Spinning a peacock.

It occurs to me that I`d better blog something about spinning or start calling this blog another name, like Digging Fishwife or Camping Fishwife or even Mother-of-two-on-school-holidays Fishwife, eh? Truth is, not much spinning has been perpetrated since Woolfest, despite all the swag I picked up there. Who`s bright idea was it to put Woolfest on the weekend that our Scottish schools broke up for the summer? I haven`t even got round to blogging about the stuff I bought there, ho hum.

Anyway, the wheels were sitting there looking reproachful and I was getting itchy fingers, so last Wednesday I picked up Old Man Louet and took him out to Prestongrange Industrial Heritage Museum, where Gourdongirl and I spend a greater portion of our spare time in the cafe, listening to the distant screams of our children rampaging around in the woods.

I thought I might get a quiet hour or so of spinning done, sitting outside the cafe in the sunshine, but not a bit of it. There were a couple of families visiting the museum hoping that they had one of their childrens` craft sessions on. "No", sez Malcolm, one of the museum assistants, "But one of the mums has her spinning wheel here and would be delighted to give you a demonstration." Sigh. Thanks, Malcolm! (He`s actually a really nice guy, and felts. You can forgive anything in a guy who opened his first felting exhibition last weekend, no?)

So instead of my quiet afternoon spinning, I ended up giving a demo and letting several pre-teen girls have a try at spinning instead. Fortunately I had brought the Louet, because it can stand up to this sort of abuse. And there`s always odds and ends of roving and a spare bobbin or two in the bottom of the spinning bag. I`ve never taken a wheel out in public and not had someone wanting to try spinning, come to think of it.

I did get a little bit done at the end, though. I started this yarn back in June (eek!!) when I was demonstrating "fancy yarn" spinning at the Edinburgh Guild Open Day. I`d decided to try to create something that would catch your eye if you saw it in a wool shop, so it had to have a bit of glitz and colour. Back at SkipNorth in Feburary we had gone to Wingham Wool Work, where they had an entire shed that contained nothing but huge coils of pre-dyed rovings. It was like a sweetie shop! I went around with several bags making up mixtures of coulours that I meantally labelled "Peacock" and "Indian Spices" etc etc, and the yarn I`m spinning at the moment is from the peacock bag.

Basically I`ve been lightly carding together six colours of pre-dyed roving (royal blue, lime green, emerald green, turquoise, jade and purple) plus some cut sari silk threads in purple, turquoise and emerald, plus some fine gold angelina fibre for the glitz.



Making rolags...




...and spinning singles. This is the second bobbin.




When plied, it`s going to come out as a lightweight DK or four ply...3.25 to 3.75 mm needles, probably.

No idea what I`m going to make with it, though. I`ll wait till I know the total yardage, though given the size of the Louet bobbins, I`ll probably have about 300 yards. Any suggestions?