Lofty Wool - Shoving it Up the Orifice

The making of a lofty yarn requires a little patience and a special procedure called Shoving it up the Oriface. I have been perfecting my strand of wool to get it down to a reasonable size for making socks, so making a big and lofty yarn well it would seem it should be a piece of cake.  After all, when you start spinning yarn, it's nice and thick and lofty.  But now my craft has been honed, and I can make a sport weight from my plies.  I am really proud of that.  I was thinking to myself, now that's something, look how thing that is, and fine and straight.  Awesome you can make socks with that now.  And then I wanted to make a coat, a nice big sweater coat for the winter, so it needs to be bulky wool, something the wind can't get through, that will keep me warm on cold days and that knits up relatively fast, because I'm a big girl and I've a big area to cover.

The thick yarn is the one I was made by the new technique, Shove It Up the Orifice, and the thin yarn is 2 ply sport weight, but light enough to make socks.

So I sit down at my spinning wheel and I start to spin.  Automatically I tense up and start to spin a thin thread... I face palm, and then I start again, and it's not so thing, but it's really twisty.  I am not getting this.  I am starting to curse and I'm facepalming once more.  I love spinning this is supposed to be fun... Why aren't I getting it.  I wasn't getting it because I forgot to relax.  I forgot to let the wheel do the work and draw in the thread.  That's why it's called shoving it up the orifice.  The secret is that you draft out the wool to the size that you want to go onto the spindle, well practically there should be a little bit of leeway in that draft, but pretty much that's what you want to do... stuff that fleece onto the wheel quickly.  Now don't turn that wheel too fast... No... You want to make sure the wheel is going nice and slow or  you'll overtwist the yarn.  So this fine balancing act is being learned by me.  I'm not very good at it, but I'll get there.


I was sent a  pair of carders by a dear friend, and I've been handcarding the wool into rollags.  That's a story for another day.  I have rolags to make a spindle to fill ... Then tomorrow I ply.  I'm hoping on Friday I'll get a chance to do some dying.  I should have enough wool by then.  I also wonder sometimes... to dye before or after spinning.  I have a friend that dyes her fleece... But I dye the spun yarn.  I wonder what the difference is?  And on that note, I'm going to go give that a ponder.

Here you can see the little helpers I was sent by my sensei.  I'm fortunate enough to have someone who mentors me in my spinning endeavors and lucky enough for her to call me friend.  Nestled in the  wool is a little frog, I love frogs, they are one of my favorite things to draw besides those aminita's with the big white polka dots. :D  As you can see there is also a wool winder and some other goodies.