As soon as the Swallowtail Shawl was off the needles, I immediately set to work on my next spinning project:
I know I said that this roving would be next, but I couldn't resist the lovely Merino/silk fiber from A Verb For Keeping Warm. I had never worked with silk before and was anxious to give it a try. My goal for this was the same as the last: to spin laceweight yarn. And unlike before, it went very well, I think.
I was able to spin this much finer than the Spanish Merino, and I attribute it to the silk content. I think the longer silk fibers helped to keep the Merino fibers together even when I drew out the fibers very thinly. I'm wondering now, if some fiber blends are more suitable for spinning certain types of yarn...?
But spinning such fine yarn took a good deal of time. And I quickly found out that two ounces is a surprising amount of fiber. I knew that two ounces *can* be a lot-- like for Jaggerspun Zephyr, at 620 yards. Though I was optimistic, I knew that expecting that from handspun might be a little unrealistic for a inexperienced spinner like me. Really, I didn't know how much I could expect. So when I finally wound off my finished yarn and did the math, I was pleased to find that I had about 462yards/ 49grams of usable laceweight yarn. And even in appearance, it seems to compare quite well:
On left: Jaggerspun Zephyr; on right: my handspun
Naturally, I chose one of the best sections for that comparison. So here's a more representative view of my handspun:
I do have one question for the other spinners out there: what do you do when you run into this?
I didn't notice it at the time, but one of the singles ran ahead of the
other and twisted upon itself, leaving me with this extra bit hanging
off the side of my yarn. I was thinking of just cutting off the
offending piece, but is it better to cut the yarn altogether, then
rejoin during the knitting? Or is there another solution?
Other than that, I couldn't be happier with the end result. My yarn is no Zephyr, but it's lace yarn that's all my own.