Skein....meet Skein

Well Jane and I bought the same roving at Knitch recently. You can see hers on her blog (which looks ever so more even than mine!). I think she has decided to leave hers as single ply but I had just the opposite thought. I thought it would look great plied together! Well, that and I'm nowhere near actually being able to produce a balanced single so I gotta ply it to make it at least APPEAR balanced - from a distance.

This is Schoppel Wolle finger roving - 100% Merino - 50g in color "Earth"


Here it is on the bobbins:




Here it is plied on the bobbins:



And here's Skein:




This is my first "real" spinning (as in not just using practice stuff) and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out! I learned a lot. First of all, I had that "a-ha" moment on the second bobbin where I finally figured out that you pull BACKWARDS on the roving to draft it - not forwards. So I learned to let the roving slip a little when I feed it onto the bobbin and then draft back before allowing the twist in. After I learned that little trick my yarn was ending up MUCH smoother!

When I started plying I did start going in the wrong direction because I forgot! Luckily I caught it at the very beginning so I was able to fix it.

So.....questions for you spinning gurus out there:

1) Do you ever just tie the ends of the two bobbins so you just have one skein? I wouldn't do that if I was selling it but for me, it's just easier to have a knot rather than two skeins.

2) Are some bobbins just harder to work with than others? It seems like the bobbin that actually came with the wheel is a lot harder to treadle with than the other 3 I have. Weird.

3) Is there a "special way" to keep the ends from unraveling when you finish a bobbin?

4) Do you ply more tightly or more loosely than you work the singles?

OK - that's it!!! :)