I’ve been quiet for several months because I started a new day job which I just LOVE! I’ve much to learn, there are plenty of opportunities for me to improve and every day is a new adventure. It has brought a level of happiness back into my life that I thought I’d lost.
These days I feel like I have fiber spilling out of my brain like stuffing from a well loved teddy bear. That’s because I’ve totally engrossed myself in spinning fiber, then working exclusively with my handspun. This is the other reason I’ve been so quiet. I’m engrossed because this summer I was invited to sell my handknits at 2 pre-Christmas sales. Thus, all my writing time was consumed with spinning & knitting items to sell. Heck, when you have baskets upon baskets over flowing with yummy handspun there just comes a point when you have to challenge yourself to use it. Why is it that I would have that much spun up, but not used?
One day about 1 year ago, a spinning wheel loaned from a dear friend saved my life. Yes, fiber saved my sanity and my life. I have been deeply unhappy, like so many other people, and spinning brought lots of brilliant color into my life when I felt the world offered nothing but gray. It kept my hands busy so my mind and heart could work out the stress and release it. I think of myself as an oxymoron – my tastes and abilities are opposing and sometimes seem to counter more than compliment one another. How fun to discover that twisting things up allowed me to untwist the tangled mess in my mind. Thus began my love of spinning.
I believe to-date, I’ve spun around 75 braids of fiber. To put that in terms that mean something to the non knitter/non-spinner…
- 1 braid =1 -4 hours = ~4oz
- Yardage / braid = 30 – 400 yards
- 1 knit hat = 4 – 20 hours = 4 – 6 oz depending on the weight (diameter) I’ve spun the yarn. Lace = finest. Super Bulky = thickest.
If you look at spinning vs. knitting time, it’s about a 1:4 ratio. Thus, if I need to create something, I often pick a smaller project (handspun) because it produces the fastest and thus gives me a huge sense of satisfaction when I complete it. If you calculate the number of braids x oz/hat, I’ve spun the equivalent of 75 hats! Thanks to the time I’ve spent “behind the wheel” and knit with my handspun, I now feel confident in the quality of my creations.
