During Le Tour de Fleece 2009, I spun a total of 11.5 ounces, completed three skeins of hand spun (plus one sample) and improved my skill on Navajo-plying (chain-plying). My goals evolved during the tour and working on chain-plying became my focus.
To start things off, here’s the mini-skein I spun during the tour… I forget which night…from a batt sample from Spincerely:
On Friday, July 24th, I tried to start my day spinning. I’d finished these singles the night before:
And I wanted to start plying. But a few minutes into it, I became frustrated because I wasn’t liking the results so I stopped. I knew I was practicing the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Also, there was just a feeling impatience, which is not good when trying to learn something. And little did I know, this was the beginning of a very bad Friday that ended with a headache.
On Saturday, July 25th, I went to my local yarn store to knit and pick up some yarn that they had custom ordered for me – some Blue Sky Alpaca’s Skinny Dyed organic cotton, DK weight, in a lovely pale pink (color# 305)… but more about that yarn in another post. The rest of the day I was a little under the weather and didn’t spin, so that became my rest day since I did not rest on Monday.
Finally on Sunday, July 26th, I got back to the spinning wheel after deciding to let go of the frustration and had one of those moments that are special when you’re self-taught – where something clicks, for whatever reason. In this case, I was fixing a broken single, trying the splice in the end and I had to switch my hand positions and things started to work. Among other things, I got better tension and I was liking how the twist was looking.
The finished yarn definitely is not perfect, but it’s better.
Never stop learning.
Whoo Hoo!!!! 
)
