A secular atheist witch @greenlunarwitch - Tumblr Blog

Posts

The last couple days of spinning have gone well. I did take it easy on Sunday and a full rest day on Monday since my hands needed a break, but progress is coming along with the BFL. I got a ring distaff last week and I like it much better than a wrist one.

I only have about 5-6 grams of fiber left for this 3rd single, so I should hopefully be able to finish it up within the next day. I hadn't set the specific goal of finishing this project by the end of Tour de Fleece because I didn’t want to pressure myself too much, but I might be able to, or at least get pretty close.

#hand spinning #tdf 2026 #fiber crafts

•18+ Adults Only

Watch Anya Live on Cam

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.

✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions

Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming

I forgot to post for the last few days, but I've spun for at least an hour ever day so far which has been my goal for TDF. My cactus wren spindle was able to be saved, and I was able to finish spinning the 2nd single on it after the glue set.

And I already made a good way into single #3.

#hand spinning #tdf 2026 #fiber crafts

Soooo.... something happened while I was spinning today...

I snapped the tip off of the shaft for my cactus wren spindle, which is something I was worried about doing when I saw how thin it was. But I'm still mad at myself for actually breaking it.

I'm seeing if I can glue it back together well that it's still functional because it's not easy to get a replacement for it. Hopefully it works, but I'm going to leave it alone for a while so the adhesive can set. So I guess I'm going to be practicing some long draw with my support spindles today.

#hand spinning #fiber crafts #tdf 2026

It's still technically day 2 of tdf.

I got a good amount of progress done today, but when I was putting it down I asked my: is this thinner than my other single? And the answer is yes. We'll see how much it effects things when I get to the plying stage.

#hand spinning #fiber crafts #Tdf

Work this last week was exhausting so I didn’t get much progress done on my spinning project, but I've got a long weekend for the holiday (and my birthday). I haven't participated in a Tour de fleece before, so I'm going to try this year. Nothing big planned for it, just trying to get some good progress done on the BFL I have on my Turkish spindles. Which I'm currently not quite half way through the second single for my 4ply, but I'm getting faster with the drop spindles.

I probably won't be getting to spin either of these any time soon, but I picked up some more fiber from some etsy shops. Not like I need more stuff for my stash, but when does that ever stop anyone?

The first is a Cormo gradient kit from AJemFiberArts on etsy. I got two of them, so there's 12 oz of fiber total. Then the other is a Polwarth/linien blend from DivineDyeWork on etsy, and I've got 18 oz of that.

#hand spinning #tdf 2026

•18+ Adults Only

Watch Anya Live on Cam

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.

✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions

Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming

I officially have one of the singles of the BFL done. Things started moving faster once I got the hang of drafting while the spindle is spinning and didn't have to park-and-draft as much. It'll be interesting to see the yardage I get out of this, but first I have three more singles to spin, and I've already started on the next one.

#hand spinning #fiber crafts

So I wasn’t quite spinning every day after work last week, but I did do a decent amount and I have all of this week off to get a lot done.

I spun up that sample of Targhee wool I got, and I'll note this cactus wren Jenkins spindle spins beautifully with zero wobble. I also feel like the shape of the arms make it a bit nicer to wind on then the Snyder spindles. It's a bit lighter but I should still be able to match what I started with my BFL singles.

Speaking of which, I've made some progress on this too. About 9g of the 26-27g I have for this section. I also picked up a wrist distaff, and while it does definitely help with the fiber management, I'm thinking I may like a ring distaff more.

#hand spinning #fiber crafts

Been trying to spin for a little bit after work. Progress is slow when working with singles this thin, but I knew that was going to be the case when I decided on this project.

In other news, I managed to pick up this pretty little birdie from the most recent batch of Jenkins spindles. It's the Cactus Wren style made with Beeswing Narra wood. It even came with a small sample of Targhee fiber which will be nice to play with since I haven't spun that before.

#hand spinning #fiber crafts

I wasn’t going to start spinning this today, but after I split the BFL in (roughly) even section for the singles I couldn’t help myself. I'm attempting to keep the color gradient of the braid intact through the plying process, and I'm spinning a good bit thinner than I have before. A slight correction, I'm shooting for a sport weight (12wpi) cabled 4ply, and the Corriedale I just spun ended up around a 9wpi. So I went down to a lighter spindle and I have been getting some nice consistency.

#hand spinning #fiber crafts

I decided to pick up some Turkish spindles since I wanted to spin a more worsted yarn, and that’s harder to do on supported spindles. My first attempt with this Corriedale turned out much better than the last time I tried using a drop spindle. It started out as just practicing with the new spindle, but then I decided to try cable plying. So this is about 29g of a cabled 4 ply yarn. I over spun the 2 ply. I read that you should put a bit extra twist in your 2 ply before the second plying stage, but I over did it a bit. But I have this beautiful green braid that I plan to spin next.

As usual, I did something with the label and now can't find it, but I do know this is Bluefaced Leicester. Unfortunately can't remember the indie dyer I bought it from last year. Anyway, the plan is to do a cabled 4 ply for this too. Something around the DK weight range is the goal, which I got pretty close to with the Corriedale, but I think I'm going to trying getting my singles a little thinner this time. This is kinda a trial run for what I'm planning to do with my Gotland fleece.

#hand spinning #fiber crafts

•18+ Adults Only

Watch Anya Live on Cam

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.

✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions

Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming

It's been a long time since I've posted. Video games had been taking up most of my free time (Expedition 33, Hades 2, Digimon Time Stranger) and I hadn’t been doing much crafting. But I've been getting back into my fiber stuff, though since the temperature is warming up here I don't know how long I'll be able to tolerate working with wool. At the very least I finally washed the two fleeces I bought a while ago, so they're all ready to be processed once I pick myself up some combs.

It's kinda fun to see the differences between the two types of wool. There's more of the Gotland (the four bags on the right) by weight, but the Romney takes up 3 times as much space.

#hand spinning #fiber crafts

The merino/bamboo/silk has been washed, and I'm really happy with how it turned out in the end. It's semi worsted 2ply, around the fingering range (I haven't checked the WPI yet), and if I counted and did my math right I got almost 300 yards in this 108g skein.

Now that I got the main project I was working on done (I, of course, have 4 in progress knitting projects, but that's besides the point) I'm getting the itch to start a sewing project. I picked up a bunch of supplies and materials a few months ago, but didn't start anything yet.

So, I printed out the patterns I bought and started putting them together. I've got to work the next 4 days, but then I have 10 days off. Plenty of time to work on my projects.

#hand spinning #yarn #sewing #hand sewing

It got a bit heavy and difficult to spin near the end, but I managed to fit all of my 2 ply onto a single spindle, all ~100g of it. My singles were under spun in a few places so I had to spice some ends together, but it's much better than my previous yarn. I'm going to let it rest for at least a few days before I wind it into a hank and wash it. And, my spindles are now free for my next spinning project, which might be the yak fiber, but I haven't fully decided yet.

#hand spinning #supported spindle #yarn #handspun #handspun yarn

It's been a while since I last posted. I got side tracked from my fiber projects by video games and now the weather is getting hot and I'm finding I'd rather play with my watercolors then handle wool.

But, I did finish spinning the singles of the wool/bamboo/silk blend I'd been working on, even managed to fit 50g of singles onto one spindle. I started plying yesterday and it's going pretty good. I'm still working on keeping the tension on the singles even as I ply, things got a bit wonky in a few places because of that, but for my 2nd handspun yarn I'm happy with it so far.

#hand spinning #supported spindle #yarn #my wips

No crafting update this week, more important things came up that needed my time and attention. One of my cats health took a decline and I ended up having to put her down. She was a senior cat, being over 15 years old, so I knew that this was coming at some point, but that doesn't make the loss any less painful. I had her for all of those 15 years. She was with me when I graduated high school, when I graduated college, when I moved into my first apartment, and when I moved across the state to a new city. She was with me for half of my life, for almost all of the challenges and difficulties of my life... and now she gone. I know the pain will lessen with time, that doesn't make it easier to deal with in the present though, but I have found a small amount of comfort by performing a small ritual and giving her a place at my alter.

•18+ Adults Only

Watch Anya Live on Cam

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.

✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions

Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming

livingadagio

Maybe this is just a me problem, or maybe it's a somewhat common issue for self taught spinners who learn to spin on drop spindles first (I wouldn't know because I don't know any other spinners in real life and am mostly a lurker in online fiber art spaces so I've never really asked about it), but spinning on my wheel I can not for the life of me seem to get the hang of doing short forward (or backward) draw to spin worsted. It feels embarrassing to admit since I constantly see it referred to as the easiest drafting method to teach and learn, and the first method that beginner spinners usually master anytime I watch videos or read guides about learning to spin on a wheel.

Teaching myself to spin on drop spindles (with only minor guidance from a couple youtube videos), I naturally let twist into the drafting zone to keep from breaking my yarn and dropping my spindle as much, and got used to ONLY spinning that way. Now when it comes to spinning on my wheel and keeping twist out of the drafting zone I'm over here smacking myself on the forehead, like dang... how tf do I hold the fiber loose enough between the fingers of my front hand to be able to slide my hand back over my drafted fiber without the pressure from my fingers bunching it up and making it weird, but also hold it firmly enough at the same time that no twist gets past my fingers into the drafting zone???

I understand enough to know that it's mostly a problem with my treadling speed (cuz spinning on a wheel feels so painfully SLOW when I treadle at the "right" speed for my skill level for this drafting method) and uptake tension. Adjusting those two things to try to find the sweet spot in between "I can't seem to keep this dang fiber in my hands or stop all this twist from creeping through my fingers into my drafting zone without gripping the hell out of my fiber" and "well now my yarn isn't being taken up by my bobbin at all" or "now there's not enough twist for how thin I'm spinning" is a bit harder than I thought it would be lol

Also I could definitely be pre-drafting and splitting my fiber bundles more most of the time until I get more used to it, like I did when I first started spinning on my drop spindles to give myself one less thing to manage while I built up my muscle memory for that kind of spinning. I'm just impatient and my brain resents what feels like taking a "step backward" in skill level, I guess, so I stubbornly keep NOT doing that even though I know I should, oops.

It probably doesn't help either that I have tense death-grip hypermobile hands/fingers that tend to always make my fiber supply messy and harder to draft than it should be. That definitely affects my ability to keep consistent pressure with my fingers on the fiber passing through my drafting hand too, because my thumbs and fingers are prone to overextending backward at the knuckles and "locking" if I hold even light pressure with them for a while without stopping. My habit of regularly releasing pressure on the fiber to let twist travel into the drafting zone generally helps mitigate that issue, but it's something that quickly becomes annoying (and then painful) if I'm attempting to maintain pressure with my fingers to hold that twist out of the drafting zone as one does when spinning worsted.

Just more practicing and more forcing myself to slow down needed, I guess, and maybe... maybe admitting at some point that my hypermobile fingers just don't like drafting methods where you have to constantly hold back the twist from the drafting zone, and that my natural way of spinning that doesn't hurt my fingers so much is good enough for my own yarn production for personal use. BUT I STILL WANT TO PROVE TO MYSELF THAT I CAN LEARN TO DO IT FIRST ANYWAY, even if that does end up being the case.

greenlunarwitch

I'm a very new spinner, and only use supported spindles, so I'm not much help, but I did subscribe to the Ply magazine and there was an article one of the recent issues about dealing with hand pain while drafting. In it they demonstrated an alternate way of doing a short forward that didn't need to pinch the fiber as much. Not sure if it will work for you, but it might be worth a shot?

Just got back from the Ann Arbor Fiber Expo. I would say that there was more yarn than other things, a few boths with some spinning wheels and drop spindles, no spinning equipment that caught my eye though. But I still spent plenty of money and came home with 2 fleeces.

First was this beautiful dark brown/black Romney lamb. I got a cute story about the sheering process as well.

Then this lovely grey Gotland lamb.

And because I'm a sucker for a good green I couldn’t say no to this Bluefaced Leicester braid.

#hand spinning #fiber crafts

Trending Blogs

Last Seen Blogs

A secular atheist witch