Instant gratification

With a little violence thrown in.

I am working on a spin/crochet along scarf with the Snobby Spinners group on Ravelry.

It is fun, and fast! And a great learning experience.

I started with this merino/silk roving.

First off the batt this is totally NOT my colors! But the pattern we are doing is Queen Anne's lace so I wanted something pretty in pink. It is also not a pattern I would pick for myself.

Then I decided to try spinning from the fold. Another first. It is a combination worsted/woolen spinning in a sense that you use short forward draw (worsted) but you introduce the twists into the fiber before you let the yarn into the bobbin (woolen draw).

And it was fast.

I wanted a worsted weight single for this project. Therein lied the problem. Despited using the largest whorl of the wheel and threadling very slowly, I still got a very overtwisted yarn. On the bobbin it didn't look too bad:

But once I wound it off I could see we had a little problem here:

Yarn spaghetti!

It's time to teach the yarn who's boss. And not in a gentle way. I washed the yarn first in very hot water, then very cold. After wringing out most of the water I beat the living daylight out of it. Yep, just whacked the poor thing on the kitchen counter top.

The transformation is amazing:

Now we were talking. It was slightly overtwisted still, so I ran it back on the wheel in the reversed direction that I spun the fiber to take out some more twist and got the yarn I wanted.

400 yards of beautiful singles, 11 wraps per inch. It is working up fast too!

I like it.