Still Spinning

Fun with Spinning
Just a quick update on my spinning. I went to A Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs, Oh last weekend and came away with a 1-1/2 lbs. of fiber.

8 oz of Crown Mountain Farms - Superwash Merino in the Stand by Me colorway. It's not a typical colorway for me so I'm excited to try it.

All my other purchases where natural colors. I bought the most beautiful taupe/white mixed BFL from The Trading Post. I've already spun up the following:



It's (3 oz) 190 yds of 2 ply Worsted spun (11 WPI). It looks fairly brown in the picture, but it is more gray in real life. Also, it is darker in this photo.
It is so nice. I still have 5 oz to spin. I'm really enjoying it.

I also bought 8 oz each of Dark Brown BFL and white Finn from Circle Hill Farms (Bradford, OH). I've never spun Finn. My plan is to spin up 2 bobbins full (2 oz or maybe 4 oz each) in the woolen fashion. I'm shooting for the 2 ply to be about sport weight or fingering weight. We'll see!!

I'm still smitten with the woolen spinning. It's just like magic the way the fiber drafts out so easily and has this "elasticy" feel to it. I've heard others describe it that way, but now that I've tried it, I completely understand it!

Yarn, Quilts & A Sweater Arm to Boot. Does it get Better than That??

Yarn:
The woollen spun yarn came out so nice, so Squishy. And it was so fun and quick to spin. I think I Really, Really like spinning woollen. I think I will need to practice for some more before I get it exactly correct. It is amazing how much faster it goes than Spinning worsted. The motion and the feel of the yarn is just so different when you are spinning this way. I am really surprised and happy to be challenged again.

I spun a 2 ply 120 yard from 2.25 oz (65 gms) at about 11 WPI.


Baby Quilts:
Yes, more completed projects! I finished the 2 other baby quilts for the 2 ladies at work coming back from maternity leave. They are for boys, so Fish and Bugs. I like them both, but i love the Green and Purple one the best. The colors are just so striking!


And the Free motion quilting was fun. I was really getting the hang of it by the end. I was fighting the machine at first. I had it into the shop to be cleaned and they tightened up the bobbin tension. When I tried the free motion quilting at first my machine kept missing stitches, and no matter how I adjusted the tension at the top, I could not do anything more than forward straight line quilting.

So I after about a day of stewing on this, I realized that when I first got my machine, I had this problem, and I took it to the shop and the lady helped me to adjust the bobbin tension (I loosened it just a tiny bit) and WOW, Free motion quilting in all directions. As Alison Rosen says....It's like Butta!!!

Finally a Baltic Sweater Update:
I missed my goal...But no big deal, it's still too warm to wear a wool sweater, so I extended my goal to attempt to finish my Baltic sweater by the end of September....Or maybe the end of October. I only have 1 sleeve to go. If I really buckle down, I could finish it in a couple of weeks, but I have been distracted again by a more challenging project.
But more to come on that later!!!! And yes, those are my toes holding down the bottom edge of the sweater so you can see the colorwork pattern.