Spinning to Gauge

I did a little exercise with a couple of small bits of roving I got free in a grab bag at a guild sale. Both the cream coloured fibre and the dyed fibre struck me as being the same sort: very soft and very crimpy with a matte texture. My exercise was to spin the first one very thin, thinner than I'd gone before, and then get the same exact gauge with the other stuff.

I was able to spin thin, and spin to gauge. It's good to know I can repeat what I did and replicate my work. I'm also pleased with the level of consistency throughout.

The yarn in the bundles is actually balanced. They look twisted because I wrapped then in a weaver's butterfly around thumb and pinkie.

I also spun twice as thin again, just for a minute or two. You can see that yarn going in a line around the two bundles.

The singles for this didn't even register on the VIP Fibers yarn gauge I use. I could have used the half inch side of a wraps per inch tool, but wrapping would have taken forever.

Spinning this thin has been a goal ever since spring when a spinner sat down beside me at the Thursday Spinners in Coombs, talked about how she got into spinning through her love of laceweight yarn, and showed me how thin she drafts. I could have fallen over when I saw her demonstration, those fibres seemed drafted so impossibly thin.