Thursday, December 13, 2012

Repeat after me!

Do not do as I do.
Do not do as I do.

After I finished the triangle shawl, I decided to finish up the spinning project I had on the Tina. If you remember, I was making faux-rolags and spinning them. I had finished the first single and wasn't happy with the rolags so I tried a slightly different method for the second single.

I took the bobbin with the first single off and put it on the bobbin holder on the Tina. I then put an empty bobbin on and started spinning. I was doing long draw, focusing on the rolags and whether they were easier to draft or not. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the bobbin on the holder was slowly revolving....


Would you believe that the end of the single was caught in the center of the wheel and it was slowly winding off the bobbin and onto the axle of the wheel?

My phone was downstairs and my first instinct was to fix the problem. I let the single I was spinning go through the orifice so I wouldn't be removing twist from it and manually rotated the wheel to the left. I was spinning to the right and so this was the opposite direction. I slowly unwound the single and wound it onto the bobbin. After I was almost done, I thought about taking the photo. So you only see the very last bit on the center of the wheel in the pictures.

I was able to salvage almost all of it. This is what I lost
Whew!

So pay attention to where the end of your single is. It shouldn't be hanging off the bobbin, waiting to be caught in something. Fortunately, this is a pretty thick single so it held together. Also, the fiber is sticking to itself and while that made drafting tough, it helped in this situation.

The second round of faux-rolags worked a bit better. Where I had really predrafted it, it fed smoothly. The rest stuck together and required a little bit more forward draw type drafting to get it unstuck. But I finished spinning the second single last night and will be plying soon.

I didn't like spinning this at all. I may try faux rolags again but I think spinning from the fold is a lot less work and achieves the same result. 




1 comment:

Stitchmistress said...

Wow, those pesky runaway singles. Just when you think you've got it.....ooof.