From (almost) first principles

I've been spinning for a while now... I first bought a drop spindle at Woolfest in 2008, then went up to Twist Fibre Craft Studio in Newburgh to have a beginners lesson. My spinning got steadily better and I produced some yarns that I was fairly proud of, but I never used them.

At Woolfest 2009, I bought another spindle so I could ply from the spindle carrying the single, onto the second spindle and a bag of beautiful 80% merino / 20% silk roving. I spun half of it up almost immediately and then never got going the other half (my intention was to ply as a 2-ply).

Roll forward a couple of years (and one small child) and The Yarn Cake in Glasgow started a Spin Sunday on the first Sunday of the month. This coincided nicely with my fingers starting to get itchy for spinning again, so I hunted down the half bag of roving and got going again.



This time, I was bitten thoroughly by the bug and within a few days, I'd finished spinning the second half of the fibre. I changed my mind about plying as a 2 ply, as I prefer the roundness of a 3 ply, so I chain plied both of my singles and ended up with two lovely skeins of approximately fingering weight yarn.





I immediately knitted the longer skein up into a scarf for my daughter.



It's a plain linen-stitch scarf using surprisingly large needles (5.5mm) as linen stitch is quite dense.
 The fabric is wonderfully flat and has a good drape and really does look woven.



The other skein is likely to become a pair of mittens, or maybe a hat.