After a full weekend of playing with fibers, the bobbin is full and needs to be emptied. It seems that spinners are a very organized bunch. They make and keep sample cards – a large card is made to hold all the fiber info – what it is, how it was prepared, method used to spin it, all the various plyings along with a little piece of the unspun fiber. I suppose this is to go in some sort of album or something.

I cannot imagine ever referencing the album again, but nonetheless I spent part of today making samples from my bobbin. Of course, this is all hindered by the fact that I neglected to keep snippets of the unspun fiber …. but I did what I could.

The first order of business is to become familiar with Andean Plying. This is an organized way of getting the yarn off of the bobbin to access both ends for plying.

The thrill of being an Andean Plying natural was quickly diminished by my first f-up. We were supposed to spin a bit of colored fiber in between each sample fiber so that we could distinguish one from the other later on. I misunderstood the direction and spun the colored fiber in between the spinning groups.

Thus my Combed Man-Made fiber samples look like this:

Within that heap, lies ingeo which is a corn fiber, soy silk, tencel, nylon, polyester, acrylic and rayon. The only one I know for sure is the Ingeo because that is dyed. oh well, spin and learn.

Moving on, here are my Thrown Silk Waste Samples [degummed dyed bombyx waste, undegummed bombyx]Carded Silk Samples[bombyx, tussah, tussah noil] and Combed Silk Blends Samples [wool/bombyx, camel down/tussah, cashmere/tussah]. Hard to believe that all of that is in there!

so there you have four of the twenty four groups we did – I have a lot more cataloging ahead.

in other news, I am rejoining WW tonight. It’s about time – the year of quitting smoking is behind me and the time has come to pull my shit together.

I hate pulling my shit together. As most of you know, I have been very successful on the WW program and worked for many years as a leader. This is both a blessing and a curse – I know it is a good program and that it works as long as you work it. I can’t believe that I have to do this again and I just wish it were easy.

Why can’t I have my cake and eat it too? In large quantities, with lots of icing???

was fantastic! When I first signed up, I couldn’t imagine how we would fill 8 hours a day for 3 days with learning, but we did and I think we have only scratched the surface. We spun with so many different fibers and different fiber preparations – buffalo, yak, camel, horse (!), silk, quivot ….. and that is just what I can remember as I am typing this – my notes from the weekend are not handy. Anyway, here are some pictures …….

Celia Quinn

right: a hook spindle
left: combing & diz demo

right: spinning flax demo
left: spinning cotton with a takli supported spindle & distaff

right: my takli results!
left: charka demo

dyed silk cocoon and the surprise inside

I think my head is still spinning. I haven’t unpacked my wheel from the travel bag, so I don’t have any sample pictures to show you ….. I could spend the entire week blogging about the past three days and if nothing exciting happens, I think I will!

Did you guys read yesterday’s comments? Did you notice that Carol has suggested a name change for my wheel?

“Proud Mary” really gets around. Are you sure your name isn’t “Runaround Sue?”

I think she may be onto something here. What do you think, should I change her name? My wheel certainly does get around. When I asked for a travel bag for Christmas, I had no idea I was getting a passport to adventure!

although now in rereading it, maybe she is suggesting that my name be Runaround Sue…. that fits too.