Fiberish Temptations for ladymurmr

[treeskin]

First, have you seen these drop spindles? They're polymer clay, but oh so pretty. Same people, page 2. Page 3. Page 4. Page 5. Page 6. Page 7.

Second, have you seen these lucets yet?

Comments

[ladymurmur.livejournal.com]

You are EVIL and I love you for it! Just a moment while I wipe the drool from my keyboard... :-D

Want that one, and that one, and this one is my favorite, no THIS one! And those lucets are really pretty to look at! I'd have to actually hold one to see how I like using it. But I can see a lovely piece of wall art involving a couple of those... mwahahahahaa!

I've been just itching (but in a good way) to spin lately, but something tells me that would be truly cheating on my string break, and time spent spinning is time not finishing the NeverEndingAfghan (so close, so close to being done!)

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, I've been "string-lite" since yesterday. I was a responsible adult and went and mowed part of the back yard yesterday morning, and my hands were numb by the time I came in. They still feel bruised today.

But, I'm still working on that lace scarf, because I'm an addict, and because I'm FINALLY beginning to memorize the charts (two separate, 12-row repeats on this thing), and because it's halfway done now, and if I finish it I can start something else....Did I mention I'm an addict?

I'm wishing there were someone local doing drop-spindle classes. I've got some fine wools I'd love to ply with the 20/2 cottons I've got, so they'd be sturdy enough to knit with.

[ladymurmur.livejournal.com]

If it doesn't have to be a tight twist, just a pleasant and companionable twining so that the two can support each other (kinda like crocheting with multiple yarns on a big hook) i think that would be easy enough to accomplish. You would just want to be careful not to add too much twist or the resulting blend would twist back on itself or warp your finished garment.

Ideally, when you ply, you're putting just as much Z twist in as you had S twist on the singles, so that the result is balanced, with no extra twisty energy left. Of course in the real world some of us just aren't quite that good yet. This is why we like wool being so forgiving, and that setting the twist still works. :-)

I am in no way an expert here. You might want to check out one of the spinning communities here on LJ. I can't remember the name of the one I read, but its on my friends list. Someone there might be able to help. They're nice folks. They post string porn frequently. :-)

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

Let's see...the wool singles yarn has a Z twist...digs through shelf for cotton...that's not the cotton I was looking for, but it'll do...the cotton is a three-ply (20/3, I think) with an S-twist. Hmm. Is the idea completely buggered?

For what it's worth, the cotton is about a third the diameter of the wool. I was thinking of using it mainly as a reinforcing thread, and a bit of extra body.

[ladymurmur.livejournal.com]

I don't know that its automatically buggered, since the plying you're thinking to do isn't for finishing the yarn itself, but more like a 2-strand braid of the two yarns, something a little more intentional than just knitting with two strands of yarn. Since that wouldn't involve a LOT of twist into the yarn, and the cotton should be fairly solid in itself, I'd think that a somewhat loose S twist ply (for the sake of the wool single) would work to stabilize the wool, and not too wreak too much havoc with the cotton.

I have this mental image now, of some rich purple wool, with a thin strand of white pearl cotton wrapped around it, almost candy cane style... very decorative.

OK. Now I'm really itching to pop over to your living room with my spindle and try it out. I'm not quite twitching with string withdrawl yet. quite. yet.

[ladymurmur.livejournal.com]

Oh - I should point out that I'm not an expert, and I've never tried this myself... but you've got my little brain buzzing on this idea, and in theory it should work. One never can tell either way with string, though, until you actually try.

[ladymurmur.livejournal.com]

...that's not the cotton I was looking for

Oh, Obi-Wan - you're my only hope!

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

You're no help :)

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

You're no help :)

Here's another complication in this...the wool singles yarn is about the same weight as #8 cotton perle, and the cotton I'm looking at is about the same as #30 crochet cotton, but with a softer twist. So, it's all TINY.

You're right about what I want to do with it, though...just twist it together well enough to make the stuff easier to handle when I'm knitting.

[ladymurmur.livejournal.com]

You know, I think if we stopped thinking of this as a true "plying" and think of it more as a 2 strand braid, or as the cotton wrapping around wool, there'd be less to worry about. The means by which we'd get there is by using a plying-like method. Semantics, I know. But suddenly my brain said "duh!" Either way, even with a softer twist, cotton tends to be much more tightly twisted than wool ever is, so even if the cotton should untwist a bit during quasi-plying, it should still be ok. In my little world, at least. ;-)

Are these wool singles commercially produced? Handspun by you/someone else? If they're homemade, making sure that the twist has been set would help maintain the integrity of the singles as well.

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

The wool singles are commercially spun, I think. These are part of that stash I inherited from Myrna last summer. It's on a largish cardboard cone, I'm guessing a pound or so, which means hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of yards. Not sure if it'd be at all practical to try to ply/wrap it all in one go, although for my knitting purposes that'd be best.

I don't think I need to set the twist on the wool. I'm knitting directly off the other cone of the stuff, and it's not distorting any more than the lace pattern would do in any other yarn. (From what I read online yesterday, that seemed like a fair way to tell. I'm not going to un-cone that much fine yarn and do the other tests.)