also i hashtagged the start of this thread and yesterday's thread with #/spindleposting

so if you missed yesterday and want to catch up go there

just finished another big hunk o' wool

think i'll spin one more smaller hunk then probably wind it off this spindle, i could probably fit more but i find as the spindle gets more full the yarn is more likely to slip off the notch in the side of the spindle that helps hold it in place

also, parking the spindle between my knees less and less! i used to be able to walk around and talk and spin and such lol so let's get back to that

also i just realized i've just been saying "drop spindle" in my alt text

i xkcd experts comic'd yall depending on the alt text!

so, for anyone who wants further description, and also to give more info on drop spindles in general

a (standard) drop spindle is composed of a shaft and a whorl, with the shaft being, well, a stick, and the whorl being some kind of larger section on the shaft somewhere. often, the top of the shaft has a hook on it (mine does) - but sometimes there's just a little notch of some kind, and you just do a little half-hitch at the top, it varies. whorls can be top- or bottom- whorls - top ones are maybe an inch from the top of the spindle and bottom ones maybe an inch from the bottom. mine's a top whorl spindle.

the whorl 1) helps with weight and spin bc of physics magic (i'll go read respect the spindle later today and get yall more info on this, my head is fuzzy on circular object physics) and 2) gives you a place for your spun yarn to pile up against rather than just gathering on the center of the spindle. so you generally end up with kinda a cone of yarn, wide point against the whorl, and narrowing as it continues along the shaft

technically, a whorl is nonessential and you can spin with literally just a stick, but i'm not sure if you can *drop* spin with just a stick - it's at least doable in the hand though.

all this said there are other kinds of drop spindles and other types of spindles (like supported spindles!). turkish drop spindles for example look totally different.........lemme go get a pic of one actually :)

#spindleposting

so here's a 3d printed turkish spindle

instead of just winding the yarn onto the shaft, you wind it around the legs and it creates a center pull ball which is REALLY nice for plying

you can see there's no hook on this one, just a slight indent in the top of the shaft, that's very standard for turkish spindles and you just do a half hitch at the top of the shaft

turkish spindles pack flat when not in use so they're great for travel

also

nonbiney turkish spindle :)

i have one other 3d printed one (i got several for teaching at one point) and it's genderqueer colors :)))

spun a smidge with the turkish

the way you wind the yarn on is "over two arms, under one" repeat forever

ok i wound the grey and then decided i was gonna spin a second ball of grey rather than pull from both ends of the ball

so i picked up a single i plied (eta: spun, not plied, was writing too fast) literally 2+ years ago and decided to ply that

anyway

single that has sat around for along time kinda loses some of its twisty energy, and i didn't really account for that in the plying, so now it's probably overtwisted in the plying direction

woops

but hey, finished multi-year-old project

bonus niddy noddy picture

also did you know! if you get distressed over a silly mistake or problem, you can usually fix it if you just don't flip the fuck out and abandon it forever

this post brought to you by the fact that i abandoned that single years back bc the center-pull end snapped and i lost my fucking marbles

well, yeah it's a bit kinked up (same yarn, same)

but hell look at that color! I stretched it a bit for the picture to get clearer view of the color, so you can't really see the twistiness

the worst outcome is I send it to my professor friend and she needle felts with it, so I'm not horribly upset. I'll see what I can do to salvage it first though

eta: @sheepnik in the comments fuckin called it and I am a damn fool! It's been plied in the wrong direction, I misread my own single 😅

so i'll be. respinning i guess. if anyone wants me

edit: this is all irrelevant!

---

one thing i think I could do - if I hated myself, which i try not to - is basically go through and re-spin, try to balance out the twist better.

but honestly my first try might be another water bath and then a dry with a weight on it???

I've not done a lot to salvage over twisted yarn before, so these are a bit of a guess. don't listen to me too much here!

ok, so, it's plied in the wrong direction! what now?

gonna get it on a swift and spin it off from that - not gonna rewind, working from the swift should be fine - and basically unspin, and keep spinning in the unspin direction until it's "balanced"

i feel like a damn fool and i am telling myself IT'S OK I WILL NOT GIVE UP ON IT AGAIN

turns out your yarn looks better when you do it right 😅

also, photo of a swift. you take your big loop made by your niddy noddy, and put it on the swift to unwind it - usually because you're then winding into a ball

the yarn is now much more vanilla

bath time 🛁

gonna swap back to the grey now

the first ball is 40g so i'm aiming for another 40g. yardage won't be perfectly equal but that's ok

oh also

doesn't that look so much better!

still damp so not perfectly color true but a phone cam won't be regardless