With Tour de Fleece in full force for most of this month, I thought I’d post about the creation of a new spinner.

Unidentified New Spinner At The Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat

Since its inception almost 20 years ago, the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat (MSKR) has encouraged many of the guys to take up spinning. Ted, the original founder of the retreats, was an avid spinner. Then Aaron picked up the mantle and taught dozens of guys to create yarn. This past Spring, Kevin taught some new spinners as well. For Kevin’s workshop this year, he dragged three spinning wheels to Easton Mountain, and I brought one of mine as well.

When I got home, the bobbin on the wheel I brought home had some newbie singles on it. It was beautifully rustic with thick and thin sections as well as sections that were overspun and underspun. It reminded me of the excitement and satisfaction of learning how to spin myself decades ago.

The feature image above is the two-ply yarn I plied with the singles. I think it’s incredibly beautiful.

I don’t know who spun the singles. I’m not sure they would have wanted me to ply them into yarn, never mind feature them on the blog. But I can’t bring myself to dispose of it, either. It’s too important. It makes me wish I had some of my early spinning efforts. And there’s obviously not enough yarn to do anything with. Still I’m hopeful that I’ll figure out who spun this fiber and return the finished effort to him. If you were in Kevin’s workshop this spring and left a bobbin behind, drop me a note.

Because as the fiber-Guru Nelda Davis said, “Joe, my dear, sometimes yarn is the finished product.”

Current Knitting/Spinning

My friend chose two of the six keyhole scarves for her birthday.

She ended up picking the second one and the fourth one in the image above.

With keyhole scarf production knitting over, I re-picked up the sock project and made some progress.

I finished the first sock. This is the commercial sock yarn and some recent handspun in a single-stripe helical knitting. I’m using German short-rows for both the heel and the toe. The short-row/helical striping combination in the toe allows me to both make a contrasting toe with just one of the yarns and still get a stripe across the center. I love the effect.

I’ve also started the second sock. The ribbing at the top takes me FOREVER, so I also decided to keep up spinning for the Tour de Fleece month.

These are two rovings I had in my stash. Carol Tripp (Windy Hill Farm) dyed the Border Leicester roving on the left. And Carol Sulcoski (Black Bunny Fibers) dyed the multi-cross-breed roving on the right. I think I’m going to spin all of the cross-breed roving slightly bulky and then ply it with a slightly thinner Border Leicester single to shoot for a DK or light Worsted weight yarn. Ideally, I’d like to spin enough to make a sweater for myself out of it. We’ll see how it goes.