A good day here. I managed to finish the current stage of a work project, and then it was an exciting race for the cyclists, with no major crashes.

Also last night was a speaker meeting at spinning group with Teresinha Roberts talking about Woad and Indigo. Really interesting talk, I hadn’t realised there were so many different kinds of indigo, and Teresinha was a very good and knowledgeable speaker. She also let me have a go on her rakestraw spinner which was great fun!

I managed to do a bit of spinning today too. I am now working on the 70% alpaca, 30% merino fibre in Cappuccino that I bought from John Arbon last October. I have about 600g and the plan is to spin a 2ply to a thickness of somewhere between a commercial 4ply and DK, and make a nice big soft squishy shawl. Here is my progress so far:

The coin is a £2 celebrating the discovery of DNA.

I thought I would give your eyes a rest after the searing orange of the last week, but I am a little concerned about the beige-ness of the current yarn. I think I like it, but I’m not totally sure yet.

I also realised today that I had forgotten to photograph my new tool for becoming a more consistent spinner. I have been making myself little record cards, which I think I shall do for any project over about 100g. The idea being that I write down what I am doing and attach a sample to the card and then I can keep comparing the stuff I am spinning to my sample. It usually takes me months and months to actually finish things, so I thought this would be a good memory jogger.

So here we have my first two sample cards:

At the top I have information on what the fibre is, where I got it from and what ratio I am using on my wheel. Then there is a sample of the single, a sample of the plied yarn, and at the bottom the plied yarn after it has been washed.

The only problem I have had so far has been finding suitable record cards. The ones I bought are a bit flimsy and more paper-like than card-like. For these two sample cards I have created my own laminate by sticking three layers of record cards together to make something a bit more rigid. It has worked ok but is not ideal. I think next I might try finding some card and cutting it down to a reasonable size.