Rows Red

Fiber: “Saturn”, Blue Faced Leicester from Seekay Craft
Wheel: Lendrum DT, 10:1 ratio whorl
Weight: 5oz/141g
Yardage: 1,252 yards, 2 ply
Diameter: Lace weight
Techniques: Spun worsted, plied from a cake.

Saturn

From the moment I dug through Carolyn’s stock, pre-Jersey, I knew that this BFL would be coming home with me. Never mind that my stash is large. No, never mind any hint of reason. The fact of the matter is that Carolyn dyes rich, moody colors, and I like rich, moody colors. Saturn spoke of the gloaming, that in between, twilight time when shadows are thick in the air. Every time I pulled this bobbin out someone complimented the fiber, people really loved the dyeing.

8 oz of BFL in "Saturn" from Seekay Craft.

I prepped the fiber by stripping it down the middle. I then pulled off a length to work with, opening it up and fluffing it out. With a few gentle tugs down the length the BFL blossomed into a silky, effortless spin. You know the fiber is good when it begs to be spun as thin as thread, and does so with absolutely no effort on your part. Spinning this fiber required nothing but endless patience, an unfortunate byproduct of very fine spinning. It took me much longer to spin the initial single than I would have liked because I was, at the time, only spinning at Knit Night.

100% BFL, "Saturn", dyed by Carolyn of Seekay Craft. Like buttah.

Once I finished the single it sat on the bobbin for a very long time. Being only the first of two 4 oz braids, I wasn’t sure what to do. I wasn’t in the mood to spin that fine (for that long), and by the time I was ready to do something about it, the initial bobbin had been sitting so long that I’d be plying a hyper fresh bobbin against a mellow old bobbin. In lace weight? It didn’t seem like a good idea to me. So what to do? Navajo ply it? Maybe, but I really to have an actual lace weight two-ply in my bag o’ handspun. That left only plying it against itself from a cake.

Like shadows and sunsets.

Have you ever plied a thread weight single from a center pull ball? A tightly packed, massive, center pull ball? Great care was taken, let me tell you. The fact that the center strand only snapped twice is a testament to that care. Amazingly, both times I was able to easily find the snapped end, though I thought for sure the first time I was a goner. It had snapped *inside* the ball. Be still my heart. Thankfully all it took was pulling out a tiny bit of yarn barf to locate it, and all was well.

I see a shawl in my future.

I was afraid of putting too much twist in the single, so initially this came off the plying head slightly under spun. After being passed around, the other Knit Night ladies concurred, and I ran that sucker back through. Strangely, both times Wendy and her husband were at my house. I knew I couldn’t re-cake that skein, it barely fit as a single and no way was it going to be rewound in one go as a two-ply. My solution? Spin it right off my free standing wooden skein winder. It worked like a charm! After being re-spun and given the usual scalding bath, beating, and dry by the fire, the skein passed inspection… no excess twist in sight.

Very, very fine.

I’m extremely pleased with this yarn. It’s everything I could have hoped for, and I’m tempted to knit with it immediately instead of waiting to enter it into Rhinebeck. I think I’ll wait, no matter how tempting it is. It’s not often that I spin a skein where I’m not picking out flaws. The fact that it happened to be made from my friend Carolyn’s roving is the icing on the cake. I bet she’d flip if it placed at Rhinebeck, I know I would if I were her! I have one more braid of this left, and since it’s brighter than the first, I think I’ll try spinning it in a different style for a separate project. The fun’s not over, not by a long shot.

Tags: FO, Spinning