Same but Different

I haven't gotten as much spinning time as I would have liked in the past week (Rhinebeck sweater knitting is taking priority at the moment), but the time I have spent at my wheel has been very enjoyable. I've been working on the FatCatKnits top/batt combo that I bought a few weeks ago, and it's been such fun. I started spinning the batt yesterday after finishing the 2 oz. of top, and to say that the experience spinning the two is like night and day is a bit of an understatement -- and it's all the more interesting given that the two preparations are, at their core, the same fiber.

The fiber that was carded to create this batt was combined with silk, silk noil, angelina, and some other fun stuff, so it's creating a wonderful texture in the singles. While I'm trying to end up with singles that are more or less the same thickness as the singles I spun from the combed top, all these add-ins make it virtually impossible to have a completely even singles -- and I'm just fine with that. For comparison's sake, here are singles from the combed top:

My plan is to chain ply both bobbins, with the expectation that the yarn from the combed top will be slightly thinner and much more even that the yarn spun from the batt. I'm planning to knit something with colorwork with both finished yarns, and I think the differences in thickness and texture should have a really interesting effect.

In other spinning news, I am happy to share that my Flatiron is finally all together and working (though I haven't actually spun on it yet)!

I had so many issues getting this wheel together that I was really starting to think it was cursed -- first half the parts were missing, then some of the bolts didn't work, and then I finally got it put together but I couldn't seem to get the flyer to move when I treadled. Thanks to some very helpful folks on Ravelry, I finally figured out that my bobbin needed to be turned the other way to spin in double drive and all I had to do to get it to work was flip the bobbin around. I expect that I'll be giving this a go as soon as I finish up the singles that are currently on the wheel, so I'll be able to give a full report then. I definitely want to spend some time spinning on it before Spinzilla (which kicks off in about two weeks) in case I want to use it for some of my spinning then.