On the spindle...

As I mentioned in my earlier message about spinning: I'm in love! Nothing is more satisfying than seeing a beautiful, colorful yarn being created, by such a simple and natural power as twist.

In the last two weeks I finished three new skeins. The first one is this rainbow-coloured 2-ply merino yarn (about 18-24 WPI)... I called it 'Hot Air Balloons', 'cause that's what it reminded me of!

I really love how the many colors in this one plied together into al kinds of different combinations. 

For the second skein, I went a bit crazy. I created coils! Now tell me, can I call this my first (kind-of) art-yarn?! I called it 'Pastel Mermaids'... For anyone who's interested, both the roving for this yarn as well as for the 'Hot Air Balloons' were bought at Meervilt.

Making coils is pretty easy, I first spun a thick-and-thin thread of the pastel-colored merino, and then I plied it with a thin silk sewing thread. By keeping the sewing thread straight and slowly feeding the merino single thread, the merino coils itself around the sewing thread. When you shove this up, the sewing thread disappears completely inside the merino single. Hmmm...this sounds pretty confusing, probably. There are good tutorials on youtube with way better explanations than mine ;)

One big disadvantage of the coils is that they (logically) make your yarn shrink incredibly in length. This yarn turned out to be only 15 meters, while the 'Hot Air Balloons' (made of exactly the same amount of roving) was 100 meters! But, on the other hand...I think coiled yarn is often used for special finishing touches, like borders and such, and not to knit/crochet a complete project. So it's okay, I guess!

I crocheted a little hat for my Secretdoll Person with some leftover of the (unplied) thick-and-thin spun merino.

Okay, now to the third skein... Again made of merino fibers. I recently bought these 5 rovings at the Dutch webshop Bodyflower (not my picture):

I used the roving on the left (purple-pink) to make my third skein: a single thick-and-thin yarn. 

Now I'm not super happy with how this one turned out... I love the colors (and the fact that this roving was dyed in the length, which gives a candy cane-like effect), but somehow it looks so fuzzy! Anyone an idea of the reason for this? Maybe it's because it's a single yarn (plying makes it look more equal and less fuzzy)? I had some troubles with setting the twist in the thinner parts of the yarn, it holds way more of the twist than the thicker regions. 

Oh well, I think I'll just keep this one for myself. It's a learning process, after all this is only my fourth official handspun yarn ever! But if someone has some helpful advice, please leave a comment! I would greatly appreciate it :)

Okido, now one last picture, of what is currently on my spindle.

I'm using the purple roving of the Bodyflower collection for this one, and I'm spinning a silver thread directly with it (so no plying!). I'm very excited about how this is turning out! I hope the silver thread will make the yarn less fuzzy (holding it a bit more together). At this very moment I'm done spinning and setting the twist. It's not much (each Bodyflower roving was only 50 grams), so I'm probably keeping this one myself too. Maybe I can crochet a cute Blythe beret of it?!