A secular atheist witch

She/Her | I'm a baby witch that's new to tumblr so I'm slowly building up my page

[greenlunarwitch]

Soooo.... something happened while I was spinning today...

I snapped the tip off of the shaft for my cactus wren spindle, which is something I was worried about doing when I saw how thin it was. But I'm still mad at myself for actually breaking it.

I'm seeing if I can glue it back together well that it's still functional because it's not easy to get a replacement for it. Hopefully it works, but I'm going to leave it alone for a while so the adhesive can set. So I guess I'm going to be practicing some long draw with my support spindles today.

[greenlunarwitch]

It's still technically day 2 of tdf.

I got a good amount of progress done today, but when I was putting it down I asked my: is this thinner than my other single? And the answer is yes. We'll see how much it effects things when I get to the plying stage.

[greenlunarwitch]

Work this last week was exhausting so I didn’t get much progress done on my spinning project, but I've got a long weekend for the holiday (and my birthday). I haven't participated in a Tour de fleece before, so I'm going to try this year. Nothing big planned for it, just trying to get some good progress done on the BFL I have on my Turkish spindles. Which I'm currently not quite half way through the second single for my 4ply, but I'm getting faster with the drop spindles.

I probably won't be getting to spin either of these any time soon, but I picked up some more fiber from some etsy shops. Not like I need more stuff for my stash, but when does that ever stop anyone?

The first is a Cormo gradient kit from AJemFiberArts on etsy. I got two of them, so there's 12 oz of fiber total. Then the other is a Polwarth/linien blend from DivineDyeWork on etsy, and I've got 18 oz of that.

[greenlunarwitch]

I officially have one of the singles of the BFL done. Things started moving faster once I got the hang of drafting while the spindle is spinning and didn't have to park-and-draft as much. It'll be interesting to see the yardage I get out of this, but first I have three more singles to spin, and I've already started on the next one.

[greenlunarwitch]

So I wasn’t quite spinning every day after work last week, but I did do a decent amount and I have all of this week off to get a lot done.

I spun up that sample of Targhee wool I got, and I'll note this cactus wren Jenkins spindle spins beautifully with zero wobble. I also feel like the shape of the arms make it a bit nicer to wind on then the Snyder spindles. It's a bit lighter but I should still be able to match what I started with my BFL singles.

Speaking of which, I've made some progress on this too. About 9g of the 26-27g I have for this section. I also picked up a wrist distaff, and while it does definitely help with the fiber management, I'm thinking I may like a ring distaff more.

[greenlunarwitch]

Been trying to spin for a little bit after work. Progress is slow when working with singles this thin, but I knew that was going to be the case when I decided on this project.

In other news, I managed to pick up this pretty little birdie from the most recent batch of Jenkins spindles. It's the Cactus Wren style made with Beeswing Narra wood. It even came with a small sample of Targhee fiber which will be nice to play with since I haven't spun that before.

[greenlunarwitch]

I wasn’t going to start spinning this today, but after I split the BFL in (roughly) even section for the singles I couldn’t help myself. I'm attempting to keep the color gradient of the braid intact through the plying process, and I'm spinning a good bit thinner than I have before. A slight correction, I'm shooting for a sport weight (12wpi) cabled 4ply, and the Corriedale I just spun ended up around a 9wpi. So I went down to a lighter spindle and I have been getting some nice consistency.

[greenlunarwitch]

I decided to pick up some Turkish spindles since I wanted to spin a more worsted yarn, and that’s harder to do on supported spindles. My first attempt with this Corriedale turned out much better than the last time I tried using a drop spindle. It started out as just practicing with the new spindle, but then I decided to try cable plying. So this is about 29g of a cabled 4 ply yarn. I over spun the 2 ply. I read that you should put a bit extra twist in your 2 ply before the second plying stage, but I over did it a bit. But I have this beautiful green braid that I plan to spin next.

As usual, I did something with the label and now can't find it, but I do know this is Bluefaced Leicester. Unfortunately can't remember the indie dyer I bought it from last year. Anyway, the plan is to do a cabled 4 ply for this too. Something around the DK weight range is the goal, which I got pretty close to with the Corriedale, but I think I'm going to trying getting my singles a little thinner this time. This is kinda a trial run for what I'm planning to do with my Gotland fleece.

[greenlunarwitch]

It's been a long time since I've posted. Video games had been taking up most of my free time (Expedition 33, Hades 2, Digimon Time Stranger) and I hadn’t been doing much crafting. But I've been getting back into my fiber stuff, though since the temperature is warming up here I don't know how long I'll be able to tolerate working with wool. At the very least I finally washed the two fleeces I bought a while ago, so they're all ready to be processed once I pick myself up some combs.

It's kinda fun to see the differences between the two types of wool. There's more of the Gotland (the four bags on the right) by weight, but the Romney takes up 3 times as much space.

[greenlunarwitch]

The merino/bamboo/silk has been washed, and I'm really happy with how it turned out in the end. It's semi worsted 2ply, around the fingering range (I haven't checked the WPI yet), and if I counted and did my math right I got almost 300 yards in this 108g skein.

Now that I got the main project I was working on done (I, of course, have 4 in progress knitting projects, but that's besides the point) I'm getting the itch to start a sewing project. I picked up a bunch of supplies and materials a few months ago, but didn't start anything yet.

So, I printed out the patterns I bought and started putting them together. I've got to work the next 4 days, but then I have 10 days off. Plenty of time to work on my projects.

[greenlunarwitch]

It got a bit heavy and difficult to spin near the end, but I managed to fit all of my 2 ply onto a single spindle, all ~100g of it. My singles were under spun in a few places so I had to spice some ends together, but it's much better than my previous yarn. I'm going to let it rest for at least a few days before I wind it into a hank and wash it. And, my spindles are now free for my next spinning project, which might be the yak fiber, but I haven't fully decided yet.

[greenlunarwitch]

It's been a while since I last posted. I got side tracked from my fiber projects by video games and now the weather is getting hot and I'm finding I'd rather play with my watercolors then handle wool.

But, I did finish spinning the singles of the wool/bamboo/silk blend I'd been working on, even managed to fit 50g of singles onto one spindle. I started plying yesterday and it's going pretty good. I'm still working on keeping the tension on the singles even as I ply, things got a bit wonky in a few places because of that, but for my 2nd handspun yarn I'm happy with it so far.

[greenlunarwitch]

No crafting update this week, more important things came up that needed my time and attention. One of my cats health took a decline and I ended up having to put her down. She was a senior cat, being over 15 years old, so I knew that this was coming at some point, but that doesn't make the loss any less painful. I had her for all of those 15 years. She was with me when I graduated high school, when I graduated college, when I moved into my first apartment, and when I moved across the state to a new city. She was with me for half of my life, for almost all of the challenges and difficulties of my life... and now she gone. I know the pain will lessen with time, that doesn't make it easier to deal with in the present though, but I have found a small amount of comfort by performing a small ritual and giving her a place at my alter.

[livingadagio]

Maybe this is just a me problem, or maybe it's a somewhat common issue for self taught spinners who learn to spin on drop spindles first (I wouldn't know because I don't know any other spinners in real life and am mostly a lurker in online fiber art spaces so I've never really asked about it), but spinning on my wheel I can not for the life of me seem to get the hang of doing short forward (or backward) draw to spin worsted. It feels embarrassing to admit since I constantly see it referred to as the easiest drafting method to teach and learn, and the first method that beginner spinners usually master anytime I watch videos or read guides about learning to spin on a wheel.

Teaching myself to spin on drop spindles (with only minor guidance from a couple youtube videos), I naturally let twist into the drafting zone to keep from breaking my yarn and dropping my spindle as much, and got used to ONLY spinning that way. Now when it comes to spinning on my wheel and keeping twist out of the drafting zone I'm over here smacking myself on the forehead, like dang... how tf do I hold the fiber loose enough between the fingers of my front hand to be able to slide my hand back over my drafted fiber without the pressure from my fingers bunching it up and making it weird, but also hold it firmly enough at the same time that no twist gets past my fingers into the drafting zone???

I understand enough to know that it's mostly a problem with my treadling speed (cuz spinning on a wheel feels so painfully SLOW when I treadle at the "right" speed for my skill level for this drafting method) and uptake tension. Adjusting those two things to try to find the sweet spot in between "I can't seem to keep this dang fiber in my hands or stop all this twist from creeping through my fingers into my drafting zone without gripping the hell out of my fiber" and "well now my yarn isn't being taken up by my bobbin at all" or "now there's not enough twist for how thin I'm spinning" is a bit harder than I thought it would be lol

Also I could definitely be pre-drafting and splitting my fiber bundles more most of the time until I get more used to it, like I did when I first started spinning on my drop spindles to give myself one less thing to manage while I built up my muscle memory for that kind of spinning. I'm just impatient and my brain resents what feels like taking a "step backward" in skill level, I guess, so I stubbornly keep NOT doing that even though I know I should, oops.

It probably doesn't help either that I have tense death-grip hypermobile hands/fingers that tend to always make my fiber supply messy and harder to draft than it should be. That definitely affects my ability to keep consistent pressure with my fingers on the fiber passing through my drafting hand too, because my thumbs and fingers are prone to overextending backward at the knuckles and "locking" if I hold even light pressure with them for a while without stopping. My habit of regularly releasing pressure on the fiber to let twist travel into the drafting zone generally helps mitigate that issue, but it's something that quickly becomes annoying (and then painful) if I'm attempting to maintain pressure with my fingers to hold that twist out of the drafting zone as one does when spinning worsted.

Just more practicing and more forcing myself to slow down needed, I guess, and maybe... maybe admitting at some point that my hypermobile fingers just don't like drafting methods where you have to constantly hold back the twist from the drafting zone, and that my natural way of spinning that doesn't hurt my fingers so much is good enough for my own yarn production for personal use. BUT I STILL WANT TO PROVE TO MYSELF THAT I CAN LEARN TO DO IT FIRST ANYWAY, even if that does end up being the case.

[greenlunarwitch]

I'm a very new spinner, and only use supported spindles, so I'm not much help, but I did subscribe to the Ply magazine and there was an article one of the recent issues about dealing with hand pain while drafting. In it they demonstrated an alternate way of doing a short forward that didn't need to pinch the fiber as much. Not sure if it will work for you, but it might be worth a shot?

[greenlunarwitch]

Just got back from the Ann Arbor Fiber Expo. I would say that there was more yarn than other things, a few boths with some spinning wheels and drop spindles, no spinning equipment that caught my eye though. But I still spent plenty of money and came home with 2 fleeces.

First was this beautiful dark brown/black Romney lamb. I got a cute story about the sheering process as well.

Then this lovely grey Gotland lamb.

And because I'm a sucker for a good green I couldn’t say no to this Bluefaced Leicester braid.

[greenlunarwitch]

I'm definitely teetering on the edge of burnout with all this overtime I'm working, I haven't had much energy to work on my projects this past week, but just a bit longer and I'll be able to go back to my normal hours.

I ordered some spinning fiber about a week ago and that showed up today. Some black icelandic wool that I plan on eventually spining up into a 2ply for the Mam's Cardigan pattern by Teti Lutsak, and then a dark brown and a light brown yak fiber that will become a 2ply for the Padolyst blouse pattern again from Teti Lutsak.

I'm excited for this upcoming weekend because I'm going to the Ann Arbor Fiber Expo. There's a variety of vendors on the list, but I'm most interested in the local farmers that will be there, so I'm hoping to come home with a lovely fleece. Also, since I learned about navajo/lap spindles, I really want one because it seems like a good way to spin up bulkier yarns via spindle, and there's a few woodworkers and other spinning tool suppliers on the vendor list that I'm going to be checking out too.

[greenlunarwitch]

It's been a busy and stressful few weeks between personal life and working overtime, but I've been channeling that stressful energy into crafts, and it's made it all more manageable. So, time to rant about all the creative ideas I've been working on lately.

First up, knitting.

My sock is coming along, slower than I would like, but I had to frog back twice. After I finished the heel flap, I tried it on and it did not fit very well at all for various reasons. So, I pulled back and tweaked a few things and also did an after thought heel instead of a heel flap (which fit much better and was much simpler to make). I started to do a 3rd chart repeat on the leg, but decided it was going to be to tight, so I switched to 1x1 ribbing instead. Right now I'm just working the ribbing until it's the length I want or I run out of yarn (I had 2 50g balls of it so I know I have plenty for the 2nd sock already).

Next, hand spinning.

After messing up the last singles I tried to ply into a sample, I spun up a few more grams of fiber and I'm going to let them rest for awhile on the spindles before I ply.

And lastly (because I've been watching a lot of Bernadette Banner on YouTube lately) I decided to learn to hand sew. So, made a trip to Joanns to see what they still had in stock, and I ended up buying more than I planned.

I picked an iron, what looked like their last darning egg, a tailors ham, a nice rigid clear ruler, some scrap remander fabric to practice on, and this gorgeous green floral print cotton that I though would look amazing as a skirt. I already ordered other tools and notions online, so I have some needles, fabric shears, thread, and such. I have some projects that I had specific fabric in mind for that I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find locally (for a reasonable price at least), so I order some fabric samples that should be arriving soon. There's a few more fabric store within driving distance, but most of them have hours that don't work with my schedule. One of them is a discount fabric outlet store that I do want to check out at some point though.