A Warm Blue Ombre

Rebecca

Jun 21

Yesterday I showed you a handspun cloth I made from an ombre that is about as cool as a blue can be. Today I'll show you my just-finished spin that is an ombre of another blue that is about as warm as a blue can be.

This spin started on my first trip to Vancouver, in the fateful March of 2020. Fibres West had been canceled, and Rachel and I went to pop-up shops in homes to retain some experience of meeting people and shopping that we missed. If we had known then what we know now, of course, we would have done no such thing. But what's done is done.

One very important stop for me was Katrina's basement. She had all this beautiful stuff crated up that would not be able to sell at shows for some time, had just had a long-anticipated trip canceled, and was generally pretty miserable. So the least I could do was commiserate, and of course relieve her of some of her wares. Mostly I bought handpainted braids for sock experiments, but I couldn't resist the beautiful set of battlings you see here. They are exactly the colour that the sea ice is when the melt is occurring, and pools of water are sitting on it, turning it this incredible teal. I bought it, and as stash does, it sits.

After this second trip to Vancouver this past spring, where all my Fibres West dreams came true and I relieved Katrina and others of yet more of their wares, I picked up support spindling. After much resistance, I fell hard. I spun a couple tiny samples to get the hang, and was ready for my first real spin.

I believe that the best materials produce the best experiences and the best results, even for a relative beginner. And, for a relative beginner, a really positive experience facilitated in part by excellent materials can make the difference between loving a craft and just liking it. Also, three years is too long for battlings to sit unused. So I took on these precious battlings as my first full spindling project, and to get to know the fleet of support spindles that I very swiftly acquired.

So let me introduce you to them, too.

This is the spindle that started it all. Rachel was gifted two spindles from Mawdsley Fiber Arts, and since Rachel is a very generous person, she didn't want to keep them both for herself. So she gave one to me, and gave me a spindling lesson while we waited for the ferry at the end of a long day on Vancouver Island.

With a large square base and simple dowel, this is different from the other spindles. It doesn't have the same flash and delicacy of some of the other types. Helen really lets the wood shine in her work. It spins beautifully, and has a weight and stability to it that made it very handy as a first spindle.

I took this spindle with me to Yellowknife, for our little family vacation there. I did not bring nearly enough fiber with me. I had to portion it out very slowly, and got into this ridiculously slow fussy wrapping to slow me down.

When I got back from Yellowknife, waiting for me were the two packages of previously-loved spindles I had ordered. First up was this sweet little Tibetan-style spindle from "Yarn Spindles" on Etsy.

This spindle is very light and swift. Being light, it takes a bit for it to get enough mass to have a good spin, but not too long. But on the plus side, with the pointy wooden tip, it spins well in almost any bowl.

Third, I explored the Mirkwoods. I had been seeing these on Instagram for years, and I always knew that if I got into support spinning, I'd have to get me some Mirkwoods, because (a) pretty, and (b) Lord of the Rings. The end.

This is Samwise, a vaguely Tibetan-style support spindle. Like all Mirkwoods, it has a ball-bearing tip. These tips seemed happiest in a ceramic bowl; my one wooden bowl is just a bit too indented for them, and I worry about the metal wearing down the wood, even though it's not pointy. I have a tiny glass candle bowl that works OK for them. I ended up turning to a large stoneware bowl (see above), which is unwieldy to travel with but fine for home. I'm still looking for the just-right match. I have a ceramic tea plate that I may try next.

If Samwise is a relative of the Tibetan style, Smaug (below) is kind of a fusion of Tibetan and Russian styles. I think Smaug was my favorite of the three. It has a very sexy profile, and the pointiness of the tip allowed me to be more flexible in what bowl I used with it.

Haldir was the third Mirkwood I tried, definitely more of a Russian style (at least, I think). The wide, low ball of a whorl meant I really had to use this big ceramic bowl to have room for it to spin. Again, I'll try the tea plate I found next time I use it. What I really liked about all the Mirkwoods was that they are nice and hefty. I always imagined support spindles would be these small, delicate things, but the Mirkwoods are solid. They spin for a nice long bit, and you can fit a lot of singles on these suckers.

This is the other Yarn Spindles candidate, this one definitely Russian in style. It also has a pointy metal tip. It's very pretty, and I like watching the watercolors go when it spins. But like the Tibetan from the same maker, it's very light, and it takes even more filling before it has the inertia to spin for any length of time. It also has a wider point than my fingers like, so when I came back to it on my latest spin, I actually sanded it down a bit so I can flick it more easily.

The last spindle of my current fleet is my absolute favorite. It comes from Woodland Handcrafts. It's adorable - an owl! It is perfectly balanced. I mean, the spin is just a dream. It has a narrow shaft and satin finish which my fingers really like. It has a pointy wooden tip that I can use in my favorite bowl. And despite being a wee Russian style thing, it spins pretty darn long from the get-go. It was a great one to finish this spin on.

After 59 days of spinning at least 15 minutes a day, this spin was evenly spread across my little fleet of support spindles. If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen all these pictures already - Instagram has been my happy place to keep me accountable and motivated on this spin. There's such a thing as too much 15-a-day, and I was in that space for a while. But even on days when I let other things drop, I put in my 15 on spindles. I'm at 75 days in my current streak, and I want to see how far I can go!

I made a cardboard box into a hideous but effective kate for these spindles. My dad doesn't know it yet, but he's going to help me engineer a better one when we visit next month. My dad has a laser cutter and I love taking advantage of it. (Apple, tree much?)

I plied this spin on my wheel. Watching the gradient appear is always the best, and look how it just glows with that silk in there!

With only 100g of fiber, I thought it would be no problem fitting this whole spin on one bobbin. Boy was I wrong!

Spindle spinning is fun. But the cool thing about spindle-spun yarn is that it is LIGHT. When using a support spindle, you are always using one hand to hold the spindle, so you are always doing long-draw. This is the most woolen of woolen drafts. Instead of controlling the twist by holding the fiber with both hands, pressing them to allow only a certain number of fibers to be twisted at once, the twist itself is what grabs new fibers to twist them. You exercise control by how much twist you build up before you pull back. Learning to see and feel and trust that process has been one of the most rewarding parts of spindle spinning.

And the yarn testifies to the process.

This is definitely a lace yarn, but it measures around 22-24 WPI, around the same as some of the fine fingering yarns I was spinning for socks last year. This stuff is all air. With about 800 yards out of 100g, the grist came to about 4000 YPP. That is completely insane, and makes me feel a lot better about how long it took to spin it. It's a ton of yardage!

For me, the process was the product of this spin. I'm sure I'll make something with it eventually, but I'm more than happy for it to be yarn for a while. I could see weaving it into something similar to yesterday's scarf, but with a really close sett and a white weft to make a warp-faced fabric. Or I could make a one-colour lace version of The Thaw. What would you make with it?

Today is the first day of summer, and at Wool n' Spinning we celebrate with #spindlespunsummer. I've never participated before as drop spindle spinning hadn't quite agreed with me. But this year it is on like red dawn, and I've already got a project queued up, that I've even spun a sample for. Here's to the crazy joy of making yarn with pretty magic wands.