I so lost the bet!

It's a good thing I didn't actually bet on it. I thought I could live with the slight over ply in the wool skeins I had for dyeing.  I mean, it is a nice yarn.  The only way I could make that yarn soft enough was to under spin it and then ply it to make a nice yarn, which meant that stupid over ply twist.   I even already had the wheel in use for that cotton exercise.    But I couldn't live with it.  I had to try to spin another 200 yards of plied yarn before I left.  

I will say that I'm not a horribly fast spinner.  I opt for slower spinning to increase chances for consistency.  It's also a bit more relaxing, although I will admit that I don't easily get the yardages for big projects quite as easily.  However, I just finished tying up and labelling the last skein for the dye exercise.  It was a bit too close for my comfort zone though.  I leave the day after tomorrow!

 I ended up deciding to try to spin enough cotton to use for the indigo.   I wanted to use it for warp stripes in a towel.   I realized that carding all those punis would take up way too much time though.   I knew I had a package of Egyptian cotton top in my stash.   The thing about Egyptian cotton though is that it is longer than regular cotton.  Also, because it is processed into top, it is slippery fibre processed to be even more slippery.  But you know, I have found that the best way to learn to do spin something is to just grab some fibre and start spinning. 

 The first thing I realized is that I had to change the whorl to a much higher ratio.   Then it was just a matter of practice.  400 yards is a good amount to start getting a bit of proficiency though.  While I was winding my skeins up today, I realized you could tell which yarn I spun near the beginning of this exercise and which yarn was spun up later, when I was more comfortable with spinning the cotton top.   It's not brilliant yarn.  It's not as nice looking at first glance as the wool yarn was, but I am so much happier with this yarn.  Not only is it balanced, but despite it's inconsistencies, I learned a lot from spinning the cotton and it is generally a nice yarn. It  will definitely weave up nicely, although I will need to spin more for the weft.  I really hope that I will be much more proficient when I get finished spinning the cotton for this project.


Lots of shrill trills and croaks coming from the pond this year.   I found this little guy sunning himself a couple of weeks ago.  He's twice the size now!  His warm, sunny ledge is gone too as we've had so much rain, the pond is full again.  Now he hangs out on or near the lily pads.  So far he seems to be alone in his little paradise.  We had two a few years back, which meant lots of baby frogs.     Even the one is a nice addition to the sound scape around the house.  Now, if the weather will get warm enough to see the lightning bugs or fire flies, it will really feel like summer.