Those of you who’ve been reading for awhile know that I’ve begun practicing with a drop spindle. I posted some practice “yarn” this spring, but honestly, I was having a hard time with drafting and getting an even, longer-than-a-millisecond spin with my spindle. Enter Mel of Pipe Dreams and Purling Plans. In September, Mel held a contest in conjunction with fundraising for the Breast Cancer 3Day Walk in DC, and I won the beautiful spindle in the foreground above. This spindle has made all the difference. It spins forever, which has given me the practice I need to figure out how to draft and spin more consistently. I’m considering this my very first yarn — spun from 2 oz of BFL in colorway Sadia from A Verb For Keeping Warm. It is a beautiful, complex gray. Here’s what it looked like when I took it off the spindles:

I then soaked it in a warm water bath, and weighted it as it hung to dry to straighten it out.  I waited all day yesterday for it to dry, and last night I wound it into a skein:

And here’s the skein with a dime for scale:

This looks pretty thick-thin, but much of that has to do with switching spindles and making it over the drafting hurdle part of the way through this projct. I’d say most of the yarn is solidly dk weight, and none of it is thicker than a heavy worsted. I’ve begun a new spinning project already, and I can already see my own progress. This is seriously addicting.

Happy New Year! I’ll be back soon with (perhaps) a quick review of my knitting year, and some resolutions for 2009.