Longest Thread

The start of this story seems oh so long ago. Wonderwool, 2 years ago, I was having a conversation with Amanda Hannaford, and the Chairman of my spinning guild; Dawn.

They'd both just received their entries back to that years longest thread competition. It was a competition that I was aware of, but never really thought I'd enter. After all, I have more than enough things to be getting on with, why would I want to spin 10g of fibre as fine as I could just to see how thin I could go...

The months rolled on, and the idea niggled at me. At heart I am a competitive soul, and do enjoy a challenge. Before I know it it's September, and I've arranged to buy a Bowmont fleece from a local flock. When I picked it up I examined the fine fibre and thought "this would be a great fibre to use for a longest thread entry". At that point, all was lost, I was committed, and before I knew it I was ringing up Dawn and promising her a chunk of fleece in exchange for all her knowledge!

I went round to Dawn's house, dragging my Matchless through the door, and was made to concentrate harder on my spinning than I had in a long time. When you're spinning this thinly you can't not concentrate, and you have to be super aware of what's going on between your fingers, and how the wheel is effecting the yarn.

I then spent my Christmas holidays spinning. I washed my precious chunk of fleece, weighed it carefully, combed it, padded my bobbins, and spun, and spun some more! Then came the plying, had I added enough twist, or was it all going to drift apart in front of my eyes. I wound it off on to a core, and then promptly forgot all about it! Luckily a post popped up in the Longest Thread Ravelry group reminding everyone about the deadline for entries. 

Then the wait for the results, and even more amazingly that my entry had come 5th. In fact, this year, us Brits had done rather well, 3 of us in the top 5 on a wheel, and Dawn had yet again won the E-Spinner category. A couple of weeks later, my entry arrived back with me. 

I already knew when I plyed it that my second bobbin was better than my first... so here's to next time. I think I may have caught the longest thread bug, it's undoubtedly made me a better spinner.