Still spinning

I've filled another spindle with wool. While this one started out a bit thicker than my usual spinning, I quickly reverted to my normal spinning style. 

I spun up a quarter pound of Wensleydale Romney cross wool, pictured on the right below. It was my first time working with nice fluffy pin drafted fiber. 

Boy could I tell a difference with the staple length too. It took me just a bit of adjustment then I spun through it quite quickly, in about a week. The fluffiness of the fibers helped. I did not have to do much fiber preparation, just spin some yarn.

Once it was spun I let it sit for a week on the spindle to relax into itself. I wound it off on my handy dandy ball winder, and then held the two ends together and once again wound onto the ball winder. I have found this makes plying so much easier for me. I just need to pay attention to making sure the two plies align correctly.

When I plied from the outside and inside of a ball I was having some difficulty with one ply pulling a longer length and twisting back on itself. When I wind them together first the lengths are matched reasonably well.

Now my little ready to ply ball is resting and waiting for me to finish the job so I can call it yarn. I am looking around for an additional spinning tool, a wraps per inch tool. Yarn weight classification is based on how many wraps around a set size tool you can make. More wraps per inch means a finer yarn weight.

Currently I have not knit with any of my hand spun. Gus has hidden my two earliest efforts. (He tells me it was not him, but I don't believe him since he is the only other one in this house that likes to carry around yarn almost as much as me.) Anyway, part of the reason I've not knit any of my yarn is that I can not judge yarn weight very accurately. I can tell the difference between lace weight and bulky sure, but hand me fingering and sport weight without the yardage and needle recommendations attached and I am lost. Odds are that I can make socks out of both.

I also have the handicap of being primarily a sock knitter. I assume all yarn should be knit at a gauge that could stop a bullet. What do you mean a sweater should drape? Don't all your sweaters stand up in the closet like mine?

No really I am not that bad but I do tend to knit rather tight and lean toward preferring a tighter gauge than most. Knitting, it is all in the style, right?