Fancy

Had a great class today at Once a Sheep learning to spin fancy yarns. It was quite a challenge as you become more accustomed to trying to spin fine, even yarns and this requires you to do the exact opposite. We had to learn to treadle slowly and use pencil roving to create thick singles that we could then use along with a very fine single to create some interesting effects.

The purple hank features lots of slubs, the first time I've made them intentionally, these are lumpy bits in the yarn which usually feature when you are learning to spin but today we learned how to make them on purpose. The two turquoise hanks feature nops which are created by allowing the yarn to go forward and backward over itself to create a blobbly bit, this was very twisty when done just once but plied again in the opposite direction created a really nice yarn with loads of texture.

The grey one was really exciting - you use a very fine single to ply with a thicker one and you make coils by pushing the thicker one up at intervals and locking them in place with the finer yarn, it took a wee bit to get the hang of it but once I got going with it I loved it.

The next one I did was the multicolour skein which is highly textured as it contains, merino, wensleydale and blue faced leicester blend wrapped round the thin core. I also did a tiny bit of angora which was sooo hard as the fibres are so short but it made an amazingly light and lofty yarn that is just so textured and soft and gorgeous.

The final thing we did was beading. For this technique you three loads of beads onto the very fine yarn and use that with the wrapping technique, every so often you add in a bead from your fine yarn, just bringing it up the thread and securing it in place with the other fibre. On it's own this was veeeery twisty, but when plied with the fine yarn again it balanced out nicely and created a really fancy, sumptuous bedded yarn.

I'm really excited to try out all the new techniques in my spinning, that's what I love about going to the classes, every time you learn so much and it just improves your basic technique and allows you to experiment and use your imagination to push the boundaries. I don't often knit with my homespun yarns but I have been using them a lot in weaving, however to maintain the texture and softness of many of today's yarns I think it might be time to have a go at knitting with them.