Wonderful Workshop

We had the most amazing workshop this weekend with Patsy Zawistoski, known in spinning circles as Patsy Z.  The weekend was a mixture of 2 workshops - Quick Novelty Yarns and Silk, the Queen of Fibers. 

Eleven of us showed up for the weekend where we learned all kinds of things. 

We tried silk in just about every preparation, we did faux boucle, real boucle, cabled yarns, Lopi-style yarns, core spun, slub/spiral yarns, "illegal" plied yarns (that is, one single with right twist and one with left then plied together), knot yarns.  It was really challenging but everyone was able to do each type of yarn, although with varying success! 

These aren't all my samples but all I could quickly get my hands on.  I found I'm not very good with the slub yarns and there were a couple of others that I didn't get down very well because I didn't have enough twist in my yarn.  I knew I had a problem getting enough twist in my plying but I didn't realize that some of that may be because I'm not getting enough twist in my singles.

I like this photo - a good view of spinning up a storm, right!

Sampling

In keeping with my goal to sample with fibers and spinning and such, I had a good time this morning.  I plopped in my "Roman Holiday" dvd, got my variety of fibers I'd put by to sample with and my cards and had a good old time.  First of all, how could you not have a wonderful time with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.  I LOVE that movie.  So sweet and bittersweet.  Always brings a little tear to my eye when they meet in the middle of all those reporters at the end.  Sigh...  Love that movie.

Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn and surrounded by scrumptious fibers.  Nothing better. 

For this morning, I just wanted to see how the fibers acted together.  I had corriedale, generic wool top, merino, silk noils, tussah silk, bamboo and tencel.  I loaded my cards with a little of this and a little of that, mixing them as seemed good, adding colors as it seemed good.  Once I had the fibers carded lightly and rolled them into a rolag, I spun them on my Ashford drop spindle and plied them Andean style to get a good 2-ply sample skein.

These were straight off the spindle and these are after they've been washed.  I don't know if you can see the difference in these pictures but they really "bloom" after they've been washed.  As always, you can click on the pictures to see a larger view.

I enjoyed myself immensely, not only because it was fun to figure out how much of each color and each fiber to load up and, of course, I always love the wow factor of how the yarn looks as it is spun into singles and then plied into a yarn.  It always seems a little magical to me and never quite predictable.  I like that!

My exploration of cotton continues, too, with this little wrap of tri-colored natural cotton that I've had for ages.  You can see the top and then how the color deepens once the yarn has been boiled good and proper.  Our spinning group took to the park the other night and I took my "coyote" cotton (that's the reddish/brown color) top and I spun and I spun.  I told some of the ladies that I never ever thought I would fall in love so deeply with spinning cotton.  I just can't get enough of it.  I realize that much of that has to do with the preparation of that particular top that makes it so easy to spin.  Believe it or not, I love cotton.  Next time I'll let you in on the little experiement in cotton my Mom and I have going.  Actually, she's done all the work to this point!