how to alpaca: wash! dry! giant rolag! spinnnnnnn! (bonus: toad who helps me wash by eating all the ants that flee the soapy flood)
hat I'm making is too goddamn small and I'm big peeved because it's samoyed yarn, so it's special and bluhhhhhhh bluh bluh!
right after this i had to stop because my brain fog was making me fuck up, but i'm really enjoying this pattern!
took a break from alpaca to dye some knitpicks sock blend for the beamish boy’s beamish bf, who has no winter woolies at all. of course my pride as a knitbear won’t let that stand! so here is an autumn rainbow i plan to spin as a long shift gradient and navajo ply. bonus screen porch fiber pileup: a couple nights ago it rained sideways so a full fleece that was almost dry got soaked again. :P eta: the ‘black’ is a deep plum.
every time i see a bunch of unspun fiber i just want to smush my face in it, it just looks so inviting do you find that a wheel is easier on your wrists/hands than a drop spindle? i can almost never spin these days because my hands are too painful and i'm hoping a wheel might be better
A wheel has been different stress on my hands, but overall I can spin longer on a wheel than I can on a spindle. It helps that I had lots of pt and ot for musician stuff, those ergonomics skills translate easier to a wheel than to a spindle. That said, supported spindle is similarly easy on the hands (more horizontal motion, no weight to support), and way less expensive of an initial investment, and portable!
yeah, a wheel doesn’t have you holding up the whole shebang while drafting the fiber, so that’s going to be easier on your hands.
hmm, to do a gradient with that fall rainbow i'd have to do blended batts on the drum carder. which sounded tremendously fun before my back noped out and before i realized i need to buy another kitchen scale bc i can't find mine. i wonder how he feels about stripes.
randomly: if you ever happen to have four rubber balls, three mugs, a half dozen rubber bands, some fiber you want to spin, and a LOT of energy to burn off, but for some reason can't stick a pencil in a potato to make a drop spindle, here is how you can make some yarn. :D
