You spin me right round Inferno Monster!

Between Defensive Driving and a Bachelorette party, I got in a ridiculous amount of spinning.

Before I talk about Inferno Monster, I need to dish about the driving course and the party.

$50 an hour.
My eyes teared up and my stomach dropped when I bought my first 6 months of car insurance. I was so excited to learn it was JUST $500 but I didn’t fully understand, that was for a 6 months policy. I had a swift learning curve. It does seem a tad goofy that at 35, this is the first time I’ve bought car insurance, but until 2 years ago, I lived in great cities with great public transportation rendering a car, not only not smart, but completely foolish. I’ve never been a big car person, never really felt that apparently All-America desire to drive whopping gas guzzling vehicles. Then I moved here, the Ex bought me a car (which will shortly be nicknamed POC short for “piece-o-crap”) and I had to buy insurance. Once I figured out how it all works, the buying of the insurance wasn’t a problem. Watching $500+ leave my account was painful however, especially when you consider that in a blink of 6 months, I’ll have to pay that all over again. And basically the only way to lower your insurance is to take a defensive driving class. Now I have heard people lament about the horrors of sitting in a room for 6 hours listening to some guy wax pathetic on the rules of the road, but honestly, 6 hours of my life is totally worth expending in the strenuous activity of sitting in a chair knowing that I’ll get to keep about 100 smackers in my wallet. Nice ROI there don’t ya think?

Bachelorette Parties
I’ve never been to one before. This was an event for a co-worker. I wouldn’t consider us “friends” but we are certainly “friendly” and I was glad to go. There is an odd tradition in these parts that Bachelor/Stag/Bachelorette parties are paid events, meaning that you, as the guest, buy a ticket and pay for the privilege of drinking with the future Bride or Groom and stand witness as their ‘singleton’ days fade into the sunset. This is how most couples raise money for the wedding I’m told. How odd is that? So in essence, it’s like paying to go to the wedding. Very strange. I had a good time regardless and rediscovered my love for Stoli. No, there were wild tales to tell for the nights proceedings, although I did find myself in the peculiar position of molding penises from purple playdo with my co-workers (silly games are apparently required at such events). That was fairly uncomfortable (more for them, less for me).

Back to the spinning!

I’ve mentioned my 3-part-plan to spin Inferno. I started off like gang busters and got the first part done. I divided up the roving into three separate colors and spun each color separately. It was much harder than I anticipated to separate the fiber. And no, I am not quite that anal enough to sit there with tweezers and pull out each fiber individually. I wound up with bunches of little wisps of roving that had two colors in it. So I decided to spin these bits at the beginning and the ending of each of the solid color batch. This fiber was a tad more difficult to work with than other stuff I’ve been using. It’s VERY soft, VERY poofy, VERY silky, and will start to felt just from the pressure of my fingers and the moisture off my palms. This is not a “gnash-teeth-rend-garments” type of problem, but does lead to slubs and mild irritation (that’s mental irritation, not physical). I’ve adjusted the way I hold the fiber a bit to help with this problem. The end yarn doesn’t suffer that much because of it. OH, also, this stuff breaks like mad. I’ll be spinning happily, la la la, twirl draft twirl draft twirl CLUNK - the single will breaks and the spindle will crash to the ground. Clunk. I think I’m going to need a new spindle soon, as this one has bellyflopped quite a bit. This stuff is so poofy that I’ve had to add a lot of twist to it of it just breaks for the weight of the spindle. But I did get to ply it all.
And I’m happy to report that the yarn is delightfully soft and fuzzy. I’ll have to let Claire give it the nuzzle test. But it seems quite nice. I can’t wait to knit with it, but wait I must! I need to find a pattern that I can show off the three different patterned yarns. Well, I HOPE I’ll have three different patterned yarns.

I’m not too sure how this will all work out yet.

A Monster Plan (or "Teaching Yourself to Spin the Hard Way")

So, as I said before I could not resist the Inferno roving from Copper Pot Woolies. My pictures really don’t do it justice. (I need to work on better picture taking but that is another post) And I’ve been drooling over it and wondering just how the heck I’m going to spin it up. (And if you decided to chime in folks, I’m working of a drop spindle here, none of that fancy wheel nonsense!). So far I have managed to leave the Inferno Monster safely in its plastic baggie but I can’t promise I won’t take it out and pet it in the future.

Spinning newbie

Inferno would be the 4th bunch of roving I have ever attempted to spin. Some would think I’m nuts and that I should practice practice practice first and not waste my first attempts on something so beautiful. Well, that certainly is a valid opinion (and certainly easier on the wallet!). But my thought is, I want to enjoy all that practice right? So why NOT work on something beautiful and lush to the fingertips? Inferno was $15. Sure, I could get cheaper stuff (the Apricot was only about $7 or $8) but it was kind of hard to work with being stiff and scratchy, and regardless of the fact that I over spun the heck out of it, it’s not soft enough to wear. So I’ll practice on the good stuff thank you very much!

Learn by doing
I’m working on the Spring Mix roving right now but that doesn’t really require any thought on color management. THAT is my practice batch. I’m working hard on getting the thickness fairly even. But I’m finding that I have difficulty spinning thick stuff. For some reason, thinner singles are much easier for me to work. It came in one loooooooooooog length. I split that in three so I could spin three singles to ply from. For the first rope I spun, I just split it in half and spun from a think chunky mass. Then, like a smart person, I did some research on pre-drafting. Yes, I should have done that first, I am a fool, but we’re going with the “learn by doing” axiom. I will eventually buy a book or take a class one day. For the second length, I have it divided into thin pencils that I pre-drafted out. I’m interested to see if there are noticeable differences in the length of the color changes. I’ve split this section probably into 8 bunches or so I’m noticing the blue sections on the second rope to be much shorter. But there could have just been more blue on that section of the roving. Spring Mix is helping me get some of the basics down, before I have to worry about color. On to Inferno!!!

Begin at the end
I’ve been thinking a bit what I want the final Inferno yarn to look like. I loved the Mother of Pearl but it’s a little on the stripy side for me. I’m hoping that I varied the length of the color changes enough in Spring Mix to make it not so stripy, but we’ll see what happens! I like yarns that are more variegated not striped. Then I was thinking about separating the three colors, spinning each separately into singles and then plying all three together. While cool, I think it would be a little too uniform. In my minds eye I see the orange popping out of the finished item and the purple oozing into nooks and crannies… But I don’t want any one section of completely solid color either.

So my plan is to separate out the three colors into single strips. I’m going to combine those three strips into three singles in the following color combinations: Orange & Pink, Orange & Purple, Pink & Purple. So from these three singles I should have a final yarn that then has sections of two color combinations. I think. Now this all works “on paper” but I’m not to sure it is going to work in real life yet!

That’s part of the fun!

I’m excited about this but I do have other things I have to get thru before diving in. My Sock 2 for SKP2008 needs to get done, as well as the Spring Mix roving and I do have the skull shrug not to mention oodles of other project. I will win the lottery so I can be creative all day long!

Inferno MONSTER

I gave in finally and I am now firmly fascinated with the whole spinning thing. I'm going to Rhinebeck Sheep and Fiber Festival in the fall to scope out spinning wheels, that's right, I'll be taking them for a test drive! The Mamajama meets a bunch of Ravelry folks at Panera's to knit away and I was foolish enough to try out spinning on a while one of the lovely (translation - EVIL ENABLERS). Now I must have a wheel! I was going to hold off on buying any more roving for a while and start saving up for Rhinebeck, but then I saw Inferno by Copper Pot Woolies on Etsy and it knocked my socks off! AND it came today (I ordered on Sunday! wooo!). I can't wait to get my fingers in it, but, I'm not really sure what to do with it. It came in three fat strips of three colors each- a deep purple, a burning pink and a glowing yellow. Do I separate out the colors and spin each one separately? Do I just pull chunks off and spin what comes to my finger tips in a color jumble? Do I try and capture the colors evenly, like spin 4 inches of each color and try and line them up when I ply? I'm lost HELP!!!!!!!!