Just the start

It's scary when you realise that you are approaching the end of your 6th decade and wonder where all that time has gone and what you've achieved. I don't think I've done too badly, could perhaps have done more to help others at times, but there's always tomorrow!

One thing I have done is learn to hand spin and weave and over the last few years these skills have done wonders for my self esteem and have kept me sane.

This is my first post on this blog and I hope to keep it up to date with details of my work and some of the other stuff I get up to from time to time.

My latest spinning project is making a reasonably robust yarn from a commercially died wool roving in order to knit a shawl. I was attracted to the colours, described as Caribean Skies, a range of beautiful blues, through blue green to lilac. See the photo above.

I have spun it semi worsted straight from the roving and have plied it to get the maximum range of colours and shades. I have almost completed the yarn so the next step will be to wash it and then I can start knitting.

Although the colours are lovely, the quality of the roving left a lot to be desired. It was expensive and it has proved to be very poor value for money. It turned out to be a blend of different fleeces, so contained lots of different staple lengths which made it difficult to spin. There was also a lot of grass seed and other plant debris mixed in with it.

It's very sad that the quality of commercially produced rovings can be so poor, but we live and learn! So the lesson for today is, next time, I'll be choosing more carefully and I'll be doing my own dyeing!