in fact, i have three.

today was day one of Camp Pluckyfluff Chicago, which is Lexi Boeger’s two day workshop on creative carding and non-traditional spinning techniques. i signed up ages ago even though i am pretty vanilla as this whole spinning thing goes, but i wanted to branch out a little. and branching out i am!

today we learned a few techniques for simple textures with thread-plying, which resulted in the first of the yarnses that i came home with today: a white wool plied with silver metallic thread in a spiral, with intermittant ‘beads’ throughout. it’s a really interesting texture and i’m really pleased with it — plus the little tiny bit of sparkle is awesome. to achieve that, all i had to do was to keep the silver thread parallel to the orifice and keep the tension on that, then let the slack wool wind on at a 45° angle — creating the spirals — and when i wanted to have a bead, held the silver thread taut with the white wool single held at a 90° angle and let it twist the wool on in place. the wool would twirl itself right on and form the bead, and it was easy as pie. pie where you buy the frozen pie crust and dump in a can of pie filling, y’all. actually it was easier than that; no oven preheating with yarn. and i have just shy of 60 yards of that, with plenty of plain white wool and metallic thread to make more, if i want.

next we did some ‘creative carding’ — raiding Lexi’s marvellously extensive stash of random fibers in a ridiculous amount of colors, we all put together batts of a little of this, a little of that to see what we came up with. (since the class is about 20 spinners and they only had 3 carders, i actually ran home and got mine. not sure that was the best decision because it was a little smaller and has a finer carding cloth than the ones in class, which confused a few people at first, but it mostly went along without incident so i’m okay with it on the balance.

meanwhile, the brake strap for my wheel has gone walkabout. i don’t know *why* it would have done such a foolish, foolish thing — i need it! — but i suspect someone may have accidentally bumped into the wheel and its velcro stuck to their fiber, and then it fell off elsewhere in the room. i hope it returns. i fashioned a temporary one out of a crocheted chain of red heart acrylic, but it stretches out and so i wind up holding on to it to pull it tight when i need serious tension, which is … suboptimal. i can order a replacement for $4, so it’s not exactly a show-stopper for life, but … it couldn’t have gone walkabout at the end of day 2??

anyways. then we spun up our crazy carded batts, which was great fun — we put little bits and bobs in the batts, and went wild on the drafting thick and thin. i had a blast because i have not spun utterly freeform without some particular eventual weight in mind (and therefore caution about my drafting) in ages, so it was so much fun to just see what happened, with colors, with texture, and with the weight. i have a good 160 yards of that and i really like how it turned out.

then we moved on to integrating objects. we started with felt nubbies — little balls of wool that we’d all felted to bring to class — which we threaded on to roving with a tapestry needle. it turns out that if you string the felt nubbie (or bead, or whatever) on roving first, the roving that it’s strung on works in with the roving you’re drafting, and makes it really nice and secure. i don’t have a bulky flyer on my babe wheel, so the orifice isn’t large enough to admit felt nubbies as they are, but i used my scissors to snip them down smaller and (with a little assistance on the brake) they worked out fine. so i have like 70 yards or so of that, as a two-ply bulky yarn, and it looks awesome.

i’m setting the twist on all of them, right now, so they’re kind of hung up dripping in the bathtub, so no photos for now. tomorrow, perhaps! i am looking forward to what we mess around with tomorrow. really glad i got the opportunity to take this workshop! am having a blast!