#handspinning — Public Fediverse posts

I've finally finished plying the results of my #TourDeFleece2026 spinning of my heritage breed samplers! They still need to be finished (washed, thwacked, etc.)

All but the outer two hanks are from 50g of fiber. The Lonk on the left is ~30g, spun after I gave up on my Nano, and the Alpaca on the right was 30g from the start. In between, quite a bit of variation in texture, softness, and diameter.

The Jacob "natural stripe" is sadly more muddy than I'd hoped! The singles had some distinct stripey character in places, but that tended to get muddled when twined with not-so-distinct sections. Oh well! It's still a nice heather effect.

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Oh hey! I finally have all my Tibetan Mastiff and/or merino swatches together for comparison!

Left to right: 3x prep/spin variants of 100% fur, 1x 25% wool, 2x 33% wool, 1x 50% wool. All are 3-ply. The fabric is somewhat dense for the blends in the middle: I probably should have gone up in needle size for the yarn, but I was keeping that factor the same between the swatches.

While the 75% fur (3:1 blend) seemed nice and fuzzy as yarn, similar to the 100% fur, it came out distinctly less fuzzy in the swatch. I now wonder what only 10% wool would be like, but I don't want to keep running tests until I run out of fiber to actually work with!

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can you imagine, a birthday present completed more than a month in advance?! unheard of. unprecedented.

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it's #Caturday and Rosie is very proud of the shawl we knit together. mostly her, of course, I was just there for the parts that needed thumbs.

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alpaca comes in so many pretty colors 😍

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And plied. Still needs to be finished, but I already really love it.

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fin fact: rosie loves alpaca. she loves it so much.

I'm pretty happy with how this came out too. this is a 3-ply crepe with two merino/silk plies and one slightly thicker alpaca ply.

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Three bobbins filled to the brim.

I think, I named 6 to spin the singles rather consistently, but the truth is in the plying, so we will see ...

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was looking for something to pair with my shiny shiny silk. I had a little bit of alpaca fleece and I'm remembering now why someone gave it to me for free. it is filthy. it's real pretty though, the dust and the vm should wash out.

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Next spinning project.

The fiber is combed top from John Arbon - a mix of 90% British wool (Exmoor Blueface, Bluefaced Leicester, Devon Closewool and Romney) and 10% Mulberry Silk.

It's a dream to spin and even if it's only a little silk - it has a huge impact on the softness, more than I'd expected.

When I visited the shop, they'd just gotten a huge delivery, and I was allowed to go through the boxes and pick something - I felt very honored

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quiet sunday spinning, soft and shiny

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Oh my, this is a great technique to deal with a striped top. The colors often look gorgeous in those tops but when you actually spin them, the colors get all muddy.

But some patience is required.

Questionable Blend 12 - Ice and Fire. Intentional Optical Mixing on a Bl...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1ricOW-ThB0&is

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#handspinning crunchy bulky wool - the big ply is black welsh mountain, the grey ply is idk some nonspecific roving and the tan is just some yarn Rosie's been kicking around. pretty.

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A day off of work, weather too hot to go outside or do anything that requires more activity than sitting in a chair - a skein of yarn is done.

I was in such a flow thati even forgot to take a picture of the singles.

I think it had about the same yardage as the other one from the toot above. And about the same softness.

We will see, how they really differ after finishing as I've used two different techniques for spinning the singles.

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Helemaal buiten mijn comfortzone, want ik spin meestal juist dun en gelijkmatig, volgde ik een workshop corespinning bij Thérèse Akkermans tijdens het wolkamp in Elsloo afgelopen week. Maar wat was het leuk! Nu nog bedenken wat ik met deze streng zal gaan doen. #HandSpinning #ArtYarn #FiberArt #Wool

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And plied.

What a difference it makes, when you don't try to spin as finely as possible.

Pre finishing the yarn is not super soft to the touch, but the fiber mix (40% Devon Closewool / 40% Romney / 20% Exmoor Blueface) wasn't suggesting it would be too soft anyway - all of those breeds are in the mid 30ies micron count.

I'll spin the other braid and finish them together.

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Spun the first braid, from the fold. And in my usual not too tidy way of filling a bobbin.

When I start a new bobbin I usually pay attention and slide the hook regularly along to fill it evenly. But when the bobbin is about half full the moving has to happen less frequently and I get in the zone, only realizing how much I've spun when the uptake gets weak. Which is way too late for a nicely filled bobbin.

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First thing to decide: how do I want to spin this. The way the fiber is structured, it is best suited for worsted spinning, fine singles and then ply them.

But that is my default spin - it gets a bit boring.

So I'm going to try two different approaches here. The purple-turquoise one I will spin from the fold, the other one with a low ratio and a rather high uptake just end-to-end. Both will be a 2-ply. Let's see, how the yarns differ.

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Today’s tour overtime - Noel, merino/bamboo/silk, 62.5/25/12.5.

Plus Merida and Harvest bracelet plied.

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Next spinning projects.

Last year on vacation I visited a wonderful fiber arts shop that has a great selection of spinning fiber. Among other things they have John Arbon - and of course I had to get some.

Two braids of Appledore in the color ways Spicy Pippin and Bitter Ellis, 100 g each (I forgot to take a picture before starting to spin off over of them)

Let's see what they will turn into

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The shop was Stiel Wolwerkplaats near Almelo, NL

I did try to spin to match, but with about a year’s gap and more experience, it’s thinner and more even. It is a different blend batch too, so the colours are quite different - less yellow in the new batch. The originals are on the right of their newly spun skeins. The little ones are bracelet plied.

Malachite blend (merino, bamboo, silk) from golden fleece studio on Etsy.

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And now it's finished. Very soft, very nice, very fine.

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Final tour tally … now that the Femmes is finished - lots 😁 and a little bit not in frame on supported and drop spindles.

Each sample skein (11) is about 40-45g, 60-90m 2plied. 7 more samples are singles that are resting (they’ll be roughly the same lengths). The big malachite skein is 460m (with another 30 of ply-back), the purple/navy Edinburgh braid is 100g/160m, and the sock wool is 200g split over two bobbins.

Probably around 2km+ once plied in total I’d reckon.

I didn’t get through my advent calendar fully thanks to the bigger malachite ply and the sock wool espin - there are only 4 samples left, so I’ll continue apace until those have been spun up.

There’s most definitely a colour theme here. 😆

I already have more weaving and knitting plans than there is yarn length.

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