Walking and Spinning

On Wednesday we had a farily decent day up here, for the first time in a good couple of weeks. So I went for a walk around a little loch not far from here, to try and get some final pics of the very last of the autumn colour, before it's gone for another year. It was a crisp, frosty sort of morning, that turned to bright, clear sunshine!

I had a lot of fun trying out the newly-discovered close-up function on my five year old camera!

I came home after my walk to my lovely little stash of Wildcraft fibre, that, I'm ashamed to say, has sat in a bag for months and months on end. I'm not sure what it is about this time of year, but I'm finally getting round to doing all these things that I've barely had time to look at all summer.

I've been trying to learn how to navajo ply by reading tutorials and watching youtube videos... to no avail whatsoever. In the end I was just about ready to hurl the entire wheel out the window in frustration, and gave it up. I really would like to learn how to do it though, becuase these hand-painted tops are really lovely to spin, but I can never get the colour to match when I'm plying, and it tends to make for a 'muddy' sort of yarn.

So this time I went for this English Wool Blend, which is too wiry for navajo plying. I split it right down the middle, in two equal parts (I thought), in the hope that when it came to plying, the colours on each bobbin would match, and that I would have roughly the same amount on each one, so as little as possible would go to waste.

In the end it didn't go exactly to plan. The colours went their seperate ways pretty early on, and there was an awful lot left on one bobbin after plying.

I think it still looks ok though. It's just over 168 yards (if I've done my maths right!), and is around 11wpi. I got the lot into one continuous skein thanks to my new jumbo flyer, which I am very chuffed with!

I'm so glad my spinning-mojo is back! It's nice to be feeling creative again.

If you've read this far, I'm amazed! I'll leave you with this little poppy that I found stuck into the side of the path on my walk. I thought it was nice, and left it there.