Spinning singles

I haven't posted about spinning in a bit so I thought I'd show some recent projects. I finished spinning the Koi Pond roving and was quite pleased with the results. When you dye roving in patches it's sometimes hard to predict how the finished yarn will turn out.

The main difference with spinning singles is that you're meant to spin with a little less twist. I also spun it a little bit thick and thin which is something you have to relearn after you've been spinning a while. You tend to get into a habit of spinning a certain way and I've been practising spinning thinner and more even yarn.

My next project is a beautiful blue and green merino braid from Freckleface Fibers on Etsy. It arrived like this:

Then I pulled it apart and wound it into balls like this:

And now I'm spinning it up!

It's so much fun spinning colourful braids like this, the colours shift as you go and you never get bored. Here's a detail:

Then yesterday was my birthday and one of my treats from Bradley was a surprise visit to a fibre shop he discovered. It's in Mt. Albert and it's called Gemini Fibres. I picked out lots of treats including a lovely new spindle made from white maple:

I also made up my own fibre sampler with lots of types of wool I haven't tried spinning before such as Falkland, Finn, Blue Faced Leicester (BFL) and Alpaca in beautiful natural colours. I can't wait to try each one!