What's your largest spindle project?

This is a short posting due to the Spring Break and Easter weekend ... the kids are home during the day, keeping me on my toes and running!

I spun up four ounces of wool/silk/faux angora blend on my spindles at the Camp Burton Spin-In, using my Tabachek Bog Oak top whorl and my Kundert -- I'd spin each spindle full, then join the ends and wind onto one, for a bigger ball. This
is going to be a nalbound hat, combined with the two ounces I did last year, they won a blue ribbon at the county fair! There's another 4 ounce bag to be spun yet, in case I need more. So it's 6 ounces so far, maybe 10 ounces before I'm done.

Also I did some sampling on my spindles, starting with a two-ply yarn. That is, I took a finished two ply, added twist and then cabled it, to see if I would get a thicker yarn. Surprisingly (to me!) I didn't -- it was the same thickness as the
two-ply, just muuuuch more twist. So that didn't work.

Then I "unplied" the two-ply into two side-by-side strands, made a center-pull ball of that rather "active" unply, and made a 4-ply from it. _That_ was thicker, and
enough thicker to be the sweater I'd like to knit. Can't say I'll do the rest of this un-plying/re-plying on the spindles, but it was a great way to sample!

Last fall I spun up 4 ounces of superwash Corriedale on my spindles and 3-plied it for my mother as a gift, as she loves to knit with handspun. That was a great colorway called "Glorious". Superwash is a great dyeing fiber, as the colors strike so brightly, compared to the same colors on regular wool.

The largest single quantity I've spindle-spun is about a pound of brown Romney, spun on Navajo spindles for felted clogs. I two-plied, not sure if I did the plying on the Navajo or my trusty top-whorls.

The "fastest" spindle project was 4 ounces of laceweight spun and then knit into a shawl -- the spindling was one month, a spindlitis challenge, and the knitting was 2 or 3 -- the fineness of the wool led to using size 1 needles!

So, what's your largest spindle project? I'd love to hear! Comment here, post a link to this "meme" on your blog, or email me -- ask =at= thebellwether =dot= com.

(based on a post by me to spindlitis, March 2007)

2 comments:

Sarah said...

My largest spindle project is the Shetland Triangle Shawl from Wrap Style. It is pictured at the blog entry here:
http://knittingsarahk.blogspot.com/2007/03/too-twisted-for-words.html
It is my first real knitting from my handspun. The only other thing I've knit from my handspun was a mini sock.

Amelia of Ask The Bellwether said...

Wow! your shawl is gorgeous. Thanks for the link!