Preparing The Roving

It was time to play with the roving. First of all I now understand why people dye the roving. I had wondered when I looked at pictures why they didn't just spin the yarn and then dye it all. The answer is because spinning white after white after white just isn't as exciting...or at least that's my theory right now.

I once again turned to theartofmegan on Youtube...for how-to's watch the following.



So you saw my fist full of fiber in the previous post. Now it was time to get it ready for spinning!

I split the original roving in half and got these two balls. It was like the ball of roving was multiplying! Each of those balls looked bigger than the original one.

Then I took those two balls and split them in half again. So this is the original fiber quartered.

This is one of the quarters next to another quarter that was split in half one again. It started getting a little trickier at this point trying to make sure that the two halves were similar in size.

The last step in preparing the roving was to take one of those eighths and pre-draft it out. Megan explains it well in the video above. So after all the pre-drafting I wound it into a nice neat little nest...and next will come spinning!

The Next Step In Spinning

Now that I've spun my first bit of fiber I can't wait to do more!! Thankfully I'm well aware of how I am, so I bought some roving off of Ebay the same time I bought the drop spindle and they both arrived the same day :o)

I bought 8ounces of Corriedale wool roving from Red Barn Farm. It's important to know what you're buying when you start looking for things on Ebay. Perhaps I should back up just a bit...

You can purchase what is called Roving, or you can purchase raw fleece. What Roving is is a raw fleece that has been washed and carded and put into long strands. Most fleeces need to be washed (Angora on the other hand does NOT ;) ) because the animals live outdoors. It can be a messy and delicate matter. The wool needs to be washed and gotten clean, but not agitated much because then it would felt the wool and ruin it for spinning.

Carding is the process of taking the wool after it has been washed and brushing it so that all the fibers lay straight and in the same direction. Think of it as taking big teased hair from the 80's and brushing it out into one of the smooth sleek styles that are popular today. Carding paddles are not quite as cheap as I would have thought, so when I looked at trying this I wanted to make sure that the fiber would be ready for spinning and not need any extra work from me.

This is the roving as it looked when it came out of the package. Red Barn Farm was sweet enough to even through a little free lavender sachet in with it...so the roving came out smelling wonderful! :o) It's a little touch...but one I as a customer really appreciate.

As you can see the strand is quite thick, and we're going to have to work at it some to get it ready for spinning on the drop spindle.

As you can see 8 ounces is quite the fist full of fiber! It was really hard for me to imagine how much fiber that was going to be. There is no set "1 oz of fiber will give you 10 yards of yarn" kind of conversion. It all depends on what the fiber is, some are lighter than others so you get more for that same weight, and how thick it is...you're not going to be able to spin some wools and bulkier fibers as thin as some others.

In shopping on Ebay pay attention to unit price!! Figure out how much it will cost per ounce including the shipping fees. With no reference for size in the pictures it's easy to make a one ounce ball of fiber look as big or bigger than the 8 ounces that I bought...and you'd never know it till you received it in the mail and wondered where the rest of your fiber was!

So my next project will be splitting this long row of roving into smaller sections. After that we will predraft it and get it ready for spinning. We'll see you then!

My First Attempt At Spinning

With baby bunnies being born this week and all the anticipation of their soft white fiber I thought perhaps I should learn how to do something with it all. My go-to place for learning things is Youtube...I'm a visual learner ;o)

There are a couple great videos there that really helped me figure it out. The young lady whose Youtube name is theartofmegan has an entire series on the subject that I highly recommend.



I then hit one of my other favorite sites...Ebay...where I purchased a drop spindle and a small amount of pretty pink fiber from billman7312 to begin with. The spindle came yesterday and I was very pleased with it. It's not a high tech item, but I did appreciate that it was stained nicely and then had a clear coat put over it. It's well made...although I do think if I purchase another one I may look for one with a notch in the side to help keep the yarn from sliding as I'm trying to re-loop it.

After a few minutes with Megan and the drop spindle this is what I was able to create...it was VERY exciting!!

The fiber was probably about 18inches long and so I had to pull it into thinner sections and then join those sections together for one long piece of yarn. The sections where there were no joins actually look pretty uniform in thickness. Joining is an art I'm going to have to work on a bit more though ;)

By the end of it I had a spindle full of pink yarn! The fiber that came with the spindle was a good strong fiber...which is great because I do believe I did what they call "over spin" LOL The yarn is VERY twisted. I'm not sure I will bother processing it like a regular yarn since there is so little of it...perhaps I might be able to knit it right off the spindle into a little swatch??

Someday I believe we will invest in a spinning wheel, but I will need to have a good amount of fiber to do that, a little chunk of change, and a very understanding husband ;)