December 2017 // Hibernate

Happy New Year!

From Rachel: For our last monthly post, Katrina and I decided to do a joint spin and post together. We want to say good-bye but as we all move onto other things, we also wanted to take a moment to thank Felicia for allowing us to come on this journey each month to spin up the fibre club and share it with you. It has been both an honour and commitment to do so. Each month, we would dissect how to spin, what to spin and who would be spinning. It was fun! I both looked forward to it and dreaded it — it was always a stretch out of my comfort zone as I tend to naturally choose soft tones, natural colours and solids. That’s one of the reasons I loved doing club! It was a pop of colour each month that pushed me in all sort of directions. This month was no different!

From Katrina: Wow, I can’t believe this year has come to an end already! I’m not sure where the last twelve months have gone, but I’ve sure had a lot of fun spinning and sharing club with you. Felicia’s story this month about winter and hibernating really resonated with me. I’m looking forward to spending time focused on family and finding some time each day for spinning and knitting.

From Rachel: I spun on auto-pilot this month because to me, spinning soft singles from BFL+Silk is one of my favourite things to do! I set my wheel up on a large, slow whorl and spin, spin, spin. Usually, I spin at about 8:1 for BFL. When I finished, I let the bobbin rest overnight and wound the yarn onto my skein winder. It was about 1.5hrs of spinning time followed by instant gratification!

From Katrina: I love spinning BFL/Silk. I love it for it’s strength and shine and I’m usually inclined to spin it as a two or three ply fingering weight yarn. This month, I decided to step outside my comfort zone and create a crepe yarn. I spun a thick/thin singles and then plyed it with a shiny thread. I’m thrilled with how it turned out.

From Rachel: When finishing BFL, even with the added silk, be aware of how much agitation you do in the fulling process when finishing the singles. There’s a chance they could felt and tangle up on each other, which happened to me this month after finishing many, many singles’ skeins. For some reason, the fibre felted in one place, which had me wondering if there was a bunch of silk there or something else. My spinning hadn’t changed. I talk about this more on my podcast in this episode. Regardless, the finished yarn has a lovely sheen and I’m excited to pair it with some other fibre in my stash to weave with … maybe into a stole?

From Katrina: For finishing, I steamed my yarn for about 20 minutes and it just added some puff and bounce back into the fibre, without matting any of the thicker parts of the yarn. My husband asked me what I was going to knit with it… and I haven’t decided yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing what this will create.

From us both: Have you delved into spinning club this month? We’d love to see what you’re doing. Please head over to the Ravelry group or tag your images with #sweetgeorgiayarns or #sgyclub on Instagram, so that we can find them!

Keep spinning!

~ Rachel & Katrina