Ideal Weight

Day 212: I am getting very close to achieving the ideal weight in my handspun cotton. The green thread crossing the skein is a commercial 8/2, the type I normally use for weaving tea towels, and although my handspun is too soft to use as warp, I believe it will hold up well as weft. I spin cotton in two ways: with a hand-held tahkli (spindle) or using a "book" charkha wheel. I find I can get a finer, tighter thread with the tahkli which, it must be admitted, probably does not speak to my expertise as much as it does to my patience. I get in a hurry with the charkha, feeding a little too much fiber through my fingers as I draft it back. The hand-held tahkli requires greater focus and consequently, the end result demonstrates more attention to detail. That said, the threads I am producing by either means are a vast improvment on the first lumpy, fragile attempts I made less than a month ago. Almost every day, I see my skill at manipulating the fiber becoming more refined, and I've learned a few tricks along the way for talking pesky slubs into thinning down before being wound onto the spindle as a length of finished single. Cotton is a delightful fiber, if perhaps not the easiest stuff to spin.