My Heart in a Skein

I started spinning more than a dozen years ago, at a time when I was very very into knitting socks. I mean, I'm still into knitting socks, but back then I was really churning them out at a very high rate. My interest in spinning came primarily from wanting to spin my own sock yarn, something I achieved fairly quickly (thanks, Type A personality!). Every spinner will likely tell you they have a default yarn -- that is, the yarn they tend to spin when they don't think about what they're doing or get distracted when trying to spin something else. For me, that default is a three-ply fingering weight yarn. I have to really pay attention if I want to spin something different, but the good news is that most of the time I'm perfectly happy to spin fingering weight yarn.

Over the past couple of weeks, as I've been working (or "working," depending on the day) from home, and as the news of the world has gotten grimmer, I've been turning to my spinning more and more. I think this is mainly because it's both soothing and mindless. The treadling of my wheel is good for getting out anxious energy, keeping my hands busy keeps me from biting my nails or otherwise touching my face, and the mindless nature of spinning my default yarn means that I can zone out to some extent. It's been incredibly therapeutic. Ending up with a gorgeous skein of yarn is just a bonus.

This Hello Yarn Targhee came to me in a swap a number of years ago. It was a club shipment that my swap partner either didn't care for or felt she wasn't likely to spin, so she passed it along to me. And I loved the colors so much that I did my usual thing and hid it away in the stash to save it (yes, I know that's completely illogical). Perhaps I had a premonition of what was to come and knew that I'd need to use the good stuff, because I put it on my 20 in 2020 list to spin, and toward the beginning of this stay at home thing, I decided the time was finally right.

I did very little with the fiber before I started to spin. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to chain-ply it to preserve the colors, but I didn't want huge sections of them, so I split the top into four strips lengthwise and spun each from end to end in the same order. So now when this is knit up, it'll stripe, to some degree, but as my splitting was imperfect, it won't stripe in a predictable way, which I rather like -- I fully believe that all handspun should have some sort of imperfection or irregularity to remind you that it's made by hand.

I couldn't be more pleased with this skein. Despite spinning it under a state of near-constant anxiety, it came off the wheel well balanced (and that's unusual for me, because I tend to like a lot of plying twist and overdo it on occasion). It poofed up nicely in the finishing and has a nice spring and squoosh to it. I have approximately 389 yards, plenty for socks or a hat or a cowl. I haven't decided what I want to do with it just yet, and I don't need to. I'm perfectly happy just squishing it in the skein for the time being.

I wasted no time at all getting the next spinning project on the wheel in the form of a more recent stash enhancement:

This is the fiber that came in the October 2019 club shipment from Southern Cross Fibre. It's on Corriedale and is called New Day. It's mostly a muted, dark mix of blues and purples with a few spots of that bright burnt orange. As you can see, I've split the fiber into thirds, and for this skein I'm going back to my comfort spinning: three-ply fingering weight.

The first bobbin was started with the ball of fiber in the lower left in the photo above, so that brilliant orange is now hidden underneath all this darkness. I'm hoping that the finished yarn, once it's plied, will be dark overall with the occasional pop of orange, sort of like that last sliver of sunlight just before it slips below the horizon at dusk.

I think you may be able to tell from the tone of my writing that I'm feeling a bit calmer today than I was a few days ago. I'm still worried about the situation in the world in general, but I'm feeling a little more secure at home. My wonderful partner spent much of the weekend shopping to make sure we have enough supplies and food. He went to Costco first thing yesterday and brought home Clorox wipes and toilet paper(!) among some needed food and health supplies. He then went and bought my in-laws a huge load of groceries because they've been unable to schedule a delivery (and as they're both considered high risk, they've been avoiding supermarkets when they can). Then he went to get a new laptop for himself so he could give his old one to Rainbow to use for her schoolwork. As if all that wasn't enough, this morning he went out again to buy fresh produce, chicken, fish, and milk so that our refrigerator is now well stocked.

I've also shamelessly copied Mary's idea of taking a bit of time each day to focus on three things I've accomplished and five things that made me happy or brought me joy. I started last night by listing them in my journal, and I plan to try to continue to do it every day for at least as long as we're holed up. You may be hearing from me more on here, as well, as I seem to find blogging sort of a public way of journaling and sometimes just getting my thoughts out helps me to feel I can breathe again.

I hope your weekend was restorative in some way and that you were able to find at least a few things to bring you joy!