Speaking of spinning, buying the spindle whorl spurred me on to spin up a modern project I've been contemplating for a few years. I like the look of 2-ply yarn where one ply is solid and one ply has long colour variegation, resulting in a barberpoled yarn.
An Estonian spinnery has been making a pre-spun yarn I've used for spinning earlier. It is a very thin roving, so thin that it does not require any drafting at all. This is called "heie" in Estonian and is marketed as pre-yarn for knitting or crochet in English. Heie is the last stage of wool before spinning, so I thought, why not use it for spinning? One is not limited to what a manufacturer says their product is for.
I'd spun and plied some of it on a wheel, and used it to get the hang of the medieval spinning technique. It is good to learn wheel or spindle management — no need to learn drafting at the same time.
It also comes in striped or solid varieties, exactly what I had in mind for this project. I bought one solid black cake and one that has red and black sections. I intended to ply the solid and striped singles to get solid black stripe separating red/black stripes.
This is the red/black cake being spun on a ButterflyGirl's spindle.
I bought 120 grams of both pre-yarns, this should be enough for a winter neckerchief. The singles ought to come out the same length as well. Roughly the same length anyways.
That was the plan right until Wednesday night when I came home to discover that the cats had destroyed the black cake yet again. Argh! This is the second time it has happened. I'll finish spinning the red/black, but I'm seriously considering not buying a third black cake of pre-yarn.