Mostly Spinning & A Little Dyeing.

I've been working on getting comfortable with my new wheel so I spent some time spinning the types of spinning I'll want to be comfortable with for Madrona Winter Retreat. I'm taking a Spinning The Wild Downs class with J McCuin MacKenzie so I wanted to spin something similar so I spun cotton. I have some natural brown stuff but I quickly put that away because I wanted to save it for a future unkown project.












I pulled out this old acala cotton that I timidly dyed last summer. I was appalled by the bright red, white and blue I was seeing early on so I rinsed the dye out before it had much time to take so I have some pretty aenemic looking cotton roving.
What makes me happy though is I finally got the concept of the long draw!!!
I'm thrilled!
I also found my brake brand was too short for the necessary cotton spinning tension. Luckily I had enough band left on to lengthen it and it works so beautifully. I did follow the assembly instructions correctly too. I'm wondering if the people that have alot of trouble with short fibers or laceweight might just have a brake band that isn't able to be adjusted to the proper tension. I know things like this must happen because we all have to put the little bits of our wheels together.




I decided to try dyeing cotton again. This is acala cotton from Little Barn. It's fragile so I braided it.
And then put it in a nylon. (I'm not sure if this is necessary. I don't really like to do this because I can't see the color.) I always want to leave it off but I can't imagine rinsing the cotton after dyeing and having the preparation all fouled up.



I also dyed some superwash and the colors weren't what I planned! Same goes for the cotton I dyed. I had a long streak of beginner's luck in dyeing but now it's obvious that I have to keep my containers clean and measure dyes and water. I've just been throwing in some of this and that. The last couple of handpainting sessions have yielded very ugly roving.