Spinning Polwarth

I’ve had this beautiful roving in my stash for a while. It’s from FeltStudioUK, and it’s 100% Polwarth. I’ve never spun Polwarth before.

As I already had a spinning project on the spindles (which is proceeding quite slowly because I’m spinning rather thin), I decided to spin this one on my Ashford Joy. Spinning on a wheel usually goes faster because the yarn is wound onto the bobbin automatically. As I’m a bit OCD about my wind-on with spindles, it takes a lot of time to spin and wind the yarn onto the spindle.

I also didn’t want to spin very thinly. I decided to just relax and spin, n-ply, and create my “default” DK to worsted weight yarn. Somehow, if I don’t pay that much attention, that is the thickness I create.

As I was spinning on my wheel again, I started to really enjoy it. I’ve been spinning on spindles mostly since the Tour de Fleece, and the speed and rhythm of spinning on a wheel was like meeting an old friend.

I was spinning and thoroughly enjoying it. The colours of this fiber were amazing, subdued and quite present at the same time. And, of course, I’m a sucker for purple. I finished the singles in about a week.

I spent a couple of nights plying the yarn. The thickness of my yarn was amazingly stable, and the plied yarn started to look nice and fluffy. No overtwist this time (sometimes my singles are a bit under and my plied yarn a bit over).

I used my niddy-noddy to skein the yarn. There are approximately 460 meters on the skein, and it weight 112 grams. That means that it’s about fingering weight! That’s a surprise, my default yarn thickness has become thinner… not that I’m complaining, because I love fingering weight thickness. I’m very happy with the result and am now eagerly thinking about what to knit with this…