About two weeks ago, a quick pass through the Stitches Midwest marketplace found me returning to my car with a brand new polymer whorl drop spindle and several ounces of various types of wool rovings.
The DIY attitude is taking me even further back than I've already gone. Looking at knitwear in the stores and saying "I could do that" (never minding that I don't have the TIME to do that...) wasn't enough. Now I look at the yarn I'd use to do it myself and say again "I could do that!" It won't be long before I buy my first fiber animal. No joke. I want alpacas. But I digress...
A few years ago I tried hand spinning. It was a lot of fun, but then we moved and I couldn't find the spindle and wool right away among all the boxes. I hadn't developed much proficiency with it yet, so the loss wasn't great. I just kept buying ready-to-knit yarn. And buying it. And buying it... The hallmark of a good crafter is a large stash, right? I must be an excellent crafter.
Fast-forward to today. We've moved again, but this time into a log home where we're slowly building a DIY life. A log home with acreage. Enough acreage for ... wait for it ... hooved animals like alpaca or llamas, or I guess just boring old sheep. So there you have it. I must learn how to spin so that someday I can have fiber animals. Because I can.
Relearning how to hand spin a single ply thread didn't take long, but I'd never tackled plying before. I figured there was no time like the present, so I found a video online showing how to Navajo ply on a drop spindle. I tried it for the first time while demonstrating spinning to a friend new to the knitting world. No pressure, right?
It actually went well. I was so enamored with the process that I picked it up again later that night while the young'n was in his high chair (it's really handy when they start being able to feed themselves, isn't it?) and not getting underfoot.
And I Navajo plied that polymer whorl right into two pieces.
Am I the only person who's done this? Is Navajo plying that much harder on a whorl? How do you do it without clamping the whorl between your knees? I was heartbroken.
But something good did come out of it. A few good somethings, actually. It motivated me to find my original drop spindle so I could carry on, I found a bunch more roving to play with, I rescued a bunch of yarn from further moth damage (there was some), and I'm attempting to make wool dryer balls from my old singles. And now I'm practiced enough with Navajo plying that my yarn is tarting to look semi-decent. Now to figure out what to knit with it...
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