Spun Yarn: So Much Yarn, So Little Time

When we first started living in the RV, five years ago, I had one cupboard for my yarn stash.  Granted, it was stuffed full of yarn, but it was just one cupboard.  Not so bad.  That was before I started spinning my own yarn.  Now the spun yarn is spinning out of control.

Hot pad woven from spun yarn

I started spinning two years ago.  As I continue to spin in my living history demonstrations, my spinning gets better and faster.  I can now fill a bobbin every day I spend spinning.  Every time I have three bobbins full, I ply the singles into a triple ply yarn.  At first I was reluctant to make triple plies because it felt like the plied yarn was so much less.  But my yarn is pretty fine and even now and triple plying it makes it look great.

Drawer under refrigerator

I am producing some nice spun yarn and the spun yarn has now expanded to fill the drawer under the refrigerator.  In fact the drawer is pretty full, which makes me think I need to knit with some of this yarn to use it up.  After all, how many skeins of triple-plied wool yarn do I really need for a good textile demonstration?  Probably some prayer shawls in the future to use up some of this nice yarn.

But even though the finished product fills a whole drawer, I have another stash of wool in the RV.  My roving (carded but not spun wool) now fills one of the storage bins we bought last year.  I seem to be placing one order of roving from the Woolery every year.  I used up most of what I bought last year, so it was time for a new installment.

Zwartbles

One of the new things I am doing with my spinning is trying some different kinds of wool.  I finished spinning up a pound of Zwartbles recently.  I am keeping a sample of the roving, a single ply, a triple ply, and notes about spinning in a Ziploc bag.  I’m planning to have a lot of different kinds of sheep wool preserved in this fashion as a reference for the future.  My favorite book on different kinds of wool is “The Field Guide to Fleece” by Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius.  My goal is to have a sample bag for each kind of wool mentioned in the book.  Only 103.  It could happen.

As much as I enjoy spinning and knitting, I can’t let this spun wool get out of control.  The RV is only so big, and we’re not getting a bigger one just to satisfy my yarn habit.