Osborn Fiber Studio

Dear Sunday,

I’d love it if you could hold off coming over as long as possible. I’ve had a hard week, with a lot of extra work, relationally and educationally. What I need now is a long Saturday, with plenty of time to catch up on chores and finish my presentation at a reasonable pace. I’m sure you won’t mind lending Saturday a couple of those stray hours that you don’t really need.

If you you decide to be really generous, Sunday, then when you do arrive, I’ll give you some quality time. What I’ve really been hankering to do is spin, Sunday, and I’d love to do it with you here. I’ll make some tea, and we can have it with the pumpkin muffins Jared made this morning.

I’ve got this hankering because I bought a new book a couple weeks ago:

I bought it on a recommendation and a whim while swinging through a yarn store in Oakmont. I had been to that store once before, and well… let’s just say we were in need of a redemptive experience in our relationship. This book has more than accomplished that. I confess that I’ve stolen moments from nearly every day since I bought it, and every time I learned something new. I was just bursting at the gills, wanting to try some woolen spinning, and I finally snapped.

I bought this Gnomegarden batt at the MD Sheep & Wool festival – a purchase from her at the Cloverhill Yarn Shop booth is fast becoming an annual tradition – and I picked it just because it looked bat-poop crazy (batt-poop, even).

Following an idea from the book, I unrolled the batt, then split it into quarters lengthwise, hoping to roll the quarters into sort of rolags.

The rolag thing worked at the beginning, but the batt-quarters were just too short to stay rolled up, so I ended up half spinning from the fold instead. That was fine with me.

My goal was to get something fat and quick – partly because I do truly want to learn how to spin woolen, and learn how to spin thick, goofy, delightful handspun; but partly because I knew that the only time I could allow myself to spin for the foreseeable future was the hour and a half it would take Jared to read aloud a chapter from a textbook on Anglican history.

I spun two quarters onto one bobbin from one end, then spun the other two onto another bobbin from the other end, with the goal of maximizing the color difference. I didn’t have to worry; there would be nothing predictable about my results.

Texturewise, the yarn is exactly what I was going for. It’s plump and airy, definitely the most woollen  yarn I’ve spun. I managed to mix the colors for most of it. I didn’t measure, but just looking at it I’m guessing it’ll knit up at about a worsted gauge. I counted the yardage, then didn’t write it down; i think it was like 90 yards from a 2 oz. batt. The whole process took less than two hours. Next time I want to add more twist to both the singles and the plying, and try to go even thicker.

Colorwise, I think it looks like unicorn barf.

So you see, Sunday, I’m not asking for much. Just a donation of a couple extra hours to Saturday, so I can spend my time with you in a more wholesome and meaningful. Don’t you think it will be worth it?