Friday 22 March 2013

Batts, Fluff and Stuffs!

I had completely forgotten I had this blog but was reminded about it today so here I am!  This came about as I was in my local yarn shop (LYS) Truly Twisted talking about how to record my crafty attempts.  In that moment I remembered this blog and thought it was good way to record what I am doing, so here I am.

I recently started to learn to spin, a friend in my knitting group kindly let me borrow her spare wheel so I bought some merino fluff from Truly Twisted and off I went.  The wheel is an Ashford Traditional and only has one ratio of 6.5 but I am having so much fun!  I haven't taken any pics etc of my first few attempts, but I am here now.

Last week I took all my odd little bits of merino that I had leftover from my initial learning attempts and made some batts on the drum carder in the shop.  Sue (from Truly Twisted) showed me how to make rolags and I went on my merry way.  Once home I was very happy doing a nice little inch worm forward draft, but I remebered that Sue also had shown me longdraw.

Now the thing is, when I look around on Ravelry a lot of people seem to suggest that this is an advanced technique and is difficult.  Being me I didn't listen and decided to give it a go, and was quite happy that I didn't mess it up and that I actually got yarn!  To be honest that's putting it mildly, I was practically jumping for joy, I could happily longdraw all day!!!!!Will post some pictures of that on another day.

So having had so much fun trying longdraw and having used up the batts I took up some fluff I had and went back to the shop and made more batts today.

So here are some pictures of the batts I made today, 5 of them.  Will make some more rolags and try out some more longdraw.

batt 03

batt 01

Batt 03

Batt 04

Have Fun!!!