An Update & Some Changes

I put so much thought into planning for that self-imposed spindle club that it's now funny how much of it has changed. I received 3 Golding spindles for Christmas. It was a huge surprise. I thought maybe I might be getting 1 but 3 just blew my mind. Here they are in all their glory (details on weights and sizes are on my Ravelry stash page):

Strickland VIII:


Celtic Spiral:


2" Cherry:

I was completely shocked. I received all 3 on the early afternoon of Christmas Eve so I immediately spent the afternoon spinning up some samples that shipped with them and one I had in the stash.

I spun up 23 yards from .3 ounces of Inglenook Fibers in the Christmas Berry colorway on my Strickland:


Next up was 25 yards from .3 ounces of Inglenook Fibers in Disco Bunny (hate the colorway, loved the fiber):


Last was 83 yards from .5 ounces of Corgi Hill Farms Falkland fibers on my 2" Cherry spindle. I am so impressed with this little guy, I'm calling it Lightning:

So the addition of these spindles got me looking at my stash differently. I decided to separate my fiber stash into 2 bins with one dedicated to wheel projects and the other to spindles. In my wheel bin I have the fibers that are more than 4 ounces and those that I wanted to try out new techniques with like learning how to long draw or Navajo ply. Everything that was left went into the spindle bin. This left me with 14 bundles of fiber at 4 ounces each either in braids or long hanks.

Instead of assigning a spindle or a month to each fiber I'm just going to choose whatever I feel like spinning next out of the bin. I am going to rotate through the new spindles for spinning singles and I'm leaning towards using my Ashford spindle for plying since it has the biggest whorl and longest shaft. The only time I might get picky is when I have a spin night coming up that requires me to spin on a Yarn Cupboard fiber out of courtesy. Also, when the 2" Cherry spindle comes up in rotation I'll need to make sure the fiber would be nice as a lace weight.

That's about it for planning. I have been told I'm over thinking things and it's finally settled in. I love to plan, especially for a New Year, but it's not supposed to be stressful. I've got my fiber sorted and my list of techniques to learn so that should be enough to get me going in the right direction for 2012.