Now that I’m getting more comfortable spinning and walking I tend to drop the spindle more. With any luck, even more practice will reduce my tendency to skitter the spindle down the road, but in the meantime I put a bumper on the bottom of the shaft. A pencil eraser works well to cover the end, and protects the wood from sudden impact!
I had a small amount of two-ply hand spun merino wool left. Not enough to weave on my frame loom, but if I could rig something up a little smaller it might work. So I tried weaving on one of my wire jigs.
I used my smallest pins to hold the warp threads and a tapestry needle to pass the weft through to make a plain weave. As the weaving progressed, I had to hold down the pins as they tended to pop up out of the jig. On the whole, the idea worked, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience since the pins were only loosely set and it was difficult to do the final passes. Mark that up as a nope.
I did some crochet, some knitting, and now it is time for nålbinding! I only had two ply and four ply yarn left, but I tried using a tapestry needle as well as a hand-made nål on the two ply. Sizing the loops to the tapestry needle was much too small and much too tight, but the 25mm diameter nål made a nice fabric for both the two ply and the four strand cable ply. I stitched in the round, then cut the tubes open. The swatch does not unravel when cut! Although a few tiny bits of yarn do fall out. Of the three methods of fabric construction, nålbinding is the slowest, but I enjoy it the most. The process is soothing and the resulting fabric is nicely stretchy (at least with this stitch).
I had some more of my differently plied yarn, so I knit some swatches. I used different needle sizes for each yarn, but used stockinette for each piece. I was reminded how much faster I am with long straight needles than with circular needles, but my knitting is still slower than my crocheting. I like the knitted fabric, but don’t really care to knit. Ah well.
All the knitted swatches had to be blocked because stockinette stitch is curly. The 2- ply was the softest, but the S plied four-strand had the most balanced stitches (the right and left side of each loop have the same number of twists). Most commercial yarn has an S ply.
What to do with wee balls of yarn? Swatches! The experiments on my hand-spun yarn continue. I crocheted up a swatch from each of the three balls of yarn, one two-ply, one three-ply, and one four-ply. I used a double crochet stitch for each swatch, but used a different sized hook for the four-ply. I’ve labeled each swatch (as you do) with a bit of hole-punched card stock.
The stitch definition is nicer (to me) for the three and four ply yarns, but the two-ply is has the softest feel. Although, the three ply may have felt softer if I used a size larger hook.
Critters and Craft 