Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a year already since I’ve started spinning! In that time, I have created 60 skeins of yarn, about 18,000 yards of handspun. Wow…that is a lot! I am a true spinner, don’t want to knit anything anymore. How crazy is that?! Of course, I do have some babies to knit for soon (my sister is due to pop any day now and have I knit anything yet…??? ummm…yeah, working on it!). Here are a few highlights of my spinning year.

Here is a picture of my very sad, sad first yarn, totally overspun and plied and feels so stringy rather than soft, even though it is merino. I will forever treasure this yarn because it was the beginning of my whole spinning obsession:

Here is my 5th or so skein of yarn and when I really felt like I was getting the hang of spinning. It was still over-plied, but it was knittable!

After 2 weeks of spinning almost non-stop, I decided I just HAD to get a wheel, so I ordered up my Kromski Minstrel, who is named Seamus. He has been a real work horse…gone through 3 drive bands, had one of his whorls damaged (and not yet replaced) and still going strong.

My first Navajo ply. It was waaaay too tight and very stringy. But the colors are so pretty! After this skein, I was so scared to do N-plies for a long long time!

Then in September, I learned Bowerbird Knits 2 step Navajo ply method and it has really made a big change in my spinning. It has made me into a N-ply convert and now I mostly do N-plies! Here is the first one of those skeins.

I have spun with merino, extra fine merino, superwash merino, merino/bamboo, merino/alpaca, merino/tencel, merino/seacell, merino/silk, bamboo, falkland, silk, BFL, superwash BFL and soysilk. I think my favorite is still superwash merino, for it’s softness/bounce and right amount of slickness. But of course I will spin pretty much anything! :)

And last but not least, here is the last skein that I finished up yesterday. The fiber is from All Spun Up in the January 2009 Spin-A-Long colorway. If I had to pick a “perfect” colorway, I think this would be it! A fitting end to a wonderful year of spinning!

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