cotton punis

cotton punis
Originally uploaded by nkosit1968

Hey folks! There's been a lot going on in my life lately. Talk about STRESS! But, I've been keeping busy with my spinning and carding.

Here's a pic of some punis I made up recently. These punis are from machine ginned Acala cotton that I've had for a few years now. Believe it or not, I used my regular wool carder to make these, and they came out pretty nicely, IMHO. The last time I tried to make punis from this ginned cotton, they didn't turn out well. I realize now that the problem was that I wasn't fluffing out the cotton first being loading the carders. This stuff was pretty compacted, so fluffing it out first was a necessity in order to allow for a smoother spin. Now that I'm doing that, the punis are coming out way better.

This stuff, as with most of my spinning has been by trial and error. I'm glad I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. I think my preference for cotton spinning is still spinning from the freshly ginned bolls. The whole process is one that I enjoy.

The Never Ending Polypay Fleece Project

I have this 3lb polypay fleece that I bought about 3 years ago. I dyed the entire fleece in shades of pink and purple, and set out to spindle the entire fleece. Well, I have completed my 5th skein! Mind you, this is something I work on from time to time, because the staple length is short and I have to comb out each lock with my pet comb. When I set my mind to it, the combing out can go very quickly. So can the spinning -when I choose to work on it. I've been very happy with the way my skeins have turned out - all in the 260-290 yard range, fingering weight, and tightly plied.
I've been trying out a new way of plying as I normally ply right off the spindle. This time, I've wound the fiber from two spindles onto a paper towel roll and plyed from that. Much easier, less tangled, and most importantly - much faster plying. I also did all the plying via thigh rolling as this increases the speed tremendously.
Please excuse the pics as they were taken with my blackberry. And without further ado...Here are the pics.

First Yarn of the New Year!

first yarn of new year
Originally uploaded by nkosit1968

I actually finished this yarn around the 3rd or 4th of January, but had computer issues. I took the photo with my blackberry, so they aren't the clearest, but it'll have to suffice.
This is a 430 yard skein of romney/corriedale fleece spun up on my columbine wheel. It will be good for a pair of long socks as the wool appears to be very strong. I think it's also destined to be overdyed as it is a very pale green color.

New Yarn and a finished object!

mmma
Originally uploaded by nkosit1968

This is a blend of merino/mohair laps fiber that was blended with mulberry silk on my hackle and then plied with angora. Love, Love, Love! 646 yards of luxury!

merino/mohair/mulberrysilk/angora
Originally uploaded by nkosit1968

Here are my fingerless mitts made with handspun merino/mohair and angora. I did this yarn about 2 years ago and finally found the perfect thing to make with it. I got this pattern from my LYS (The Yarn Tree) when I purchased some angora yarn some years back. It's knit flat, then sewn up. Hated sewing them up, but they turned out well. My blocking skills....well, that's another story. LOL!

Cotton yarn

Well, I've finished another cotton skein. This time, it's a pharmaceutical grade cotton that a friend from my spinning group and I split. It's pretty linty, but I got it to experiment spinning cotton on and it's working out pretty well, I think.
You'll recall the yarn from a previous post:

I decided to make a 4 ply skein with this yarn. I first wound the 4 spindle cops off onto a single paper towel roll, and plyed it off of that. This was a much easier choice than plying off the spindles itself. No tangles! The plying went really quickly too. Then, I skeined the yarn on my niddy noddy and got 196 yds. There was some left over on 2 of the spindles, but I just left that yarn and will add on to it later for another skein.







I'm very happy with this skein. Cotton is totally addictive. The spinning is very soothing and almost meditative, more so than wool, IMHO.

New Yarn

I've had some bits and pieces(some very substantial) of various shades of brown fleeces already spun up and couldn't decide what to do with them. So, I came up with the idea to put all those pieces together to create a somewhat unique yarn. I had small spindles of babydoll and merino, then some alpaca, bond, cvm, rambo/romney and shetland. Here's what I did with it:





I made a 3 ply yarn and got 270 yds! It turned out much nicer than I anticipated.

Fish