I made yarn

I finished spinning the fiber I was working on during Tour de Fleece. Someone told me that my spinning will improve if I participate in this event, which is where you spin during the Tour de France bicycle race (either while watching or not...no requirements). Everyone is supposed to set goals and for many, including myself, my goal is just to spin every day, which would be hard except we sit down every evening to watch the recorded Tour de France so I just sit in front of my spinning wheel instead.

And here is the yarn I made:

I really like this! I wasn't sure about the color combination at first and the singles on the bobbins only give some indication of what the finished plied yarn will look like:

My spinning is getting more consistent, and I didn't have too many places where it got too thin or too thick. Too thin is more of a problem because if I draft a bit that's too thick, I can usually stop and redraft it a bit thinner if I haven't gone too far past it; however, too thin is forever too thin. My only option is to remove it and rejoin but often when I do that my join isn't very good and the result is worse than a too-thin section.

I ended up with almost 700 yards out of the 8 ounces of fiber. Quite a lot! I thought I'd be spinning it and plying it forever.

I also finished the yarn - I'm a chronic "non-finisher" in that I enjoy the process of making something but then for some reason I get close to the end and stop. I have to push myself to seam the sweater I knit, hem the garment I sewed, finish the tassels on something I wove, and to wash and snap the yarn I spun. Washing spun yarn is needed to "set the twist" - it relaxes the yarn and releases the tension that's been spun into it as well as removing any dirt or oils. Snapping is something you do to help distribute the plied twist more evenly. When you wind off the plied yarn, you usually do it onto a niddy noddy, from which you can make a skein.

niddy noddy

To snap the yarn you put the loop of yarn between your two hands (like you're doing "cats in the cradle") and jerk your hands outward to "snap" the yarn. 

Wet wool drying on a sunny and warm day

I'll leave you with a picture of the previous yarn I spun. I finally washed and snapped it too!