Putting a spin on things...

Crazy, crazy, that's how it's been around here with the end of the school year fast approaching. Grading projects, writing finals, grading finals... it's all over at the end of this week, hoorah... and then I get to teach a summer class and have some contract work to do. The fun never stops. Not that I'm complaining too much. It'll be nice to get to the end of the summer before we get to the end of our money.

I spent the whole day today writing an exam and grading papers. My brain is full. I need a drink. I don't even drink and I need a drink. But yay for the meditative effects of knitting and spinning, because when I'm brain dead I can spin instead of drink, which is much healthier and productive and I get something nice at the end instead of a hangover the next day. Between the time I got my Ladybug after Christmas and now, I've finished spinning up the pound of Falkland wool that came with the bug:


That's about 700 yards of approximately aran weight -- on average, that is. It's not exactly what you would call even throughout, but that's okay. It was a learning experience. It seems to take a pound or so of wool just to get the hang of this. I think I'll dye it, maybe a midnight blue, before I knit it into something.

And I took a few ounces of unnamed wool from a Louet spindle kit and played with a) trying to spin it as thin as I could:


and b) chain plying it to make a 3 ply:


It made about 220 yards of approximately sport weight, this time a lot more even. Some overspun spots, but it all came out pretty nice. I weighed it at school and it was 125 grams. Interesting. The kit said it came with "8 ounces of fiber," which came in three balls of roving. Three into eight should give us 2.66 ounces per ball of roving, but one ball spun up to 125 grams of yarn, which is 4.4 ounces. I don't think I'll write to Louet and complain about getting too much fiber in my spindle kit. I just wonder if the person writing the text to the box was talking to the person weighing out the fiber for the kit, that's all.

Then I was torn. It's two weeks before I go off to Black Sheep Gathering and take an all-day spinning class. I don't want to have all my bobbins full. But could I leave the Ladybug alone, untouched for two weeks?

Could I?

When I have this delicious plum-and-blue merino top from Three Fates Yarns that's been waiting for me since before I even got my wheel?


Hahahahah. Of course I couldn't.


It's a good thing that I've got a break coming up, because I've got two weeks to finish spinning and plying this before Black Sheep, and of course I had to decide to try to spin this as fine as I could and see if I could get a fingering-weight 3-ply out of it. Of course.