Spinner's Home lottery 2012!

Here is my entry for the Spinner's Home lottery!

• Hva har du lært om fiber/spinning/bruk av ditt håndspunnet garn i det siste året?  Hva har du prøvd nytt?  Hvordan har du presset deg selv ut fra din "comfort zone" til nye utfordringer?  (Om du er helt fersk til spinning regner jeg med at alt ligger utenfor din comfort zone.)  Eller, hva har du funnet ER din comfort zone?  ("Comfort zone" betyr at noe er så behagelig at den har ikke noe utfordring; man kunne nesten gjøre det uten å tenke.  Det betyr ikke at det er kjedelig, men heller at du har mestret det og at du kan "falle tilbake" på det for å slappe av og fortsatt vite at produkten kommer til å bli det du ville.

Since I started spinning in November 2010, I learned pretty much everything in 2011. I started on an old Swiss wheel and then got my little Ashford Kiwi (Raindrops) in the summer and absolutely love it. My yarn has gotten thinner and thinner and more even.

I've only spun with sheep wool (mostly merino) except for one top which was 50% merino and 50% tencel. The tencel made everything slippery, but I got used to it and I think did a pretty good job. Though my yarn is still getting thinner with every top (which means I don't have a consistent thickness), I'm now spinning very comfortably, which means I have worked my way INTO a comfort zone. I was starting to wonder if it was ever going to happen, but switching from the old wheel to the Kiwi made a huge difference, and not drafting (that's right Trenchwork!!) also made spinning much much easier.   

I just joined the Spunky Eclectic club and I look forward to trying new fibers, but I do like to go back to merino just so I can feel like I actually have a comfort zone and that I can go to something «easy».

• Har du funnet at du spesielt likte noen fiber/redskaper eller ikke likte noe?  Hvorfor eller hvordan?

Haven't experimented much, but the 50% tencel is just beautiful. I love the shine and got used to how slippery it is. I look forward to experimenting with the Spunky Eclectic fibers this year.  I am getting fiber every other month because I don't spin that fast, and I hope that the blends are too "sophisticated".  I hope they are more the 50%-50% type instead of 40%-30%-10%-10%-10% so I can actually find out which fibers I like or don't like, and so I can feel the difference between the fibers and not just the blends.

• Hva har du fortsatt lyst å lære eller der det noe du er nysjerrig om?  (Fiber, teknikker, metoder, redskaper)

I realized the other day that I had no idea what I was doing in terms of the settings on my wheel (I don't even know what ratios are), but it felt right and it worked well, so for the moment I'm happy with that. Of course I knew that before, but I sat down to write what I was doing and realized I couldn't because I didn't know. My entry was somenthing like "spun a lot of merino today", which obviously lacks a bit in the technical department... I think when I decide to intentionally spin a certain way, I will start looking into how the wheel actually works. In the meantime, I'm exploring fibers.

• Hva er det du er mest stolt av i spinning/bruk av ditt håndspunnet garn i det siste året?  (skulle elske å se bilder her!)
  
  
  Well, they have just been better and better, so I'm proudest of the last one I spun up. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  And I'm also proud of the first knitted item I made with my handspun, which was a Mustard Scarf  for a friend.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Tenk litt om hva du ville ha om du vinne:  en håndtein eller fiber?  Om fiber, tenk tilbake til de forrige spørsmålene:  noe spesielt du har lyst for?  Om du virkelig har lyst for en liten redskap kan du si det også om prisklassen er omtrent det til en håndtein eller fiber.  (Det ville si, ikke en rokk.)
  

FIBER!! FIBER!! Anything really, as long as there is not too much green (I don't see it well and I don't see all the variations). I'm not sure I could handle having to mix fibers myself yet, so maybe pre-mixed fibers would be better, but then again, there's always a time for learning!  And I don't know if it's the Christmas spirit, but I wouldn't mind glitter :-)