Missy B: Spinning with Judith

Two weeks ago (I'm so behind!) I was lucky enough to take a three day spinning intensive taught by Judith MacKenzie McCuin and hosted by Morgaine of Carolina Homespun. It was a great class. Judith is one of my favorite teachers. Pictured at left is my spinning from the class. On the bobbins from left to right is worsted spinning from merino top, woolen spinning of down fibers, and worsted spinning of various fibers. The skein on top is from a plying exercise. Judith brought cones of lightly spun singles from her rambouillet sheep. We wound these onto our bobbins and then practiced our hand positions for plying. The skein in the picture is a 3-ply.

Can I just say that worsted spinning is slow! Or maybe I just say that I am a slow worsted spinner. The woman I learned to spin from is very much a production woolen spinner and so that is the style I became most comfortable with initially. To go back and re-learn worsted makes me feel like the slowest spinner ever. The multi-color bobbin on the left will turn into a cabled 4-ply. I think I am going to make a EZ Baby Surprise Jacket from the yarn, if I ever finish spinning it. Actually I am trying really hard to work on spinning a little every day so that I can finish this yarn. Then I think I am going to spin two black worsted singles to ply with the singles on the right bobbin and some woolen singles for the middle bobbin. My desire to play with this yarn is motivating me to keep going. I could just Navajo ply off the worsted singles but then I wouldn't really have enough to do anything with and the woolen singles would just be a study in frustration if I tried to chain them.

On the other hand I did Navajo ply the spinning I did at a recent intermediate spinning class at Deep Color on fiber blending with hand cards. The reason being that I want to knit a swatch to see how each of the blends feel and I didn't want to change that by plying it with some other fiber. We used mostly white fibers so no picture but I am taking off for the CNCH conference tomorrow at Asilomar and I may take it along to swatch. Maybe I will share my impressions when I get back since I did take notes on what each blend is.

The set up of this conference is a two and a half day class on alternate years it is a vendor hall and short format classes (next year is in Sacramento). I am taking a class on cut pile weaving with Sara Lamb. I am really looking forward to the class, as well as getting away to a beautiful place with friends for a few days. Work and life have been stressful. My grandmother continues to do poorly and it takes its toll. But Monday is my birthday, so there are plenty of good things to look forward to. My husband and I are both taking off work to celebrate because we both have been so busy that we have barely been able to spend much time together. I think we may spend the day in the city and my dad my come along depending on what is going on with my grandmother. Should be fun. Maybe I will just have to figure out a contest or something so we can all celebrate my birthday together. Plus I totally forgot to celebrate my 2 year blogiversary back in January so we can celebrate everything all together. Sound good?