Spinning? Really?

I know, I know....another rabbit hole has worked its way into my life and I LOVE IT!!! I am teaching myself how to spin.  Wool fiber (roving to start with) into yarn.  How freaking cool is that?!?!

So a few months back, I purchased a DreamingRobots.com Electric Spinning wheel, the Nano 2.0.  It is so stinking little, cute, robust and very inexpensive.  I figured it would be a great place to start, and it absolutely has been.  It took me a bit and a lot of video watching to get a feel for it and I am still HUGELY learning.  I have spun 9 small 2 ounce bobbins and have realized that these bobbins are way to small for me to do anything with at this point in my journey. I think I am spinning about a DK weight, but it is not consistent.  Thick then thin, but those are getting further and further apart...those little thick and thin clusters.

What is too much twist  - better yet, what is not enough twist.  Yes, yes this is a rabbit hole!!!

Here are two spools of single strand spun yarn and two rolags.  I am not very good at the rolags yet and am trying to get a better understanding of them,  What I have learned so far is that once you blend your yarns on a blending board or with hand cards or a carder, you can either create batts or rolags.  I am creating rolags because they are smaller and easier...i think. The second thing that i learned is that the rolags that I created in the blue an dwhite are far too dense.  They should be much lighter and fluffier.

The singles I had spun were chunky, thick and thin-ish and not consistent at all!, but I continued on and just kept trying.  I did finally ply a strand of the blue and white blend with a solid white and plied those together to create  a fun chunky mix which I knit into my very first hand spun hand woven wool hat.

The second attempt at spinning fiber was with the gold/green/ ivory mix. I mixed it up a bit more and added some recycled sari silk (the bigger chunks of gold). The rolags are much lighter and much easier to spin.  I still have a bit to go, not enough yarn for anything except maybe a trim - I ran out of the scrap hunter green and gold wool roving, Great for practice and who knows what it may become.

The third attempt at spinning was aslo from blended rolags that I had created from a scrap bag of wool roving.  I did not take a picture of the blending board and the colors, but they were Royal Blue, Magenta, Pale Pink and orange.  I love ho they spun up, but still a very chunky yarn which I knit into another chunky hat.

What is next?  Working toward consistency and a finer single ply.  I would love to be able to produce a nice DK weight 2-ply yarn for sweaters.  That is my goal.  I will keep you posted!