit, and a kind Raveler sent me a bit more! So I should have enough to make my sweater. I’m already almost 2 balls in:

The remainder of the month I devoted to small, quick spins. Over on Ravelry, in the 12 pounds in 2012 group, the March challenge was to spin batts. I have several in the stash and have never been to comfortable spinning this particular preparation so I thought I’d try my hand at it.

Spin number two was a beautiful set of batts by Spinnerette Fibers. The wool is Falkland which is one of my favorites and the colorway is Denim.

I spun the yarn in color chunks, and plied each batt together in the same order so the gradient (white, grey, sky blue, navy) was preserved. I love how it came out!

Spin #3 was a small one. A while ago in a swap I received 2 small batts (total 1 ounce) of Rambouillet wool in yellows and purples.  The dyer, Spin Up Girl Fibers, created them for me and called them “Flirty Fluffy!”

Since there was only a little bit of fiber, I decided to spin this into laceweight singles. Again, I pulled the colors apart to preserve the gradient and then I spun. I have to say the fiber preparation was AMAZING. It was so soft and drafted so beautifully. I totally credit that for my excellent yardage – almost 150 yards out of 1 ounce of fiber!

Spin number 4 for the month were some batts that I made in January. I’m part of a spinning group from the eastern Kansas area called the Spinsters. We meet once a month somewhere between Kansas City and Topeka (usually).  January sessions are at the Harveyville Art Project where Nikol graciously lets us use her carders. Everyone brings a bit of fiber to share, and we all end up with crazy colorful batts!

Last year I loved how my batts looked and how the resulting yarn spun up. This year I thought the batts were kind of fun. We had a full rainbow of colors which I separated into lights and darks:

I managed to get fairly decent yardage out of these (yay for spinning thinner) but I have to say I’m sort of ambivalent about the resulting yarn. Somehow the colors just don’t come through and I feel it’s kind of a boring yarn. What do you think?

Total spinning for the month: 34.4 oz or 2 lbs, 2.4 oz.