Spinning

SAL with Smaug: finished!

The SAL with Smaug has been running from March 9 until yesterday (April 30). I’ve been spinning along, and I’m surprised by how quickly one can spin on a supported spindle. My original plan was to spin the two fiery Nunoco batts, but I finished those at the end of March already. I ended up spinning a braid from Tibbe as well, and a braid from The Homestead Hobbyist, and two more Nunoco batts!

The first project was the Nunoco Kasbah batts. I’ve spun it on my MirkwoodArts spindles plus a TwistedGrain Contingency and a Phil Powell Russian. The resulting yarn is a 2-ply gradient, 836 meters/100 grams, so a real lace weight!

Smaug's Fire, 836m/100g
Smaug’s Fire, 836m/100g

The next project was a Tibbe braid in gorgeous teals, blues and purples. I really enjoyed spinning this Polwarth! The resulting yarn is a 2-ply lace weight too, a bit thicker at 680m/94g.

Smaug's Jewels, 680m/94g
Smaug’s Jewels, 680m/94g

There was still time, so I picked up another braid, this time from The Homestead Hobbyist. BFL this time, and a whopping 120 grams of fiber. I decided to navaho ply this time, ending up with a light fingering 3-ply at 580m/120g.

Smaug's Topaz, 580m/120g
Smaug’s Topaz, 580m/120g

I still had a couple of days until the end of the SAL, so I picked up a beautiful batt from my Smorgas box: 56 grams of Orchid (merino and silk). I spun a bit thicker this time and ended up liking the singles, so I haven’t plied it. I still may do that, depending on what I want to knit from this. The skein is 507 meters of singles.

Smaug's Dessert, 507m/56g
Smaug’s Dessert, 507m/56g

I still had two days left, so I thought, why not? I picked up the other 50g batt from the Smorgas box in the Willow colourway, and spun that the same way. I ended up with 485m/50g of singles.You can’t really see the sparkle in the picture, but there is golden Firestar in there!

Smaug's Scales, 485m/50g
Smaug’s Scales, 485m/50g

I may combine these two skeins at some point for colour work.

This SAL was a lot of fun, and also very productive. All in all I’ve spun almost 6 kilometres of yarn in about seven weeks! I’ve also gotten better at supported spinning, and I think that supported spindles are now my favourite kind of spindle (followed closely by Turkish spindles).

The yarns that I made in the SAL with Smaug!
The yarns that I made in the SAL with Smaug!

Next month will probably be more about knitting than spinning. I’m already pondering what to make with all this pretty handspun.

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