Faster by the day

 There's an old phrase floating around that says something like:
Spinning on a spinning wheel is faster by the hour.  Spindling is faster by the day.  This has gone through my head repeatedly since having kids.  While I was gluing knitting needles and shooting other photos, I hung up some yarn to dry on my (dirty) porch.  First, I hung up an experiment I'd done.



Last summer, I bought some Clun Forest roving from Custom Woollen Mills in Alberta.  It is a down breed, bouncy, and hard to felt.  Perfect for boy mitts.  I spun it up in two ways.  One was a slightly over twisted chunky single ply.  The other, which took much longer, was a skinny single that I plied into a 2 ply.  It's well balanced and the skein looks much nicer.  I will continue onward with this experiment and knit both into mitts.  My best guess is that even though the 2 ply looks nicer and would perhaps last longer, the chunky single will save a lot of time.  My boys don't often lose their mitts, but they do insist on growing, so they outgrow them, but not before they get dirty repeatedly, felted, and well-worn.  Sometimes the end game is about efficiency and not perfection.

The second batch of yarn was ALL spindle spun.  I spun and plied it all on the spindle.  Much of it was spun and plied right on the same porch, as I watched kids.  I have no idea how long I spent on this.  I recently dug around in my spinning basket, noticed a had a lot of odd single balls of spindle spun yarn, and plied them.  That added up and amounted to a lot of yarn!

I have no idea what these skeins will be one day.  What matters here is volume- I was actually productive during those hours on the porch. The kids' wheelbarrow (well-used in 'weeding' play) caught their drips as they dried.

 I often feel stymied by the number of interruptions, illnesses, and other details I manage...it's not a professional 40 hour work week or lifestyle.  However, I recently applied to something and realized that I'd had 60 articles published in the last year.  Sixty!  (some were reprints, but that is ok) So, just like that water dripping, a little at a time does add up after a while!  So...spin on!  (or write on?!)