Well, again, it's been a while...
Lots going on here, but not fiber wise. If you hadn't heard, we're expecting our third child this spring. I'm finally in my second trimester and feeling a tad bit better, but not a ton. I'm T.I.R.E.D.!!! Man, for all of you mom's who've been pregnant with a toddler, you know what I mean! That, and I'm no spring chickie any more, 38+ and feeling every day of it right now. It is why things have been crazy quiet for me.
In my spin a long for October, I wanted to show off some awesome Icelandic I got recently. Long luscious locks in blond tipped moorit colors. It is wonderful!!! My favorite thing to do with long Icelandic locks if tailspin them.
Since most of you will be working on a regular wheel, I did do this on my Majacraft Rose. Much easier to do on my bulky wheel, but I wanted to see the challenges involved. For those of you who use a spindle, the best hint I can suggest is using a heavy spindle as heavy tension is a key of success for me in this technique. I am a very poor spindle spinner so you'll have to fill me in on how this technique works, but I have heard of other spinner's doing this successfully on a spindle.
Here we go...
First, separate your locks. This makes the rest of the process go much faster, albeit, tailspinning is a very slow process.
Second, use a good hairy yarn to spin your locks onto. I use a faux mohair on a cone as this is what I have and have LOTS of it. Cones make it easier to use, but a ball would work as well. I know that kendigcottage.com carries a mohair cone that looks nice and hairy.
Now, attach your leader to your mohair and prepare to spin. On my Majacraft, the little hole on my flyer is not large enough to get a tailspun yarn through (just ask me how I know...) so I put my yarn in the V of the flyer for spinning. I then spin down the leader until I need to wrap it around the bobbin. I stop and remove the yarn from the V and wrap the yarn by hand around the bobbin. Very slow, but successful.
The actual technique I use:
Here, I'm placing the lock UNDER the mohair core. Then, I start spinning slowly and the lock starts wrapping around the yarn. Keep your tension on your wheel tight, and hold onto the yarn so it's nice and taut.
After the lock has secured it's base around the core yarn, let go of the end of the lock and continue spinning a round or two. Pull the lock out to keep it from getting caught up in the next lock you spin.
Here I am wrapping the yarn by hand.
That's it!!! Keep going until your bobbin is full. This will not take long as tailspun takes up a lot of room!!!
