Yarnspinners Tales

A Spinner's Journal

2011-11-05T15:10:00.000-04:00

Wonder what I've been working on the past few months? Knitting? Spinning? Dyeing?Nope it's been a whole new experience for me, as creator and designer of the book, A Spinner's Journal.

I am a list maker, note taker at heart. For years I've kept spinning notes, in calendars, in notebooks, in fancy handmade paper books, and sadly just plain on bits of paper. I still look back on these notes now and then, and find that the information there, often scanty, is still helpful and enjoyable to read. I decided I needed a better way of archiving the process of turning that fiber into yarn, and beyond that, maybe other spinners would like to buy the same thing. The concept for the Spinner's Journal was born, tended, grew and finally is available for purchase.A peek inside: (the copyright part does not show in the actual book, I put that on here for the photo)

I've done a short promo podcast at Yarnspinnerstales that describes the book in more detail.There's a link right over there on the right side of this page that says A Spinner's Journal. Click on that and it will take you right to the page to buy it.Try it, I think you'll like it! I personally think it's fantastic :)

Fair Skeins 2011

2011-09-23T12:01:00.001-04:00

Only a month late, and the last post needed to get this blog somewhat up to date. I put four skeins in the state fair this year.On the top, 100% tencel dyed by Natural Obsessions in a color called Baltic. Below that the beaded yarn:

Less exciting, but just as beautiful, on the top a skein of milk and targhee lamb and below that another fiber dyed by Natural Obsessions fibers, a blue faced leicester roving.

This was the first year that the fair had a category for 'man made fibers' and that was why I could enter the tencel skein.

Spinning beaded yarn

2011-09-23T11:24:00.000-04:00

I talk about this process in the podcast in episode 66 but sometimes a photo essay also helps. So I thought I'd blog some of the photos as well as talk about the actual process.This idea has been rattling around in my head for awhile, instead of putting beads into my knitting, how about beading during spinning and then knitting with the yarn. The chance to actually try it though didn't happen until I bought the Aura spinning wheel. It's lovely wide open orifice allows spinning with objects larger than the fiber to pass through and wind on to the bobbin. If you've read the previous posts you saw where during the Tour de Fleece I tried a sample skein using an alpaca single, thin beading wire and beads. It was an interesting yarn, but not one that I really had envisioned knitting something with. So I kept to the basic idea of it, using the alpaca singles, and beads but this time I strung the beads on a thin tatting cotton thread. The idea was to have all the beads threaded onto that ball of tatting thread, and pull the thread up through them as I plied. So the thread had to be thin enough not only to pass through the bead holes but also to flow continuously through those beads as I pulled on it to ply.I set up everything around my comfy chair, my spinning spot of choice. My Roberta electric wheel was to the left of me, to serve as a bobbin holder for the bobbin of alpaca singles. My Aura was of course in front of me, and to my right, on the floor was a lazy kate, holding the ball of tatting thread with the beads.And we off and spinning.....Well, not quite.The fact that the beads were on the floor lower than everything else was a real problem. The beads needed to be higher than everything else, to 'fall' into the drafting zone when I was ready for a bead. Otherwise I was continually stopping, bending over, grabbing a bead, sliding it all the way up, and then putting it into the yarn. It worked, but was really annoying. I thought of asking hubby to hold the beads up in the air for the hour it took me to ply, and then reconsidered, wanting to not live with a cranky hubby. What I needed, a sky hook, really didn't exist, so I rigged up the next best thing. I needed something to hold the thread with the beads near the same level as the plying area. I finally used what was at hand, a collection of wood TV trays that sits in my living room.So the final set up looked like this:

First the lazy kate holding the (now almost gone) first ball of tatting cotton, with the beads strung on it.

Next, note the thread running up from the lazy kate to the TV tray and over it:

A photo showing what it looked like right in front of me

And finally the beaded yarn on the bobbin.

It worked fine and did produce a beaded yarn. The yarn has a few faults, mostly that it is hard to get enough twist around the larger beads. When I do this again (and I will) I have two changes I will make. One I will use consistent size beads, probably a bit smaller than these. Two I will actually do a three ply. This is something I read later in a book. It is suggested to make beaded yarn one should spin a single Z a bit over twisted, ply with a Z single that holds the beads and then S ply a third single. My first try will be a handspun single, but use the tatting cotton for the other two singles. Then I may get brave enough to try handspun for all singles.

Knitters become spinners

2011-09-17T11:34:00.000-04:00

It happens all the time...a knitter sees a spinner creating yarn and thinks, oh what if _I_ could do that?So I decided to focus one podcast of yarnspinnerstales to just that process. If you are a knitter and have been thinking about learning to spin, take a listen to Episode 65. It's a pep talk of sorts, but is full of good thoughts about just how to get started with that goal, creating your own yarn.Because I've never know a knitter who had too much yarn.....

YST Episode 64 Interview with a sheep breeder

2011-09-17T11:28:00.000-04:00

In the podcast for episode 64 I have a great conversation with a breeder of the Black Welsh Mountain sheep. These sheep, originally from the Great Britain area have been preserved and improved by the efforts of Oogie MeGuire at the Desert Weyr Farm.I belong to an internet group years ago of spinners, that decided to do an exchange of rare breed fibers for spinning studies, and at that time Oogie provided samples of not only fibers from her BWM sheep, but some UK fibers too. Her point was to show that the US breeders had not been select breeding for the fiber in the sheep. Her goal was to breed BWM and improve the fiber, because with it's lovely black color, it's a wonderful addition to any spinners yarn. In our conversation Oogie talks about the process of doing this over the years since that first sampling as well as many other interesting things a breeder comes to know about their flock.She also graciously sent me some new samples, and I can say the fiber really does show improvement. BWM fiber is never meant to be one of the super soft fibers, otherwise it would no longer be true to the breeds' standards. It is one of those very usable middle of the road soft fibers, good for strong wearing fabrics, whether knit or woven. Here's a photo of the new samples she sent:

Fiber gifts and purchases

2011-09-17T10:15:00.000-04:00

OK, so although there's very little fiber that I don't love, and lots and lots of fiber that I do love to spin, it's hard to say that I have a favorite. Natural Obsessions Fibers though is one fiber craftsman that time and time again has created lovely colors on wonderful fibers. Over the last couple of months I've been 'improving my stash' with fibers from her offerings on her website both as gifts and purchases.This lovely 100% blue face leicester wool is called Chipolte. I spun some of it into a two ply yarn and entered it in the state fair this Aug. The fiber is nice and soft and I love the color.

I have not spun any of this fiber yet, but what lovely fall colors! It's called Herb Shoppe and it is 75% blue face leicester and 25% tussah silk.

There is nothing better than mulberry silk, unless it's dyed mulberry silk. This is called Elusive because the colors are hard to capture on a camera. That's OK because it's the shine I want you to see!

Want even more shine? Then try tencel, shown here in a very saturated blue called Baltic. I've spun some of this already and the yarn is every bit as lovely as the fiber.

Since I've been at SABLE in my stash for way too long now, I have to limit what I add to it, however, that won't stop me from encouraging others to add to theirs, especially from Natural Obsessions Fibers!

Spinning a lock and from the fold YST Episode 63

2011-09-12T11:43:00.000-04:00

This project started as a group spin along study in the yarnspinnerstale group on Ravelry. Remember when I posted here about washing locks in mesh to keep them intact for spinning? These are the locks that I used for this study. I talk about all of this too in the yarnspinnerstales podcast, episode 63.I only have photos for four of them, although for the fifth, I have a video of the actual lock spinning process. It's on Youtube and you can find it here. My daughter did a great job with the camera, it was my fault that we had so much background noise. I was super busy, as usual, and we combined a trip to the Greencastle fiber fair and taping of this video. Since we were spending the day together, we just got it done! The locks I am spinning in the video are from the unknown ewe lamb that was in this bunch of samples that I washed. It really was nice to spin, and the yarn came out super thin, especially considering the fact I was spinning on my haldane, a wheel not really known for spinning thin. So that's lesson number one, and really in my mind the whole reason to fuss with washing locks, is that you can spin a super thin yarn with the locks....usually. I'll show you an exception further down in this post.I had spun the entire amount on one bobbin while doing the video, so to ply the yarn I first wound it on my ball winder. While I was doing that I noticed that the single was very well behaved, no kinking at all. I looked at that and decided to try and knit with the single instead of plying it. I knit straight from the ball winder. I found a pattern from an old book, for a coaster for a bridge table. The set of course had all the suits in different coasters, I just made the heart coaster. This is shown in the photo below:

It was a totally unplanned project, knit up in several hours and gave me so much pleasure as I knit and admired the lovely single wool yarn.But back to the other locks and their results. Here's a photo of the next two breeds I want to talk about, including the yarns I spun by the lock:

The top lock is from a romney and was the shortest of all the samples. In spite of the shortness though, it was very easy to spin the lock. The yarn was slightly rough feeling and is 15 WPI. I know that it would work to do this fleece as locks but since I have others that will be better washed as locks, I will not spend the time doing this fleece that way. Romney cards up nicely also, and this length of fiber works well in the carder. The whole reason for doing the lock washing samples was to decide the final way to process each of the fleeces.The lock and yarn in the lower part of the photo is from a Cormo border Leicester breed. I bought this fleece because I have loved fleeces from this shepherd in the past, and because I loved the color of the fleece. The longer length of the lock made me think it would be a good candidate for lock spinning and it did make a nice 12 WPI yarn. However the feel of the yarn is a bit rough, because lock spinning is basically worsted style spinning. This creates a tighter yarn, which makes any scratchy fibers stick out, creating the rougher feel to the yarn. For this reason, I have decided that this fleece will be washed in my regular method and drum carded into big fluffy batts for spinning a lofty yarn that will hopefully feel a bit softer.The last two lock samples are shown next:

The top lock is from a corriedale fleece. Look at the length of that lock! And with that length, spinning it from the lock was super easy and fun. The yarn is 16 WPI with a slightly fuzzy look to it. My only complaint is the color. It's off white, with a yellow cast, and I would not like the yarn in it's natural color. So this fleece will be dyed. Now that I know spinning from a lock works well, I still have many options. I could wash the locks in the mesh like I did for this study, and then pop them into many different dyes, like in mason jars, coming up with many locks of many colors. Or I could wash the fleece less carefully, and comb the fiber on my large combs, pulling off top. This will give me a similar type yarn to this sample. I would then spin the yarn and dye it later. The bottom lock in the photo is from a cormo. The lock is small and tightly crimped and full of lanolin. I had concerns that it would not wash well in this method, but was surprised to find that the lock was not as sticky as I expected. There was more waste on the combs when I opened up the locks than I expected, so I'd lose fiber to the combing, something to be aware of when I plan my final project. But once I had the lock opened, it spun so nicely, and made a lovely soft 20 WPI yarn. This fleece would not do well with any other processing, and although it's going to be very time consuming to wash this fleece with the mesh method, I plan to do it, and then spin a soft yarn from the locks.It may seem strange to put spinning from the lock and from the fold in the same study. My logic is that really the process is close enough, although I agree the yarns are totally different. To spin from a lock, you open the lock by combing and then with your fingers tease fibers into the drafting zone from one end of the lock, catching more fibers until the lock is gone. To spin from the fold, you fold fiber over your index finger, and tease a bit forward off the fingertip and spin from that feeding more fiber from the fold until the fiber is gone. It's that manipulation of the teasing a bit of fiber in both of them that makes me say they are similar.I did not do a video of the fold spinning, but here's a photo of the fiber folded over my finger ready to spin:

To show the difference between the yarns created by the two methods, I choose suri alpaca fiber, which usually comes in locks when you get the fiber raw. Here's a photo showing the two types of yarn, and a bit of the washed but unprepped fiber:

The top yarn was spun from the combed opened suri locks. This is the case I spoke about above because these locks did not spin well. The combing open process was hard and there was a lot of waste. And the locks are so thin and slippery they were hard to hold to comb. Then once I had opened lock fiber, it would not spin as wool locks spin. There was not that even straight line style of spinning with these locks. So the yarn is thicker, and very lumpy.The yarn on the bottom of the photo shows the same prep, I combed open the locks as best I could, and then I folded that prep over my finger and spun. The yarn is much better, less bumps and more even. Both yarns are super soft, but the top one, having it's unevenness is less so than the bottom.And this is lesson number two, although the fiber is in a lock, it's not always best to spin it in the lock method.As a final photo I want to show a yarn I spun from the fold method, from a top:

The fiber is 100% milk top, natural dyed and called 'Persimmon' It was dyed by Natchwoolie The yarn is so soft and lovely, although the same amount of top that I got only gave me 88 yards of a two ply. I'm still looking for that perfect item to make with the yarn.

YST Episode 62 two rare breed reviews

2011-09-11T21:22:00.000-04:00

I had not done any rare breed reviews for awhile in the pod cast, so for this episode I review my study of the breeds Clun Forest and Black Welsh Mountain.Here's a link to the episode on the website.The clun forest sample that I had was small, but I was able to do some carded and some combed. Here's a photo of those yarns and a sample of the fiber:

The small sample on top was carded and spun on a lightweight drop spindle. The center skein was carded and spun on my roberta. The bottom skein was also spun on the roberta, this time from combed top. You can see the small sample of fiber left, short, soft and slightly crimpy.When I did my sample for Black Welsh Mountain fiber, I was involved in an internet group that was interested in studying the rare breed sheep and their fibers. One member of the group owns Desert Weyr farm and raises BWM sheep. She was very knowledgeable about the breed and had even included fiber samples in the exchange that were from the UK, the origin of the breed. The difference between the UK and the US sheep was distinct, and the farm's goal was to improve the quality of the US BWM sheep and their fiber, within the standards of the breed. The first distinction of the breed is of course the black color. The fiber is of moderate softness and crimp. The difference shown in her two samples was the length of the staple, the UK fiber was longer, and slightly softer. Although much of this can not be shown in a picture, I have photo of both samples that I spun into yarn.First the UK BWM sample:

Note the length on the fiber and compare it to the US sample of BWM

Both yarns are spun from carded fiber. I later learned that BWM can produce a better yarn when combed for top, because the combing helps remove some of the kemp that can cause the yarn to be less soft.The good news is that these samples are over five years old, and that since then there has been lots of progress in improving the fiber from the farm's sheep. I had the opportunity not only to see some of the new fiber from the farm, but talk to the breeder, Oogie for another podcast, episode 64.

A New Wheel YST Episode 61

2011-09-11T19:49:00.000-04:00

April always means the chance to go to the Greencastle Fiber Fair, and I was lucky to go this year. I did a bit on 'impulse' buying too: a new wheel:

In case you don't recognize this wheel, it is a Majacraft Aura.I talk all about it in the Yarnspinnerstales podcast episode 61The first thing I did was go through the various positions of the two bands, and recording just what affect they had on spinning. I found that many of them will not be positions I use, but the fact that the wheel is this adjustable is impressive. Making the chart of the settings will help me months from now when I find that I want to spin a certain way. I love the enormous bobbins, and fantasize about a winter long project of filling them with singles, enough to knit a sweater. I have a tub full of border leicester roving just waiting for that project.I think though the biggest joy is just how well a spinning wheel spins, that is so newly constructed. I have fussed with my other two old wheels for so long, that the joy comes in being able to just sit down at a wheel and spin.

I love having it signed and dated too! Although they use a code for the date, so referring to this Ravelry thread will help. The A stands for Aura, the M stands for 2011 and then the number of the wheel, 101.

Finished socks

2011-09-11T19:12:00.000-04:00

Somehow, summer has come and gone, and I have lots of blog entries on my 'list' that I just never found the time to post. I have a dear friend with a similar problem, she actually posted a photo of 'ketchup' since that is what all her posts where going to be. I'll spare you that, but would like a bit of forgiveness, as I do post a series of posts here, trying to catch up on my fiber doings over the summer.Or, even earlier. I think I finished these late March. I am looking forward to cool weather so I can wear them. It always amazes me that photos of socks make it look like I have gigantic feet. I really don't. And these socks fit very well, in spite of looking like they are too wide and would just bunch up in the shoes.

Details:Yarn: Lana Grossa PrimoNeedles: DPN size 2 Knit one at a timePattern: My favorite basic ribbed sock pattern, K4 P2

Tour de Fleece 2011

2011-07-04T11:53:00.025-04:00

And we're off spinning again for the 20 days of the Tour de France. I decided that my project this year would be to spin all of the dyed superwash Merino fiber that I did in the tertiary color study for the podcast.

The tertiary colors are created by taking a primary (red, yellow or blue) and combining it with a secondary color. This creates six tertiary colors, yellow/orange, red/orange, red/purple, blue/purple, blue/green and yellow/green. I dyed at least one oz of each of the six colors and then put more of the superwash into each dyebath to exhaust the bath and give me lighter shades.

So I have twelve 1 to 1.5 oz of the fiber to spin. My goal for each days is to spin two bobbins of singles of one of the twelve, ply the previous days singles and prep the next day's fiber. It sounds like a large goal for each day however, the 1 oz spins up quickly with the prepped fiber.

So follow along with me, I will try and post a new photo each day.

There is no photo for day one July 2nd. I prepped the dark yellow/orange fiber and spun two bobbins of singles and prepped the light yellow/orange fiber.

Day 2 July 3rd: Plied the dark yellow/orange singles (50 yards), spun the bobbins of light yellow/orange, and prepped the dark red/orange fiber.

Day 3 July 4th: Plied the light yellow/orange singles (82 yards), spun the dark red/orange singles and will prep the light red orange fiber tonight after work. This photo shows the top as it looks after dyeing and before predrafting.

Day 4 July 5th: 79 yards 2 ply of dark red/orange yarn, two bobbins of light red/orange singles and tomorrow's unprepped fiber 3 oz of red/purple superwash merino

Day 5 July 6th: 89 yards 2 ply light red/orange yarn, one bobbin single of 1 oz of dark red/purple superwash merino, and the prepped second oz of the fiber for tomorrow.

Day 6 July 7th: No photo today, there was so much going on during my day I barely found time to spin. I was able to spin about a third of the 1 oz of dark red/purple fiber in a single. I will finish that bobbin tomorrow, let it sit a day and ply those singles on the 9th.

Day 7 July 8th: Finished the bobbin with the singles of the dark red/purple. The fiber is the light red/purple and each bump is about 5/8 oz for tomorrow's spinning.

Day 8 July 9th: 107 yards plus a small 9 yard skein good for swatching of the dark red/purple. I love love love this color! Two bobbins of singles of the light red/purple color. And next we go to the contrasting color, yellow/green. The balls are the dark color of that dyepot.

Day 9 July 10: Sadly there is only 60 yards of the yarn, I loved the light red/purple as much as the dark. The dark yellow/green is now the least appealing to me of all I have spun so far. If it had all turned out like the dark bits you see now and then in it, I would have loved it. I think I put too little dye in the pot to get that type of saturation, I tend to be very cautious with yellow and the green was pretty light too (emerald). And the whole fiber ‘reads’ light because there is so much yellow in this blend, the primary is yellow and the secondary is yellow/blue probably more yellow than blue. So there is difference in the dark and light of this dyeing, but it’s hard to see unless the two are side by side, and I may lose even that after spinning and plying the fiber. The two lumps of light fiber to prep tonight really are the same weight, each 7/8 of an oz, one must have puffed up more than the other right before the photo was taken, it looks quite a bit larger.

Day 10 July 11th: A day of rest. I took the rest day too, although many spinners continued on with projects during the rest day. I thought my hands needed the break.

Day 11 July 12th: 79 yards 2 ply dark yellow/green yarn, bobbins of light yellow/green singles and tomorrow’s dark blue/green fiber.

Day 12 July 13th halfway point in the race! I’m slowing down for the rest of this week. I will spin another bobbin of dark tomorrow, and ply them on Friday. Probably will prep the light blue/green during those days too.

Day 13 July 14th

Second bobbin of dark blue green, and prepped light blue green for tomorrow.

Day 14 July 15th:

87 yards 2 ply of the dark blue green, 2 bobbins singles of the light blue green and tomorrow’s fiber which I will draft out tonight after work, the dark blue purple.

Day 15 July 16th:

73 yards 2 ply of the light blue green, one bobbin single of the dark blue purple, and the light blue purple prepped for tomorrow.

Day 16 July 17th:

Left two bobbins are the singles for the dark blue purple, and the right two bobbins are the light blue purple superwash merino.

Day 17 July 18th:

Top: 76 yards 2 ply dark blue purple superwash merino, Bottom: 82 yards light blue purple of the same fiber.

And finally a photo of all of the skeins of the tertiary color yarns, 970 yards total:

Day 18 July 19th:

Time to move on to other projects, mainly the yarn I want to enter in this years state fair. First though I need to clear some bobbins on my lace flyer on the Ashford, so today I spun some natural color cashmere, enough that I can ply with a previously spun bobbin. Then the bobbins will be available for the first project of my state fair skeins.

Day 19 and 20 July 20 and 21st:

Two days of spinning for one photo. The fiber is a 50/50 blend of targhee/milk and this shows the first bobbin with half of the fiber I want to spin. There is a small sample of what the two ply will look like on top.

Day 21 July 22nd

TGIF, except in the Tour, today is nothing but uphill. It's the most challenging day of the ride, so to keep with that, the spinners have decided that it would be a good day to spin something challenging to us.

I have an idea for a state fair skein, that involves spinning the beads right into the yarn. My challenge today was to spin a sample for that skein.

I had spun singles from a natural color white alpaca and used that as the base for the yarn. I took a thin wire normally used for jewelry making, and strung some beads on the wire, leaving the wire on the spool, the beads resting down by the spool.

Then I set up my Majacraft Aura wheel in front of me, and my Roberta wheel beside me. The roberta fed the alpaca single from it's bobbin, as I plied the wire and the alpaca. Every now and then I would slide up a bead, ply behind it, and then continue with the wire alpaca ply. It was a small sample because there was not that much wire on the spool.

Here's a photo of the resulting yarn:

The yarn is stiff, malleable, and can be shaped into just about any form I want. I like that for it's possibilities, but decided I would not make the state fair yarn with the wire. I will ply the yarn with something soft, like a crochet cotton.

Day 22-23 July 23-24th The End

No final burst of glory here, just some mundane spinning of more alpaca singles to be used for the large state fair skein. Play time is over, time to do some real spinning.....(laugh) I loved the TdF this year, I had so much fun with the tertiary color spinning, and can not wait to knit with the yarn.

Spinning Singles study

2011-05-06T09:51:00.009-04:00

I had the great idea of doing spinning technique studies with my podcast listeners this year. I explained the concept in several podcasts at the beginning of the year, and set March as the start date. I needed a central location for them to post their photos, so I invited any one wanting to spin along to join the Yarnspinnerstales spin in group on Ravelry Even though I set this project for March, it's an open ended invitation, anyone can work on these goals I set to explore the technique of spinning and knitting with singles. So if this piques your interest, hop over to the group, check out the thread for the March singles study group.

I also discussed what I found as I worked on these samples in episode 60 of the YST podcast.

First a picture of all of the swatches, then a photo of each with explanation:

I was using a wool roving, probably a blend of other fibers too. I really don't know the entire fiber content, since I purchased the roving.

The first goal was to spin some of my default single, as if I was just spinning this to use in plying. I instructed everyone to leave the single on the bobbin to rest for a time period (mine was about 1 week) but then instead of plying, to just knit a swatch from that single. This was to give us an indication of whether the single was balanced, or over or under twisted. This is important information to know, even when using the single to ply. Some of that active twist can be relieved when plying, however, it shows up when knitted as a single, even after resting. You see this in the photo below, a slight slant to the knitting, and a curl at the upper right corner.

The next instruction was to correct your spinning, either not as much twist or more twist, to try and create a balanced single. I actually did this swatch last, after step three and four, and so had plenty of fiber left and spun a larger amount than all the others. So to use it up, I knit the garter stitch swatch but then went on to knit SS stitch, with a few YO to make a simple lace design. You can see this area, pulling in due to the SS stitch. I had spun the single as before, being more observant of the twist, let the single rest on the bobbin for 2 weeks and then knit the swatch. The garter area of the swatch was well behaved and laid flat without blocking, showing I had achieved my goal of spinning the single without extra active twist.
Suggestions 3 and 4 were set up to show ways of controlling the active twist of singles, before and after you knit, and also to show that active twist will return if you wash an item, and not block it.

#3 was a study of blocking the single before knitting with it. The single was spun as above, although not allowed to rest. I immediately wound the single on my plastic niddy noddy and wet the skein while stretched and allowed it to dry completely. Then the swatch was knitted straight off the niddy noddy. The resulting swatch was very well behaved, no active twist at all. Even the tiny skein of single, shown above the swatch laid flat. However the gauge of the swatch had increased by almost 2 stitches per inch, so doing this for any garment would require close attention to the gauge. Also, if the item was washed, it would have to be blocked back to it's original shape. But the goal here was to create a relaxed single to knit.
#4 was set up to study active twist yarn, or highly energized yarn as some call it. I spun a single with an excess amount of twist, spinning enough to do two swatches. The swatch to the left in the photo was knit immediately after spinning the single, as you can see it is so energized it almost rolls up on itself. Then I took the remaining single and put it on the plastic niddy noddy and wet it and allowed it to dry, just as in the step above. The swatch to the right was knit straight from the niddy noddy. It shows that blocking the yarn did help alot, however there is a limit, because there was still active energy in the swatch. The gauge is tighter, and the fabric has a very dense feel to to, like all those stitches as being crunched together by the twist.
I think everyone that spun along with me on this study had a great learning experience. I talked more about some of the observations from the group, and my personal experiences in the podcast.

I have other spinning technique spin alongs planned for the year, so be sure to check the YST group on Ravelry and join us if they seem interesting.

Lock washing

2011-04-06T07:51:00.007-04:00

This post connects with the Yarnspinnerstales pod cast, episode 59. For this post I will talk about the five different sheep breeds that I picked to wash and how I washed them. In a later post I will talk about the washed locks and spinning them.

First a photo of all five locks:

As you can see, I picked a variety of staple lengths for this study. I figure they would all be about the same as far as washing. The selection of the different lengths was more for the later study when spinning them.

A closer look at each of the locks. In the top of this photo is Romney, dark brown in color, locks very short and in 1 inch or so clumps. Below that are Cormo locks. These locks in my opinion were going to be the hardest to wash. First of all cormo is genetically related to merino, and so will have high lanolin content. Second, the crimp is tight, holding in that lanolin. And finally the clumps of locks are also tight. All these factors make this fleece require special handling as far as processing. However it should be worth it as the micron count of the fleece is very fine and the fiber is very soft.
This next photo shows locks from an unknown breed. It was just marked as from a ewe lamb. However it had such nice distinct locks that I decided to include it in my experiment. Staple length is much longer than the two above, but about medium length over all.
The next photo shows locks from a Cormo border leicester breed. This is an unusual combination but the shepherd was trying to come up with a fleece that had the softness/fineness of cormo with the staple length of the BL. It does have the nice long locks, like a BL fleece, but lacks some in the softness. It looks white in the photo but is actually a very creamy tan/brown color.
Finally, the longest locks, shown below in the washing bag is from a Corriedale fleece.
This is not really a bag, but nylon net that I cut into a rectangle, laid the locks out on and then rolled up. I realize now that I didn't catch the ends of the bag in this photo, but what I did was take crochet cotton thread and a large eye needle and just stitch up both ends, with a very wide running stitch. I left plenty of each end of the thread and did not knot it. That way after I was done washing the locks I could just pull the thread out, open up the bags and remove the locks. I can reuse the nylon net over and over for as many times as I want to wash locks. Rolling the net around the locks keeps them intact through the washing process.

I cut the nylon net to a size that would lay flat in an old oval roasting pan. In fact I used two roasting pans for this process. After I had all five breeds rolled and stitched up into their bags, I filled two roasting pans with water and a couple drops of Dawn dishwashing soap and heated them to boiling. I drew very hot soapy water into my sink, and put the bags into that water first. This prewetted the fibers, and removed the dirtiest part right away. After the roasting pan's water was boiling, I turned off the heat, and transferred the five packets of wet fiber from my sink to the roasting pan. I did this by clothes pinning the five packets together at each end, and picking the packets up all at once by the clothes pins, letting most of the dirty water drain out, and then whoosing them over to the roasting pan, dripping all the way. Ah well, it was time to mop the floor anyway. I let the packets soak in the roasting pan, still clothes pinned together for 15 minutes, picked the packet up, let it drain, and put it into the second roasting pans hot water, this time taking off the clothes pins. After another 15 min soak, I took the roasting pan to my sink, gently poured off the water, drew hot water without soap and slid the bags into the rinse water. I rinsed a second time, let the bags drain as much as possible and then rolled them individually into towels. When I unrolled them, I was surprised how dry they felt. I laid the bags out on my usual fleece drying mesh rack and they were dry in several hours, although I left them alone for a week before actually combing them, just to be sure.

All five breeds washed well with this method, although as expected I feel just a slight tackiness to the cormo indicating there may still be some residual lanolin. This method does not remove any vegetable matter in the locks, however once they are free of lanolin that generally falls out when combing. I really liked this method of washing locks. The only word of advice I would give is to be sure and not put too many locks in the bags, and to not rush the soaking process. But following this method does keep the locks intact, no matter their size or length and with gentle treatment will not felt the fiber at all.

Blending with a hackle

2011-01-30T11:50:00.003-05:00

The newest YST podcast, Episode 57, has just been released here, or on Itunes as yarnspinners tales. In it I talk about my experience blending fibers with a hackle.

A hackle looks like a comb, but really is not a fiber processing tool at all. The fiber you use with a hackle should already be in a 'ready to spin' state, because once loaded on the hackle you will pull it off, no combing. So whatever state your fiber is in, will pull off in the same state, or if it is not well prepped, be hard to pull off.

The best use for a hackle is to blend similiar length fibers into a top for spinning. In my experiment I was using a merino top and a hand carded dyed angora fiber (the blue in the photo). So the fibers do not have to be top to be used, roving is fine.

The fibers are laid onto the hackle exactly like you would load a comb. Layer the different fibers however you want. The photo below shows both the fibers loaded on the hackle and being pulled through a diz. That process is also exactly like you pull fibers off of combs after combing. So if you are already familiar with combing, you will not have any problem at all using a hackle.

A photo below showing the pulled off top.

I loaded more angora to that bottom top, which is why it is showing more blue.

Several questions come to mind as I write this. Could I use that hackle as a comb base? Well technically yes, but it wouldn't be good for two reasons, one you can not rotate the hackle like you do combs, and two you have to have a comb any way for combing on it, which means why use it for combs when you have combs. I suppose you could load not well prepped fiber on the hackle, comb it with a small hand comb across the hackle and then pull it off. It would help those that only have small hand combs to comb a larger amount of fiber at one time.

Second question, is a hackle really worth the price? I think mostly not really for most spinners. However there is one nice aspect to it, you can control just how thick or thin you pull off your blend by using a diz with different size holes. It would enable the spinner to spin very fine yarn for lace weight from the blend.

Last question, why not just do the blending on large combs? The main reason not to is that most large combs have more teeth in descending on them, as in the five pitch combs. This is necessary for the processing of combing out all the shorter fibers when you are prepping the fiber. That is not really the goal with the blending process. In fact there is actually waste left on the hackle, surprising for having already prepped fiber. Trying to blend on five pitch combs with increase that waste to probably unacceptable levels.

But basically the hackle is a simple to use but very gratifying tool for the spinners toolbox. There are endless variations to play with when it comes to blending fibers before spinning them, and that is what makes this process so much fun.

On a personal note: did you notice the better photos in this post? I got my much needed improved digital camera, and went through the learning process of how to use it for this post. I bought a Sony Cybershot and I think I am going to really like it.

Color Blending using the tertiary colors dyed fiber

2011-01-09T21:21:00.013-05:00

In my podcasts Yarnspinnerstales I have been discussing color. Episode 54 and 55 were both on color theory and episode 56, just released is about the results of blending of the fibers I dyed. The most recent episode can be found here

My experiment started back last fall when I decided to do a two day dye day. One of the projects during that time was to dye fiber as close to the tertiary colors of the colorwheel as I could get. There are six tertiary colors on the colorwheel, shown in the photo below, starting with and going clockwise, orange red, red purple, purple blue, blue green, green yellow and yellow orange.

Now I will be the first to admit, it's a terrible photo, it was a very cloudy day, and I over compensated by putting too direct of a light on the samples. But there is also the fact that I was 'trying' to get the tertiary colors, and that of course meant mixing dyes, allowing for great variations. However, I got lots of fun colors, reasonable close to the concept and went on then to try and decide just how to use the fiber.

I dyed 2 oz of each color, and my first thought was to just spin the six colors, plied with themselves and knit a colorwheel shawl (circular with the colors in pie segments). I became somewhat daunted by the planning in the knitting, so I decided to change my idea to a rectangular shawl, and have the colors progress along the rectangle, one edge to the other. My first visual thought was to start with the yellow at one edge, and put each color in turn as I knit. I figured I would just overlap the two adjacent yarns to ease the transition.

There's two problems with that idea though, first the overlap area would be doubled yarn, and second it's still the jarring appearance of these distinct colors next to each other. I decided a secondary common color was needed to go between the sections of tertiary colors. Black? Gray? Brown? And needing to find a common fiber, superwash merino in that fiber to spin made me go one step further in the thought process. What if I got the common color by blending the existing colors.

And thus the blending podcast was born.

After consulting Deb Menz book Color in Spinning, I decided to play with three options. First take groups of two colors, card and spin those. Or two groups of three colors, card and spin those or last of all all six colors and card and spin those. Once I had some sample yarn I could put it beside the yarn of the main colors and figure out a pleasing color scheme (I hope).

The photo below are the three groups of two that I put together, grouping the purple/reds and the blue/greens and the orange/yellows.

When blended I got lovely batts, but still very distinct and vivid colors. (Sorry the photo below is the opposite of the one above in orientation).

And of course the yarns looked the same. Lovely colors, nice depth but not what I need for the project. I have enough variety of color already.

So I broke it down again, into two groups of three. This time I chose the triad theory on the colorwheel, where the colors are equally spaced around the wheel. So it is pick a tertiary color, skip a tertiary color, pick a tertiary color, skip a tertiary color and pick the final tertiary color. The second set is made on the opposite rotation. First set is red orange, yellow green and blue purple. The second set is red purple, blue green and yellow orange. The photo below really does not show the colors well.

When carded to blend I got very blue and orange looking batts (again these are opposite to the above photo). I really loved the blending in the batts, they are exciting looking.

The yarns of course look very similar to the batts, showing mainly blue or orange in the colors with sparks of the other colors.

Finally I decided to try a blend of all six colors. Now having actually learned something from Deb Menz's book, I knew to get a balanced yarn when using all six colors, I needed to follow the proportion theory. Basically long ago very learned folks in color theory figured out that if you want to combine multiple colors, some colors will present stronger than others. If you want to present a combination that looks balanced you need to use less of those colors and more of the ones that do not present as strongly. I finally had my answer to just why, a little yellow goes a long way in any dyeing or spinning project.

The proportion numbers are given like this:

yellow orange red violet blue green

3 4 6 9 8 6

It does not matter what unit of measurement you use, as long as each color is measured by that unit. So three of x units of yellow are combined with 4 of x units of orange, etc.

Now I was just doing a sample skein, and was working with less than 1/8 oz of fiber, so I just eyeballed the ration by putting the smallest amount of yellow up to the largest amount of the purple blue.

Here's what it looked like before I carded it:

And then, after carded for three passes (mixing the fibers as well as possible):

Really cool colors and finally getting something close to what I could use as my connecting color in the shawl.

The yarn looks purple brown from a distance (this is called optical blending in color theory) but if you look at it closely, you see specks of all the colors now and then. It's a very exciting yarn and certainly one I would love spinning.

I still have not made my final decision on the actual shawl design. If I use fiber to make this intermediate yarn, I may not have the quantity of the other colors to present a balance of each of the six colors. So I may scale my project down to a scarf size to allow the balance, or come up with another design. Still thinking.....

Updated list of recent podcast episodes

2010-11-17T18:43:00.003-05:00

For awhile I was listing each podcast as a unique post, but it's been awhile since I've blogged. However I have been podcasting during that time so here's an updated list of the episode numbers and topics. As always these can be found at Yarnspinnerstales website or by searching on iTunes as Yarnspinners Tales.

Episode 43 Spinners Block
Episode 44 Fiber Fairs
Episode 45 Spring Spin in
Episode 46 Spinning Tools
Episode 47 May Spin in 2010
Episode 48 Planning a dye day
Episode 49 A chatty spin in
Episode 50 Pour and Wrap dyeing
Episode 51 Dyeing the tertiary colors
Episode 52 Walnut leaf and indigo dyeing
Episode 53 A front porch spin in
Episode 54 Color theory for spinners Part 1
Episode 55 Color theory for spinners Part 2

Tour de Fleece 2010 finish line

2010-08-12T14:35:00.023-04:00

I know this has been over for more than two weeks now, and no I am not still toiling up that last mountain. It's just that with my work schedule and the need to do lots of outside work lately, I have had little time to be on the computer to update the blog.

So here it is finally, the report on my challenge to myself to spin everyday during the Tour de France. It surprised me just how challenging it was to get even 15 minutes of spinning in on many of the days. No wonder I still have a never ending stash of fiber, seeing as how I find it so hard to fit spinning in my day, even when that is my goal.

I did most of my reporting in one of two Ravelry groups during the tour, either my Yarnspinnerstales Spin In group, or the Yarnspinnerstales team thread in the Tour de Fleece thread. Most of these photos were posted there also, but I thought I would pull it all together here in one post. That way, if I decide to remove the photos from Flickr, which will take them away from the Ravelry posts, I still have a record.

First, a recap. One project was to spindle spin a cashmere/silk blend batt. I have one cop of single wound off and a partial one still on the bobbin, no finished skeins of that project.

Another project was to spin the cashmere by itself on my Ashford. I found that I spun on this wheel only three times during the tour, and so I have only maybe a third of the bobbin filled with a spindle. It's lovely to spin, although the Ashford was being fussy about the take up and that is probably why I didn't go back to it much.

The third project was to spin more bamboo for my plying with the Blue Face leicester dyed wool I had already spun. I actually finished this skein during the tour:

The last project is the one I spent most of the spinning time on. There was a dyed Polworth roving that I wanted to spin and ply with a natural color polworth roving. I finished this skein and a smaller one, not shown in the photo, and filled two bobbins with more, which will be plied later.

So now I will start using a copy/paste of the forum posts in order to record my day to day spinning during the tour.

July 3rd

No pics for me today, I worked last night, but I did spin. I did the spindle thing at 4 am in the morning during my break, it was neat to spin at work. I decided to use my regular sized Bosworth spindle, instead of the mini, the cashmere seems to need that heavier spindle for more twist. Oh my I still can not get over just how soft cashmere is…no wonder everyone raves.
After spinning some of the first batts, I’ve decided the blend needs more silk, I’m not seeing the shine in the yarn like I had hoped. Easy to fix, I’ll just add more as I card the blend.
I left the bag in my locker at work, so I hope to do some more tonight, although I am expecting to be pretty busy.

July 4th
Spun at work with drop spindle during my break (4am my time), got two batts of the cashmere/silk spun (remember these are hand cards so the batts are small). Also carded up four more batts. The single is looking beautiful, but I may increase the amount of silk in the next batts, I’d like to see more of it in the yarn.

After sleeping today, and with my ‘morning’ coffe (hah) I finished the plying of the BFL and bamboo. I now know the total yardage is 455 yards. Sounds like socks to me!

July 5th

Day three I spun one bobbin from the dyed polworth roving. This roving has long stretches of the colors that ooze into the next color. And the pound really was one long stetch of this colorway, it makes me want to keep that colorway intact. So I wound the roving into one big ball producing this:

Yes that is my comfy chair it is sitting in, and I put a bobbin on top of it to give you a sense of it’s size. Now you know what a pound of roving wound into one big ball looks like.Then I will just spin the singles starting at one end until I get to the other. Those singles will be plied with a
solid color, probably brown polworth.I hope the color stretches in the final yarn will be muted enough not to be too stripey when knit and I hope that it will be enough yarn to knit me a vest. That’s alot of hoping, but what’s a spinner to do!

Day three’s bobbin from the ball o fluff:

July 6th
Spun cashmere for about an hour (watching a taped show, probably more like 45 min) got this much on the bobbin, did a small self plied sample of 2 ply on top of the bobbin. You can see I have a few overtwisted areas, the Ashford’s take up was fighting me a little, I finally took the
tensioning string completely off to get the take up I wanted. Also I am spinning this with the cross wrap method, single is hooked on hooks on both sides of the bobbin.

My main spinning time was spent on the natural color polworth, which looks gray in the photo but is more brown in real life. It’s spinning wonderfully, better than the dyed roving. I didn’t get a bobbin full though yesterday, and had to sleep today, so this will be on hold until my next day off. Tonight I will spin on my drop spindle.

July 7-9th

Day 5,6 and 7 report.

Bah had to work, and my plan to spin at work failed, it was super busy. I got more time on Wed evening, I spun about 20 minutes on my drop spindle. Thur I spun for about 15 minutes at home on the brown polworth before going into work. Friday early morning (around 3 am) I didn’t really spin, but carded up six batts. I had planned to spin more Friday evening, Digitaldurga and hubby and I went to a wine walk and I took my drop spindle stuff with me. But it was warm and muggy and I didn’t feel like handling the cashmere when I felt that sticky. I did spin during a stop at our local yarn store, for maybe 15 minutes. And not getting home until almost midnight made that the only spinning I did on Friday.So it did happen, I spun something everyday, and I have to remind myself, that was my goal. But it sure didn’t make much yarn LOL.

July 10-11

Day 8-9

They don’t call this a challenge for nothin….
But TGITW that’s thank goodness it’s the weekend! I am looking forward to spinning the polworth, it spins so wonderfully, I’m actually enjoying it more than the cashmere, which I will spin some today too, maybe on my porch. It has cooled off here some too, at least in the mornings and evenings. Ah Fall, you are such a memory….
Sat morning was cool and pleasant, for awhile, so I sat on my porch and spun the cashmere. I have maybe a third of a bobbin done, but a little of the fiber goes a long way.
Sunday I added to the bobbin of the solid color polworth, and I finished filling that bobbin this morning (monday) It’s actually a rest day today, and I won’t be able to spin anything else today, I have to nap and then go to work tonight. I can not wait to see how the two polworth singles look once they are plied, so I probably will take 15 minutes or so tomorrow to ply a bit, just to see how it looks.

My goodness the weekend went fast.

July 12-13th

Day 10-11

This was yesterday spinning and a nice photo of the progress on the cashmere/silk blend

Day 12

Today’s spinning (Wed July 14th, happy BD MOM!)

This is the polworth, one dyed single, one natural brown single, ending up with a 10 WPI 2 ply. But trust me, this shows only the tip of the iceberg, remember all those colors in the pile of roving? You’ll see what I mean when I take a picture of the skein tomorrow, I still have more to ply.I am obsessing about keeping the color progression the same as it is on the roving, because really there is so little repeat in the colors. So to do that, I am marking the yarn as to the absolute start of the spinning, as #1 and each end the next number. I had to do some backwards thinking, since the beginning of the yarn is at the bottom of the bobbin of singles LOL.
I am very interesting in how this is going to look once it is knitted, I will be swatching some soon I think.

July 15th

Day 13

Finished the plying yesterday, now to spin more of both. A little over 250 yards of 2 ply seems to have used about 4 oz of the dyed roving. I haven’t weighed the skeins yet, I am keeping them on the niddy noddy for awhile.

July 16th

Day 14

I am really loving the colors and the yarn is so soft. I’ll be spinning more of both for today’s spinning.

July 17-18th

Day 15-16

I’m in a funk today because I have to work, so I did the easiest spinning, the brown polworth. As I have read posts especially over on the TdF daily thread I see lots of people spinning polworth, and some lovely colors too. I am filling the bobbins with mine for the next set of skeins.
I did spin on the drop spindle last night at a really great production of Shakespeare’s Much To do About Nothing. It was an outside production in a park and I kept up my tradition of taking a drop spindle with me to spin while watching. It’s better than trying to knit. I spun the cashmere silk blend. No spinning tonight at work, since I did spin this morning. Tomorrow night I will try and spin with the spindle while at work.

I am just very happy that I have stuck with my goal to spin everyday.

The brown polworth:

I took my drop spindle to work on Sat and got to spin a teeny bit, but the night was really busy. Sunday night was better I spun during most of a break. I decided the cop was getting too heavy although it really wasn’t all that full on the spindle, it just didn’t feel like it was spinning like I wanted. So I took the cop off and wound it on a paper towel tube, and started a new bit, before I had to put it up for the night.

July 19th

Day 17

Monday evening I spun a bit on the never ending bobbin of brown polworth, I think the house fairy is stealing singles off of it while I sleep, it never seems to fill up! I am going to put it aside tonight and spin some color.

July 20-25
Day 18 to the finish

Here ends any entry from the ravelry forums, and any photos also. Day 18 and 19 were times I spun on the BFL natural color, Day 20 I carded more batts of the cashmere and silk and spun some. And that was it, I did not spin any more. Day 21-23 were too busy with getting ready to leave town and then actually going on a getaway weekend. I chose to truly get away, and did not take a computer, spinning, reading. Just sat by the river, watching the boats go by, drinking a nice wine and sleeping until I wanted to wake, not at the beck and call of the alarm.

As I said, it surprised me just how hard it was to get in just a little bit of spinning each day. It was a challenge, and I almost made it. I have not spun anything since either, although I am getting the itch again. There's two full bobbins of the polworth waiting to be plied, and all that lovely soft cashmere. I doubt it will be a challenge to sit down at the spinning wheel again, very soon.

Tour de Fleece 2010 the starting line

2010-07-01T12:05:00.008-04:00

I know everyone knows about the Tour de France, but maybe you have to be a spinner to have heard of the Tour de Fleece. This is a big challenge time on Ravelry for spinners, who decide to spin with goals in mind, while the bikes are spinning their wheels in France.

So I decided to join the fun this year, and have set my goal to spin everyday during the July 3rd to 26th event. Given my current busy life, I have not set any other goal, just to 'get some yarn made' everyday.

To help motivate me to sit and spin, I decided it was time to dip into the prime stuff in the stash. This is stash I have held onto, because it was just so wonderful to me. Well, it is wonderful and so will be wonderful yarn, and later, wonderful knitwear. It's just plain time to spin it.

First: a Rovings polworth dyed roving called Spice Island:
The colors are more vibrant in person, my camera just didn't pick that up in the daylight. I will spin all of the dyed roving into a single, and then spin a single out of a natural colored polworth roving, shown here:
Again the camera and daylight washed it out some, the natural brown roving is a deeper brown that it looks in the photo above.

As a second project I will spin this cashmere roving:

I plan to spin it as thin as possible and see something lacy in it's future.

Now my biggest problem with spinning everyday is my nightshift work schedule. I work two nights back to back, and so the day in between is spent almost entirely in sleep before going right back to work. I decided the solution was a drop spindle project that I could keep in my car or even my locker at work. Then I know I will find at least 15 mintes to spin on a break at work. I had experimented awhile ago with handcarding a cashmere and silk blend and spinning it on a drop spindle, and thought it be good to revive that project. So here is my portable spinning kit:
I carded a few rolags to show the blend. That's my regular sized Bosworth spindle with them, to give a sense of their size. See the shine of the silk?
And so here's the bag, all packed and ready to go (I have to work the first two days of the Tour de Fleece so it will definately be needed).
Yes, that is a Laurel Burch bag. It was a very welcomed gift from a coworker several years ago, and I still smile whenever I use it.

If anyone wants to join me for this challenge on Ravelry (and probably see more progress photos there) check out the Tour de Fleece group and look for the wild card group for Yarnspinnerstales Spin in. Or just come to the group for Yarnspinnerstales spin in and check out the thread on the TdF there.

Onwards

2010-07-01T11:54:00.003-04:00

I had to go look in the archives because I truly could not remember, but I started this blog Nov 2002. For many years I used it to record my fiber pursuits. It was not easy those first few years. There was the learning curve of uploading photos, the hassle of dialup and all of those internet nusiances that have finally been smoothed away.

Now I should have no excuse for this last six month absence. My camera takes wonderful digital photos, adobe puts them in nice small jpegs for the internet, DSL uploads them almost in seconds.

I didn't even stop working on fiber pursuits in those six months.

No, but I did go through some major life changing events, first hubby's serious illness and hospitalization, then the need for me to return to work full time. And not just full time but _night shift_ work. It's taken me months to adjust.

Now I need to overcome some other internet issues, to make blogging super speedy again. Blogger insists to keep this blog on a very old google account of mine, so I have to log into that before signing on to blogger. I haven't found a way to keep the free account and change that email log in, so that hassle remains. I now find I need a new camera, and am very tempted by one that will wifi your photos straight to the internet. Will they still be speedily uploaded when there's no photoshop to make them nice small bitsize? I don't know. Where I use to have the time and patience to photoshop all my pics and then upload them, I find I don't have the time now.

I fear that my blogging may come to a screeching halt, because of these time devouring issues. I have found one small starting point again, the Tour de Fleece that begins July 4th. I wanted to blog about my plans for that, so for now, that's a good starting, or I should say restarting line. Hence the onwards title.

CW

YST episode 42 Spinning experiments

2009-12-17T18:30:00.010-05:00

Episode 42 of Yarnspinnerstales podcast is posted and continues the theme of intentional spinning of a yarn. For this podcast, and this blog post I share some of the things I learned while trying to follow a statement made by Judith MacKenzie McCuin in the book Intentional Spinning that you can make thicker or thinner yarn with your spinning wheel, by changing nothing but the tension. If you increase the tension and do not change the treadle speed or drafting you will get thicker yarn. The opposite, decreasing tension will create thinner yarn. I knew the spinner's rule of thumb that if you wanted thinner yarn, you should spin with less tension, but this took the idea one step further. It was creating a way to have any spinning wheel spin any size yarn. I decided to experiment with two of my spinning wheels, the electric Roberta, and the Haldane double drive.

Right off the bat, the Roberta has the difference that I do not need to treadle. Instead there are various settings on the speed control, which would relate to treadle speed. I had the advantage that I could keep the speed even, unlike on a non electric spinning wheel. However there is a disadvantage to the Roberta in that it has no way to really tone down the strong pull in created by the bobbin driven set up. Even if I completely remove the tension spring that runs over the flyer, I will still get pull in, due to the bobbin tension always being the same(there is a rubber ring running from the bobbin to the electric motor, speed will change and increase pull in, but even at slow speed there is still a significant pull).

But this is exactly why I wanted to try the experiment with the Roberta, to see just what type of yarn would be spun, trying to keep everything the same except the tension spring. I did do my samples with three different speeds, slow medium and fast. This was a second part of the experiment, I was mainly looking for the ideal speed, given the parameter of increased or decreased tension.

So first I spun my default yarn, both with the tension spring on and off. Both came out to be a 12 WPI 2 ply. These two photos show those samples:

Changing speed made no difference, however I did get a thicker yarn when the tension spring was off, which so far did not match the expected results. It could be because I rarely spin with that tension completely off and it was affecting my spinning.

Next I increased the tension by attaching the tension line and spring and tightening it to the point that the spring was standing taut but not spread open. This increased the pull in dramatically and I immediately was spinning much thicker yarn around 8 WPI. I could get even thicker yarn by increasing the speed, I have the medium speed show here at 6 WPI and got the same thing when spinning at a fast speed (not in photo):

I next reset my Roberta back to how I generally have it set to spin my default yarn. I spun some of that 12 WPI 2 ply, and then started to decrease the tension for a thinner yarn. I completely removed the tension line but was not having much luck creating thin yarn. The next thing to try was to keep the tension spring off and then criss cross the yarn on the bobbin. I saw immediate results, the single thinned out but was not going any thinner than my normal default 12 WPI 2 ply. Here's the photo of all three speeds:
All of the above experiments are based on the premise that treadle speed and drafting stays the same. I finally gave in a split the roving into half of what I had been using, which really thinned the drafting zone. Keeping the other settings the same as above, I finally came up with a very nice even 18 WPI 2 ply.
There's definately proof that yarn diameter can be affected by the increase or decrease of tension. The electric spinning wheel, with it's bobbin driven style may not be the best example of this premise, however I learned so much just doing this simple experiment and now have more skills with the Roberta to spin the type of yarn I want.

Another of my spinning wheels, the Haldane, has had the reputation with me of only being able to spin sock yarn. It is a small wheel, with a small drive wheel which means treadling is often used to compensate for it's lack of range. Likewise it only has two ratios, which I have never understood on a wheel, unless it's just so small that larger ratios would make the operation clunky. But it proved to be the perfect wheel to once again try the tension experiment.

I used the same fiber to keep all factors of the experiment as close as possible. I used a well processed merino top, since I wanted to have a fiber that would draft smoothly and not require me to stop and pick out VM or neps. All the samples were very small, and were created by pulling just spun single off the bobbin and letting it self ply back on itself before measuring the WPI.

First I spun a sample of my default yarn, again a 12 WPI 2 ply. I was spinning on the larger of the two ratios and trying to keep my treadle speed and the drafting the same. I then increased the tension (turn the knob that raises the flyer, tightening the drive band) Of course I felt strong pull in, and also found it was very hard to keep the treadle speed the same, it was much harder to treadle. The yarn thickened up immediately, although it took me a bit of practice to keep the drafting zone even and the twist consistent through out the yarn. The middle sample in the photo below shows my struggle, the bottom sample yarn shows it finally working into a 6 WPI 2 ply:

I reset the spinning wheel back to my default settings and spun some default yarn, and then decreased the tension (still on larger ratio) That yarn is shown as the first decrease tension in photo below which was 14 WPI 2 ply. Then I moved to the smaller ratio and got a finer yarn at 18 WPI (although I had more consistent twist with the larger ratio)

At first I caught myself treadling faster to compensate for the feel of less pull in, but I caught myself doing it and realized I should be keeping the treadle speed the same, and slowed down. I was surprised to find the yarn stayed thin just as before, I just was spinning as much in the same time period.

The last yarn in the photo is an amazing 40 WPI 2 ply that was made after criss crossing the single on the bobbin. It's merino and will relax after sitting, and I just remeasured that WPI as 32 WPI but still, thin is thin!

One comment made in the book is that if you can not go down any more ratios (now true on my Haldane) then you should criss cross the yarn on the bobbin, which is like going down another ratio. I had never tried this on the Haldane, for one thing the way the hooks look on the flyer your first impression is that they are backwards for doing the criss cross. But I found that I really could hook the single on the opposite side and then back to the hook that fed the yarn out the oriface. The only real problem is that the yarn on the opposite side rides very close to the bobbin yarn, it seems to me it could rub as the bobbin fills up.
This angle shows the 'opposite side' on four hooks and then across the bobbin and hooking on the oriface side on three hooks. I found when doing the criss cross, the opposite side is usually on one hook more than the oriface side.

So I have to eat humble pie and no longer say that my Haldane can only spin sock yarn. The wheel is perfectly capable of spinning a lovely lace yarn, as long as I am willing to pay attention and not just sit down and spin my default yarn.

I learned so much from this experiment and I would encourage other spinners to grab some lovely leftover bit of top and try it too with their wheels. You may learn a whole new skill your wheel has, that you never knew.

Nostalgic Knitting

2009-12-14T15:20:00.003-05:00

My last two knitting projects sent me down memory lane and it got me wondering: Will our grandchildren love our knitting projects of today as much as I love my grandmother's patterns?

Every now and then usually around this time of the year I knit what I fondly call grandmother slippers for someone as a gift. That's because it was the first thing I was taught to knit, by my maternal grandmother. Oh there may have been the endless garter stitch something that was really nothing, but the slippers are burned in my memory as my first project. As are the directions for the slippers, well almost. I can cast on and knit up the first 6-7 inches, but when it comes to decreasing to fit over the toes, I never remember the formula. Oh I have it written down-in my grandmother's handwriting no less, tucked away with the other precious things I want to keep. I may have even transcribed the pattern but who knows where that copy ended up. No instead I do as many of us of the digital age do, and go and search online for a pattern to follow. It turns out that I am not the only one with fond memories of this slipper pattern, although it was someone's Aunt Maggie that taught them. So I knit my slippers like I have been doing so much lately, with the pattern on the laptop beside me as I knit. How different and yet maybe not so different, to compare that to a grandmother sitting in her chair near you, knitting, and telling you what to do next. See, my grandmother really didn't teach me how to knit from a pattern until much later, because so often, she didn't knit from patterns either. It wasn't until I was ready to make things that she would not have knit, that I had to learn to read that special language of knitting.

The second project, currently on my needles is a dishcloth. Now my grandmother was not knitting dishcloths in her early life when she was teaching me to knit. No, knitting dishcloths triggers a memory for me, of her knitting late in her life, now blind but unwilling to give up knitting. Those dishcloths were often crooked, and had unintentional lace openings, as she would miss a stitch. But they were treasured, and definitely put to use. As I sit and knit on this dishcloth today, I am amazed at her ability to continue to knit by feel alone. I find my eyes glued so permanently to the stitches that I only listen to the TV show, how will I ever learn to just knit by feel alone! And she was not doing the dishcloths that are cast on with 35 stitches or so and knit square. Nope, she was doing the corner to corner, increase and then decrease pattern. And yet, I can understand exactly the love to knit that put the yarn and needles in her hands.

I found out this Thanksgiving that the niece I taught to knit two years ago is now knitting Christmas presents _and_ teaching someone else to knit. My heart glowed when I heard that, passing on the art means so much to me.

As does archiving and passing on the patterns. As I sat and knit from the pattern on the laptop, it made me wonder, is this a good archival tool? In many ways, yes, because so much of the information is available to a wider knitting audience. And the patterns should stay available unless we have a true digital meltdown. It's like an instant access to a knitting only library and that is all kinds of good. What I personally will miss is the thrill, laughs and just plain fun of finding a pattern book from the 1940's and looking through that booklet. It has all the problems of archival paper, it's yellowed, it's brittle, it's been written on, torn, and has a missing cover. But there is just something to having those patterns in you hands, dreaming the same knitting project dreams that another knitter also had, that just can not be duplicated by a pattern on the internet. I think this is why, ultimately the book industry will stand firm in this digital age, and why we as knitters will continue to love the new books as they appear. And maybe instead of looking up grandmother's online bookmarks, our grandkids will have the same love of books too.

Keep on scrolling

2009-11-25T17:27:00.002-05:00

I just posted five (yep five) blog entries today. So scroll on down to be sure you see them all.

Carry on...

A yarn dyeing commission

2009-11-25T17:13:00.004-05:00

Even a fiber vendor like myself has their secret fiber obsessions and mine happens to be the vendor Natural Obsessions. There's many reasons, her range of fibers available, her great eye for color, her dyeing skills and most of all, her love of a challenge.

So I sent a challenge her way. I wanted enough hand dyed lace weight yarn in fall colors for a shawl. We discussed the options of different yarn fibers and I finally decided on bamboo. I have four shawls already in wool/silk and thought it was time to add something new to the wardrobe (er I mean knitting stash).

Drum roll please....the resulting yarn is stunning:

It's so hard to capture the true colors when the day is cloudy. I put the skein on the window sill in the daylight for a closeup and more accurate photo of the wide range of colors:

I had a pattern in mind when I commissioned the yarn, however I plan to do a large swatch first to see if that pattern is the perfect shawl for this multicolored yarn. It's such a special yarn, I want to find a pattern to do it justice.

Fiber fair purchases

2009-11-25T16:48:00.005-05:00

Back in Oct I went to a fiber fair in Corydon Ind. Of course I bought stuff, what a silly question!

The wonderful white fiber is a blend of merino top and mulberry silk, it's going to be amazing to spin. The small material bag was sewn by a local artist and is for storing your DPN. I loved the fabric but what I loved even more was the magnetic closure she used, no chance of a stray needle migrating out and getting lost.

This is a braid of dyed BFL wool:

And the vendor right next to that was selling the BFL wool sock yarn:

Both are super soft fiber.

I also purchased a raw fleece and you can see a photo of that if you go on down to a previous post (YST episode 38 and 39).

Cleaning out the spinning basket

2009-11-25T16:39:00.003-05:00

My spinning basket is probably much too large for my own good, and it seems to accumulate odds and ends of fibers that won't spin into enough yarn for projects. Last month I decided it needed a good turning out, and that I would spin up those odds and ends. Since there was a very wide range of fiber types, I did not try to combine them into the same yarns. I just spun each fiber and got whatever yardage of 2 ply I could from each of them.

Wide variety of yarns on niddy noddy:

The cormo and silk will go in my spinning stash, I am sure I can combine them with something in a project sometime. The white spaelsau will go into my spinning supplies to be used as leader yarn on my bobbins as I need it. The brown alpaca had the most yardage (170 yards) and is a good start for something so into the stash it goes. The final thick black spaelsau is an interesting yarn, not for clothing for sure, but I love how dark this natural color yarn turned out. However I have no idea what I will use it for.

Such fun, cleaning out the spinning basket!

YST Episodes 38 and 39

2009-11-25T16:14:00.006-05:00

I've published two podcasts since last posting. Both are on this website or on Itunes at Yarnspinners Tales.

Episode 38 is about what to look for when you are shopping and purchasing a raw wool fleece. You can know so much ahead of time by just studying the different characteristics of the sheep's breed, and by having a general idea of what project you would like to use the resulting wool yarn. In this case I didn't really have any photos to post for the podcast.

Episode 39 continues the discussion, with non wool fibers. The second half of the podcast handles the question, OK now I have all this fiber, how do I store it?!

In between the recording of these two episodes I did have the chance to go to a local fiber fair, and purchase a raw romney fleece. So I used that as one example for storing your fiber. Here's a few photos to go along with that.
Whole fleece:

Lock Closeup

For those that wonder just how much is lost when I take out what I don't like in a fleece:

Final temporary storage until washed:

A Bit of non fibery goodness

2009-11-25T11:32:00.004-05:00

First, I realize I haven't blogged in forever. Life is like that for me. I spend an equal amount of time at the computer every day, but what I do on the computer during that time varies extensively. Now and then I realize I have neglected some areas and have to play catch up.

Although knitting and spinning are a major part of my life, I do have lots of other interests, hobbies, loves and commitments. I thought I would share one of those today, my love of gardening.

I love gardening for many reasons, but this fall I got to experience one of those reasons that rarely happen. Things finally fell into place for me to try a fall planting of some greens. And although I will have to harvest the last of them today before the first hard frost hits over this weekend, and although they are still by many standards tiny, they are a chance to experience greens unlike those one can grow in the spring.

Here's a plate of the tender dainties just before I put my chicken salad on top of them:

There are two types of leaf lettuce, green and red as well as baby spinach and chard leaves in that mix. They taste like that perfect spring lettuce.

The thing about spring lettuce is one can get those tender non bitter leaves for only two weeks at least in my gardening zone. The frequent rain and rapidly increasing heat of spring sends the leaves into a frenzy of growth and they are soon bitter and trying to form seeds. Well, who can blame them, that's their job!

However, the drier fall weather as well as a more stable and cooler temps in the fall meant they grew very slowly, staying small and mild.

Why is this amazing? Well, it's all about luck, true luck. The seeds had to have enough moisture to sprout (often the fall is too dry) we had to have enough non frost days to let them even get this big. I could try to do this again every year from now on, and not get this type of success. And that's why I love to garden!

The lettuce just before picking:

Spinach and radishes( did not do as well)

Two thirds of the harvest (I left some in the garden as an experiment on just how long it will survive the cold)

Finished socks

2009-10-09T09:37:00.003-04:00

My finished projects have been few and far between this year. I have been working on these socks for far too long, since they were generally my 'travel' knit project. I would work on them only at knit nights, or when traveling. And in keeping with that, they were finished in Sept, while I was on vacation, and visiting my mother.

Details:

Yarn: Hempathy by Elsebeth Lavold 3.25 balls

Needles: circs size 2

Method: 2 socks on 2 circs

Pattern: Seduction Socks by Ann Budd

YST Episode 37 September 2009 Spin In

2009-10-09T09:23:00.004-04:00

When I do a spin-in podcast, I often will review different breeds of sheep, talking about their history, fleeces and the yarn you can spin from them. Episode 37 (posted Sept 12, 2009 and found here or on ITunes as Yarnspinners Tales) reviews two breeds, the Southdown and Polworth sheep.

Here are photos of each of those samples (you should be able to click on the photo to enlarge). First the Southdown:

And this is the Polworth.

These breeds were opposites in the way I liked to prep the fiber for spinning. The Southdown did better as a combed prep and the Polworth did better carded. Listen to the podcast for lots more details on these two breeds.

MIA

2009-10-09T09:07:00.002-04:00

Sometimes it amazes me just how fast time flies. I could not believe it was mid Aug when I last updated this blog.

I was busy though, with mainly non fibery things. Work related classes and a certification exam. A wonderful vacation. The never ending housework and gardening, including mowing. Another podcast. Some clothes sewing (mostly alterations). Several batches of tomato sauce made. Some knitting, some spinning, and much handspun yarn listed on my Artfire Store, ZavagantStudio. This is just what I can remember this morning, with only one cup of coffee in me.

Sometimes I wish I kept better journals about my day to day. It just seems that actually doing the 'day to day' gets in the way of doing just that. But really it's like any habit, once established, will be easier to do everyday. And I just have not established the habit of recording my daily life.

Still, blogging and other internet journal records (like my gardening journal and Ravelry) have aided me in getting at least more recorded than I would have before their advent. For this I am truly grateful. There is so much satisfaction in going back on this blog two years, and reading all about what I was doing with spinning and knitting. There's a joy to go and look on my projects on Ravelry and see the completed photos. Oh of course there were dozens of other knitted projects and spun yarns before that, but at least it's a start. I am a firm believer in archiving the day to day of everyone, because ultimately that is our true history.

YST episode 36 Spinning on a Charkha

2009-08-20T16:28:00.006-04:00

I can not believe I am at the 36th podcast! It will soon be two years since I started this creative adventure.

Episode 36 of Yarnspinnerstales is all about spinning on a charkha, and this time I have two special guests sharing their experiences with their Bosworth book charkha. I also do a review of the DVD Charkha Spinning Tips and Techniques, by Elaine Benfatto.

But best of all, there is a Youtube video that not only shows spinning on the charkha but is explained in detail by my daughter. Check it out here.

A few photos just to show you the charkha. First, closed showing that it really is the size of a hard back book:

Next, the charkha opened, showing just how neatly everything fits inside:

And finally, the charkha opened and set up ready to spin:

Be sure to check out the webpage for the podcast, as I have posted lots of links there that relate to spinning with the charkha.

Items for 2009 state fair

2009-08-16T09:38:00.008-04:00

Only five items going to the state fair this year. One is my beaded mystery stole, which I have posted about before and so I will not include in this post. The second I've posted a progress photo already, the targhee/bamboo skein of yarn. I've been playing around with arty shots of yarn, so here's one of those with that skein. The photo has not been though any photo shop editing, which I would do before using it, if I plan to sell this yarn. Right now I haven't decided.

The next item needs more explanation. I submitted for the designer yarn category a skein of cashgora goat and silk 2 ply skein. The idea is to try and copy the Orenberg style yarn.

Here's a photo of that skein of yarn.

There's a number of reasons this skein does not come close to true Orenberg yarn. First, cashgora is never going to be a good replacement for the goat down used in the true yarn. Cashgora, at least what I have, is very scratchy. The Orenberg yarn I have has a bit of scratch, but not enough to be uncomfortable. I really doubt I would wear a shawl of my yarn. Second, I did not get my spinning quite thin enough on either single to make the 2 ply the WPI of the original yarn. I'm off by about 4-5 WPI. It felt like I was spinning thin enough, but the final skein after washed was not as thin as the original.

When I was plying this yarn, I did two different skeins. One I plyed with my Ashford, with the lace flyer and aimed for a very loose ply. After it was washed I had quite a few areas in the yarn where the cashgora popped out, like little tiny locks. It was a neat yarn, but not what I had in mind. So the second skein (which is shown above) I plyed on my Roberta, and went for what would be considered tradition balanced ply. I liked that yarn much better and it actually matched the look of the original yarn.

The other thing I about this skein is that I handled it differently than I have most yarns after washing. I washed the skein, hot soapy water, rinsed good, dried in a towel and hung the skein in front of a fan until it was just barely damp. Then I put the skein on the skein winder and wound it off on to my PCV pipe niddy noddy. I was putting tightness into the skein, stretching it while it completely dried, by doing this. Every now and then while it was drying I pulled on the skein so I pulled the area that was wrapped around either end was moved off the curve. I hope that makes sense, I was trying to prevent the yarn developing a permenent curve in it. The only other time I have used this method with a skein of yarn is when I do 100% angora.

The result of doing this with the skein gave a very smooth crisp yarn, with very little halo. That matched the original yarn, at least in appearance.

One of the requirements for this designer category is to knit a swatch, at least 6 inches square. I have always been very uninspired for these swatches in my past entries, so I decided to get very creative this time. Since I was trying to make an Orenberg style yarn, I went to those books I have and discovered that the Gossimer Webs Designs book had a small sampler practice shawl that would be within that size range. It took me two days of knitting and I had a wonderful time discovering the construction concepts of these shawls. The resulting swatch looked like this:

I had to come up with another creative solution to block it. Regular size shawls are blocked with wires and pins, but this little swatch seemed overwhelmed by blocking wires. First I tried pinning it to a towel, like I do other swatches and found I couldn't pull the swatch hard enough, the towel would just scrunch up underneath taking my swatch with it. So I finally hit on the idea of placing a square of cardboard on top of the something soft that pins wouldn't hurt. You could use the bed, but to make mine portable so I could prop it in front of a fan, I use a new package paper towels. The pins just pushed right through the cardboard, into the package and I soon had my swatch pinned out nice. Here's a close up:

It looks so lovely and actually developed quite a halo as I was knitting. I enjoyed knitting with the yarn a lot, it actually had that crisp feeling like linen. But what that means is that the final product is sadly very scratchy. It won't soften either like linen. So while it has been a very fun project, I will not be spinning any more of this yarn. I seriously doubt the spinning judge at the fair will like the yarn either, but probably for different reasons.

The last category I submitted an entry for was to knit something in natural color handspun yarn. You even had to submit a lock of the fiber as well as some of the yarn. I used some Black Welsh Mountain handspun and the pattern Bella's Mittens (look for the pattern in Ravelry it is a free pattern). The mittens are made to go up to the elbow.

I could not get the best photos of these. The yarn is very black but looks lighter in the sunlight. Also it's a bit tricky to take a photo of one hand inside a mitten and the other hand holding the camera to take the photo. But in spite of the mittens looking like cooking mitts, you can get the idea of what the pattern is like. They fit me perfectly because I could try them on as I worked and I got the decreases to hit where they needed to be. And they will be exceptional warm this winter.

After working for many weeks with this deadline looming, I feel lost as to what to work on now!

A knitting spider

2009-08-14T18:04:00.002-04:00

I had several titles for this blog story, 1. The bungee jumping spider, 2. The trapeze spider, and 3. Boing boing boing. I decided since this is a fiber blog I would at least give the title a knitting slant.

I live in a very old country house and because of that I tend to 'share' my house with nature, often unwillingly. For this reason, I have learned to be very observant, and am often quick to spy the unwelcome guest.

Now this story starts with my overhead fan. On it, I have a lovely ceramic chain pull, a knob to grab and pull to turn off the fan. It's quite country looking, with a painting of a mallard duck. The ceramic pull itself is hollow in the center. So this morning, when reaching up to turn off the fan, I noticed a brown blob in that hollow center, and thought to myself, hmm dust bunny. Except the blob moved and I immediately knew it was an unwanted guest.

So I did what most anyone would do. I gave the knob a strong flick with my finger, thinking that the insect would drop out and I could deal with it better. The knob swung violently back and forth and yes, the blob dropped out, but with a surprise.

It was a knitting spider, and it was using a lifeline.

I see some very strange and sometimes outright funny things here in this country house. But nothing recently has tickled my funny bone like this high flying spider. As the knob swung back and forth, so did she on her life line, looking for all the world like a trapeze performer at the circus. But the tricks continued, as she swung she also climbed her bouncing lifeline, looking now like the bungee jumping spider. She was tucked back up into her hiding spot long before the knob stopped swinging.

I must confess, she's still there. She's not a scary looking spider, and hasn't moved all day. Maybe she finally feels like the hangover is gone. There are times when I look at that knob and get tempted to whack it again, just for the giggle, but I am kind hearted by nature. Besides for all I know, this is the time she forgot to put her lifeline in her knitting.

No Wool Here The July Phat Fiber Box

2009-07-23T18:30:00.009-04:00

Remember the awesome birthday gift I got last May? Well, I have been watching the PhatFibers site since then as well as the group on Ravelry. I decided after doing several podcasts on non wool fibers with my daughter, that I would get the July no sheep box. And it was a wonderful collection of shiny goodness and other goodies and I wanted to share it with you.

So lets open the box!

ohh it's just jam packed! Lets start with the bright colors that first catch your eye.

A package of firestar from Gales Art, dyed silk cocoons from Hampton Artistic Yarns (she suggests snipping them up into art yarn) and a shiny purple bag of dyed mohair locks.

Now the 'blues' it amazed me how many samples actually coordinated in their colors. Bag with the purple ribbon, dyed milk top from SilverSun Alpacas, to the right dyed bamboo top from Sweetpeafibers, and in front in the braid dyed bamboo from Moonwood Farm.

More fiber! The blue is dyed bamboo, the brown is natural color llama (I think based on the photos on the label) from the Critter Ranch, and in front a light yellow batt of alpaca and angelina from Maude & Me.

Now the handspun yarn samples. Oh but first in front my favorite thing in the whole box, a tiny drop spindle, with ceramic whorl and a teeny sample of bamboo yarn from Serendipitous Ewe. Love it! If you go back in the back near the box edge you see another ingenious way of displaying a yarn sample, an old fashion wood sewing thread bobbin. This has an amazing lace weight seacell and silk yarn wrapped on it. I want to make it into a necklace! It's from Knit it Up. The pink yarn sample is kitchen cotton from It's a colorful Life. The pink in the back reminds me of the sari recycled yarn, and I was spot on, it's a handspun of tencel, mohair, recycled sari silk, bamboo and ramie from Coolclimates. The green in front of that is alpaca yarn dyed with indigo and osage orange from Mama Jude's (you know how I love the natural dye stuff and this is a very good example of what can be done with multiple dips) Last the black worsted weight alpaca from Northern Bay Handspun.

The pink is reclaimed acrylic yarn from Jag's Funky Fibers. The large batt is a blend of cotton, bamboo and silk or angora from Desired Haven Farm. The lipgloss (Cowgirl lipgloss, it's sparkly!) is from Calizonadesigns. The orange yellow skein of yarn is bamboo from Christina Marie Potter.

Just when you think the box is empty you realize there are patterns in the bottom and some goodies in that clear bag. There is a stitch marker from Marcie Phillips In stitches. There is a stitch marker that looks like peas in a pod (hey, I am a gardener so I love it!) from Yarndemon. There's a sample pack of gift tags, really nice designs to put on your handmade gift with a place for fiber content and care from fibergifttags. And there is a yoyo with a button, ready to adorn some knit or crochet item from desert garden farms.The spiral hat pattern is by Kelly Jensen and the hoody pattern (in cotton of course) is a design by Kira K Designs. The goody bag contains lots of business cards with discount codes for online shopping. I made paper bookmarks to be included in these bags to advertise my podcasts. I put pictures of different non wool fibers on the bookmarks (like silk, tencel, cotton) and then information for the podcast episode that tells how to spin these fibers. I know many spinners are very familiar with spinning wool and I wanted to use this great opportunity to help spinners feel more comfortable with fibers that are not wool. I hope this adds to my already wide and welcomed listener base.

This box sure did brighten my day when it arrived!

Blending fibers with carders

2009-07-08T17:38:00.006-04:00

Episode 34 of the YST podcast is posted and is available here or at ITunes by searching for Yarnspinners Tales. In this podcast I talk about what I've been doing a lot of lately, carding fibers for blending. I usually use a drum carder, but in the podcast I talk about both hand cards and the drum carder, comparing some of the pros and cons of each. The first section is very good for anyone that is not familiar with carding, as I cover many of the basics. The second section goes into more details about actually blending, either different fibers or different colors.

Early this spring in a dire need for color, I dyed white Maine Island washed fleece a yellow and orange, in two tones, deep and light. I had done just a sample batt of the dyed fiber and had decided to go ahead and do all the carding as a basic yellow with highlights of orange in the batts. And since these color contrast so well, I decided to use them as the example for carding in the podcast.

Most of the batts look like this:

The difference of when more orange is showing is often just a factor of how the batt is rolled. It could look yellow on one side and more orange on the other. I admit I did not really follow any set ratio for the colors, I was just adding orange to the batts as I thought they needed it. I wanted my yarn to spin with as much variation as possible.

I ended up with a lot of orange left over, and in a snap judgement from a dive into the fiber stash, I thought the orange might look interesting with this left over bit of brown shetland fiber.

It ended up looking way more 'halloween' than it shows in this photo!

Both fibers were very nubby. The Maine Island was that way to start, and the shetland was waste from combing. Although the shetland is much softer than the other fiber, I doubt I will use this in anything but a felted item, probably a purse. I plan to spin all of the batts and then see is I can come up with a striping felted purse pattern.

I had set aside some straight yellow and orange fiber to spin as a sample, and after seeing the purity of the color, I wish I had saved more!

But the carding is done now, and the yarn is spinning up to look like this:

I think the knitting is going to be very nice and tweedy, but in a very bright way.

I also discuss using the carders for just blending fibers, although in many ways the basics of blending are the same, whether you are mixing colors or fibers. Anyone who has a carder and has played with blends knows the possibilities are endless, and that you could give a room full of spinners the same colors to blend and have as many varieties of batts as you have spinners. That is what is so wonderful about the process, each is truly a work of originality.

I should be knitting a sweater but

2009-07-07T11:02:00.002-04:00

I have heard the siren call of knitting dishcloths.

A long long time ago, I went to R&M yarns and bought a cone of a 2 ply cotton. I really didn't have a specific use for it but the quantity would easily have made a sweater of shawl.

Just recently I found a dishcloth pattern group on Ravelry and joined and that cone of cotton was easy to grab when I wanted to start my first pattern. I have none of the traditional cotton yarn in my stash, and I had not ever come up with a use for this cone, so it is now labelled as my dishcloth cone of yarn that will probably outlive me.

Here's my first dishcloth. The pattern for this cloth can be found here. It is called Eyelet and Bead dishcloth. It's so pretty, I haven't given it a dunk yet in soapsuds. I have to get over that and remember, I can always make another one, in a matter of three episodes of my favorite TV show.

I admit I still get the giggles when I look at the cone of yarn and try to imagine just how many washcloths can be made from it. Care to guess? I could hold a contest, but I doubt we all will be around 10 years from now when I hit the end of the cone. Here's a picture of the cone.

It's so tall, I had to lay it on its side in order to get the photo to work. It weighs four pounds! But don't forget, there is a cardboard cone in there. Oh and yes, that is a second dishcloth started, it is just pattern number one in a stitch dictionary. It's too scrunched together to see, but there's an easy knit and purl pattern going on.

The small ball is because I needed to knit the cloths with a double strand (making it a 4 ply) in order to get a nice thick hand to the knitting. So I just took some off on my ball winder, and knit from a strand from it and a strand from the cone.

Oh and don't grieve too much over the lost sweater or shawl I could have made from this cotton yarn, I have another one, only in maroon and white, that I like better!

Knitting Updates

2009-06-25T17:56:00.004-04:00

I suppose it is only fair that if I get to post something that I am very proud of, I need to post the ones that I am not so proud about.

Recently I needed a very easy mindless type knitting project and when I was going through the stash yarn I found four skeins of this soft and pretty acrylic yarn. I found an afghan pattern in Quick Knitted Afghans called Cross Stitch Squares that I really liked. I knew that four skeins of yarn was not enough for a full afghan, I was going more for a wheel chair lap throw, or baby blanket.
The pattern is fun and easy to memorize and I was enjoying the knitting. The recently I had my knitting with me at my mother in-law's house and she just raved over it. But when she took it out of my hands, what she did was through it around her shoulders, like a shawl. And insisted it was just the right length and would be just perfect for something to throw on in cool air conditioned resturants. Well. I first tried to talk her out of it, saying that it was too square in shape to really work, and she kept saying, oh it goes around my shoulders just fine. See, she's not a knitter, and had no idea that the reason it went around her shoulders just fine was because the knitting was bunched up on a circular needle, giving it that nice round shaping. I knew if I just cast off it would be a rectangle and not fit at all.

But I relented and said that I would have to do a few more rows on it, only increasing the length some. I knew during those rows I was going to have to figure out how to create a shoulder shaping 'after the fact'.

So I discussed it with my daughter, who is more of the knitting designer than I, and also consulted a sweater pattern with a circular yoke style. I was trying to get an idea of how many stitches I could go down over about 10 rows.

The final outcome of that was I took the shawl down from 140 stitches to 64 stitches over the ten rows. I followed the garter stitch pattern that was used at the beginning of the afghan, so it would match that. except that I purled on the wrong side on the three stitches used in the decreases. This made the decreases show up more, following the obvious block look of the body. Finally I cast off, made a loop and found a button and now have a shawllette to give my mother in-law.

A close up of the decreases:

I say I am not proud of it, not because the knitting is bad. It just really bothers me to be stopped mid way during a project. I can't even say I enjoyed the challenge of the design, because I didn't. It did turn out nice and soft, but I have a thing about acrylic garments. You can't really block them and it looks very unfinished to me for that reason. I don't mind that in a blanket, I do mind it in a garment. And I did not achieve the stash busting goal, I now have two skeins of the yarn which I know is not enough for even a baby blanket. I am still thinking about what to do with the yarn.

Other knitting news, I am working on a very fuzzy project, so it may lanquish awhile until the heat dies down. This is in Knit Picks Suri Dream in the color Woodlands. The pattern is Lacey from Knitty.

I am going to look like a big fluffy teddybear in this, but I probably will not wear it outside of the house. This is my solution for the extreme chilliness of my house in the winter and the fact I can not be under a blanket all the time. So I am making a wearable blanket.

What you see in the photo is a sleeve. The pattern is done with the magic loop method and starts at the cuff of one sleeve and continues to end at the other cuff. It's been a bit of a challenge for me since I had never done the magic loop knitting. It was very slow going until I got about six rows done and then everything sort of fell into place and the knitting has not been hard at all. I am interested to see how the how thing knits up. I know it's been really nice to be able to slip the sleeve on and check the fit as I knit. The cuff is intentionally tall in the pattern and I followed that part of the pattern, I think it will help the sweater stay on better to have a cuff halfway up to the elbow.

But as long as the heat lasts (and it's been very hot here for weeks now) I will stick to knitting socks and cotton washclothes.

Non wool fibers part 2

2009-06-01T10:08:00.009-04:00

I just discovered tonight that this post was still saved as a draft and not really posted. My apologies to those that came to see the photos connected with the podcast episode 32 Silk soy and milk.

These are fibers for spinning of course, not food. It's part 2 of our non wool fiber podcasts. We talk a little bit about silk, since it was also covered in a previous episode. We focused on the soy fiber, talking about how to spin and dye it. And also a bit on the milk fiber. All of these fibers belong with protein fibers group, and dye like wool, with the exception that they should not be held at heat above 200 degrees.

Both my daughter and a vendor Natural Obsessions have a knack for dyeing these fibers. Here's a few pictures to prove it:

100% milk fiber, dyed by Natural Obsessions:

100% silk, dyed by my daughter:

100% soy silk, dyed by my daughter:
And my daughter spins it well too! 100% soysilk

Natural Obsessions http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=Shop&seller_id=28031

Spinning Tencel and bamboo

2009-05-16T13:58:00.002-04:00

Episode 31 of Yarnspinnerstales is posted and is available here or on Itunes.

This podcast is part one of two podcasts on spinning non wool fibers. I asked my daughter to join me for these podcasts, because these are the types of fibers she spins all the time. Although calling them non wool is not exactly right (because non wool can include other animals like alpaca and angora) we can't just call them plant fibers either (because silk falls in this non wool category). So we decided to base the categories on their sources, which affect mainly how the fibers are dyed. The categories are cellulose and protein derived.

Cellulose fibers include bamboo, tencel, and cotton. Although hemp and flax are plant derived, they are considered bast fibers and will have a podcast of their own. And cotton was covered extensively in episodes 12, 13, and 15. So for this podcast we talk about bamboo and tencel, going into the process of their production, as well as spinning and dyeing with these fibers.

As you can see in the photo, bamboo and tencel have an amazing shine. They do feel slippery as you spin them, and for that reason require higher twist and want to spin very thin. This makes many spinners afraid to spin these fibers. We hope that this podcast will help those spinners learn how to handle the fibers so they can enjoy the lovely yarns they create.

Because sometimes a verbal description of a process is not always enough, I have posted a video on youtube that shows tencel being spun on a Lendrum wheel with a very fast flyer.

I am currently spinning a combined combed top of targhee and bamboo fiber on my Ashford with the lace flyer. It is a beautiful white, the targhee being non shiny and the bamboo shining through. The singles are very fine, and a test self 2 ply is measuring 23 WPI. It's going to be a lovely lace weight yarn.

The coolest birthday present

2009-04-29T11:11:00.008-04:00

My daughter got me this fiber mystery box for my birthday. These boxes are the brainchild of Phat Fiber. Once a month boxes with samples from Etsy sellers is put up for sale on Phat Fiber's Etsy store. April box's theme was 'green' and so the idea was captured with either green color in the dyed fiber samples or yarn reclaimed. There was a very unique yarn created from soft cotton sheets, cut and plied with thread. A few of the natural fiber samples included angora, mohair and something called South Africian Fine Wool Top. There were patterns and also three wonderful stitch markers. It was like getting a present full of presents!

A few close up photos:

The grass is green, the socks are not

2009-04-29T11:07:00.002-04:00

Finished in six weeks. Probably the fastest I've ever done a pair of socks. They fit wonderfully.

Project details:

Yarn: Sock It To Me! Collection
Color: Puzzle
Needles: two size 2 circs
Pattern: Cat Bordhi's basic sock on two circs sock pattern

Episisode 29 podcast pictures

2009-04-23T14:59:00.012-04:00

The April Spin In podcast is posted, you can find it here or in ITunes under Yarnspinners Tales.

I took quite a few pictures that go along with the podcast, but you can enjoy the photos without listening too. The first segments of the podcast are discussions of two sheep breeds, both of which are double coated fleeces. The first called Spaelsau, is from Norway. A big thank you to one of my listeners Silja, for sending me some black and white fleece from this breed of sheep. I was able to wash it and spin some sample skeins to keep in my breed notebook.

Spaelsau was created from an original old breed of Norweigen sheep, bred with Icelandic, Finn and some Faroe Island sheep. The long outer coat of the fleece is rough but spins into a very strong yarn, useful for many non garment type uses. The under coat is softer and can be carded and spun into a bouncy yarn useful for hats, mitten and socks.

This is a sample of the unwashed white Spaelsau:
And this is the unwashed black Spaelsau:

Note the very long locks, and the obvious coarser outer coat in the black:

After separating most of the rougher outer coat, and washing the remaining undercoat the Spaelsau looked like this:

These are the sample skeins of the white, with carded and combed fiber (try clicking on the photo for a larger version if you want to read the tags)

And the black:

My favorite sample skein was from the black undercoat carded and spun into a very low twist, bulky yarn. Here's a picture of that skein (it's softer than it looks in the photo)

Since most spinners will not be able to get a fleece from a spael sheep, I did a second review of a more readily available double coated sheep, the Icelandic. Here's the sample skeins from that review:

In the Yarnspinners Tale part of the podcast I talk about a recent road trip to a spinning and weaving store The Woolery Recently this mail/catalog only business moved to Frankfort Ky, expanding the business to include a store front. This puts the store about 45 minutes from me, and I am quite excited about that. We spent over 2 hours browsing, talking to the owners, and trying out different spinning wheels. I focused mainly on double treadle wheels, and found one I really like, so now I am hoping there's a new wheel in my future.

Another wheel we spent time looking at which I want to write about here, is the Road Bug wheel by Merlin Tree. The wheel is small enough to fit on the floorboards at your feet in a car. Now, I really think road trips are for knitting and have no desire for a wheel this small, but the wheel has some interesting design features that made it worth a few photos here. The design feature is the fact that it has no drive band and that it works by friction (thus creating the term friction wheel).

First a photo of the wheel, from one side showing the treadle, bobbin storage and fly wheel. The fact it is sitting on the table and the hands next to it should give you a bit of sense of the size of the entire wheel.

If you look closely on this side you can see the friction drive. A black roller sits at the end of the bobbin/flyer and that same roller also snugs up next to the fly wheel. As the spinner treadles, the fly wheel turns, turning the black roller, which then turns the bobbin. Pretty ingenious design!

It took my spinning friend Viki a bit of fiddling to get it spinning, but we had just put the wheel together (straight out of the box) and after getting the flyer mechanism placed correctly, as well as getting the oil worked in, she was soon spinning just fine on it. There's a bit of a trick to getting it to treadle just right, it really needs a toe/heel motion. Also if you sit the wheel on the floor, it is way below your waist. That's not really a problem since you can angle the yarn up to you as you spin, but does mean leaning over to do anything with the bobbin.

While she was playing with that, I test spun four other wheels, two Majacraft and two Kromski. Then there was all that browsing of fiber, books, and yarn to do. All too soon we had to head back home, promising ourselves another road trip soon.

A Big blocking adventure

2009-04-23T14:39:00.004-04:00

The Serendity stole (aka Mystery stole) turns out to be a hard critter to block. If I could get down on my hands and knees and if I had a stretch of floor that no one walks on, I could block it there. But my usual blocking place, the bed, just did not have enough length. And if I was going to do it in sections (not being able to find room to do it all at once) I decided I might as well put it on something of comfortable reach. So it's blocking on top of my dining room buffet on a thick tablecloth. Well, part of it is blocking, about 3/4 of the length. When that dries I will do the other end.

(Yes that is my wine cellar under the buffet).
I did run wires through each edge in the YO's that the designer conveniently put between the shawl and the scallops. This is also something new for me, I have not used the blocking wires until now. I had to run the wires through the top line, pin that down, run wires through the bottom line, pin that down, and then pin each scallop and the bottom edging.

The pictures are doing a pretty good job at showing the lace design, but the beading is lost in the color. The beading is much more obvious in person and really adds to the design. And the angle of this above photo did not quite catch the grafted area although there is just a hint of it in the lower right corner. The graft did not disappear completely with this blocking, I quess I could have pulled on it harder, but was already at my limit of space, sideways, to block it on top of the buffet. I can live with a slight line being visable at the graft.

I put the crocheted edging on it, that was not in the designer's pattern. I did not feel the edge would not roll, even with blocking and there is a lovely line of beads there that i did not want to get lost in the roll. So the crochet edging was something I found in a very old crochet edging booklet that I have. Usually I am not real fond of crochet edgings, but I like this one and feel it blends well with the scalloppy design of the long edges.

I spritzed the shawl heavily with water after it was pinned, I did not wet the shawl first which is another new thing for me. I thought it best not to wet the whole shawl if I was not going to block it all at once. I am sure I got the shawl good and wet though, judging from the 'wet wool' smell. Now the only problem is keeping the cat off the very inviting surface.

Grafting the mystery stole

2009-04-08T11:45:00.002-04:00

It's done! I joined the two halves last night and am really pleased with the result. I need to do something lovely on each edge, probably a crochet to keep it from rolling. And then I will block it and get photos posted.

It was a very unusual way to do the kitchner join and the actual process was not described well in the pattern directions. I did read everyone's input about the process on the yahoo group connected with the shawl, but still felt it was a process that would either present itself logically to me as I attempted the join, or fail miserably. I was not about to accept failure, because the thought of trying to unjoin something made of those tiny stitches was unacceptable. The alternative was for it to work the first time.

So I took the one piece of advice I had seen the most often, to first purl (wrong side row on each edge of the area to be joined) with a very large, and strongly contrasting yarn. I was knitting the shawl in lace weight yarn and so I choose a bit of worsted weight handspun in white that was conveniently laying around. Cotton was recommended and I can see why, because my choice of wool meant the lace yarn often wanted to stick to the wool yarn when I was removing the contrasting thread. But I didn't have cotton thick enough and all it meant was a bit more caution as I removed the wool.

The first step was to purl each section's wrong side row with that contrasting yarn. Then I slipped each section's stitches from the circular needle I had been using to a long straight needle, one size smaller than the circular to help the actual edges lay flat and not follow the curve of the circular needle. I made sure the two straight needles holding each section would line up right, so right sides of the two sections were on top and the end on the knitting needles were to my left. I started the kitchner stitching from the right of the shawl where the points of the needles were.

The first dozen stitches were very fiddly. For one thing I was trying to work with the shawl laying on the table and stretched out flat. As I completed the set of kitchner I would release the stitch of the contrasting yarn and pull it out. The actual sewing of the kitchner was going through the lace yarn, NOT the contrasting white yarn. So the sewing was happening below the stitch that was on the needle. However, it made it pretty easy to see the lace stitch and to slide my threaded needle through it, either knit or purl wise.

After that first dozen stitches I gave the sewn area a good tug, and that's a good thing because it really did need to be loosened and stretched along the seam. When I did that, the seaming practically disappearred. Kitchner is amazing that way.

Once I got the rhythm going, I realized it would be so much easier if I had the knitting needles up off the table and held in my left hand side by side. Then it was really easy to get a rhythm going and keep track, the front needle always had a knit direction, slip the contrasting stitch off and pull out, front needle purlwise in next stitch, back needle purlwise and slip contrasting stitch off, then knitwise in the next stitch, back to the front needle, etc etc.

It took about three hours to complete the grafting. The stitch markers had been left in place from the original patterning, and that really helped keep the grafting even. The only thing I would have changed was I did a few knit stitches with the contrasting yarn instead of purls, following the original pattern and it was harder to graft those stitches. I would purl everything for that one row, just to have all the stitches going the same direction. Otherwise, I really was impressed with how using the large contrasting yarn helped with the grafting process. I hope my explanation here will help me remember how it was done, and maybe help someone else that attempts it also.

Dipping in the dyepots

2009-03-30T09:31:00.011-04:00

This is a picture heavy post, which I usually do not do. I promised lots of pics though on the podcast about dyeing this fleece. If you are interested in the podcast you can find it here or on Itunes.

Spring is really popping up all over my place now, and I have been getting the itch to copy to spring colors. Here's a few that got me thinking of yellows, oranges and greens:

Those lead to my version:

It all started with this fleece, a Romeldale (the white version of the CVM breed) that was a lovely soft fleece but which had some yellow coloring to it that I was not sure would wash out.

There was a pound of the fleece and it was very free from VM and otherwise really nice. Since I wasn't sure I would end up with a nice white yarn, I decided it was time to do some fleece dyeing. After all, there is no better time to dye a fleece than when it is wet from washing. I discuss the whole process on the podcast, episode 28. After splitting the fleece into four different parts and doing two dyepots, with two parts in each pot, I ended up with a dark and light version of yellow and orange.
The orange was much darker than I had planned, my first reaction was, oh my, I've made clown hair. The color is growing on me though, more so than the wimpier lighter version of the orange. It was my plan to card the fiber in mostly yellow batts with the orange striping through the batt, similiar to the orange pollen on flowers. After the fiber dried, I did some sample batts to see how I liked my idea.

The batt on the left is how it looks when you take it straight off the drumcarder. The ball on the right is the second batt I did, pulled off the drumcarder in a continuous strip, which not only makes it more roving like, but also shows more of the orange, which is buried in the middle of the first batt,
I will have too much of the dark orange, so I am thinking about another spinning experiments, of a cabled yarn in orange and yellow. So I did a solid yellow batt (far left) and a solid orange batt (in the middle). I will spin singles from those and try a cabled yarn from those.

The batt on the far right was my attempt to card a batt for a second carding. You can see that it did do the further blending of the orange which I like. But I have a very hard time carding the batt fiber, it was wrapping the small drum of my carder and really not wanting to feed in nice, no matter how small of an amount I tried. I believe this is because I have a fine teeth drum, which works fine with shorter fibers (which the dyed fleeces locks were) but not well at all with long stapled fibers (which is what a batt acted like once it was all carded). It is not going to be worth the struggle to me, just to get that further blending and I will not be carding the dyed fiber more than once.

After I had used the yellow dye pot twice, I decided to add blue dye for a green color and dye some yarn. Remember the summer Ravelry spinning olympics project, where I took raw fleece to a finished project (the cat bed) during the olympics? Well, I have four skeins of that Maine Island yarn still, and thought I would like a color other than white.

Adding the blue dye, without adding more yellow, meant the blue dye struck first, giving the yarn a more blue tone than I had planned. I still love the color, and the yarn is thick and squishy. I plan to knit a version of a pocket stole, something to throw over my shoulders while I spin, knit or read.

Don't you just want to squish it?

1800 miles and very little knitting

2009-03-28T15:34:00.003-04:00

Recently we rented a car and drove south to visit my mother. The round trip mileage is around 1800 miles and we divide the trip into a day and half drive each way. That should mean lots of knitting time for me right? With that thought in mind, I am sad to show the sum total of my travel knitting:

I chose to do socks in the car because it really is a nice small portable project that fits well in the lap space a car provides. And I chose a no pattern type of sock (letting the colors just do the work) to have even less to fool with. I did take the Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles book by Cat Bordi, mostly because I had made one of the sock patterns in that book before and really liked it. She does one sock at a time in the book, but I am a vetern two socks at once knitter and knew I would do both at the same time.

The pattern is actually her first in the book, the very basic sock. I like it for the ribbing all the way down to the heel (I don't really like doing the K2P2 but I like how the sock fits and feels) That's why the photo looks like I got started on the cuffs and forgot to stop, but it really was intentional. I am about an inch away from turning the heel.

The biggest accomplishment of the project was that I cast on the two socks with the circs instead of my usual cast on (with four DPN and knit several rows and then set up both socks on the two circs). I was too lazy to pack the DPN, so it was get the socks cast on, or not knit. Interesting way to make one learn a new skill (grin). It involved much fiddlely stuff, much moving stitches from here to there, and much finger crossing that I was not going to end up making mobius socks. After knitting about an inch I breathed a sigh of relief, all looked right and tubular.

I really do not like the way the set up causes one side to start with a P2. I can prevent laddering of the yarn when doing a knit stitch, there is a knack to tugging both the first and next stitch that causes everything to tighten up just fine. But that type of tugging is contrary to the way a purl stitch falls, and I found myself fighting really hard to try and get those stitches tightened up. It's a sad thing to admit that it took me until at least three inches of ribbing to realize I could just do four knit stitches in a row in that area, I mean, who would notice? But since I hadn't thought of it at the outset, I didn't switch. I am going to call the laddering a 'lacy effect'. Yeah, I am that type of knitter.

While actual at my mom's, I did the last 20 rows of the last chart of the Serendipity (mystery 4) Stole. I did not do the grafting, and still have not done the grafting. I followed all the posts about the shawl on the yahoo group devoted to it, and a pretty high percentage of the knitters had a hard time with grafting lace weight stitches. The designer has given specific directions to purl the back rows of each side in a very smooth, larger and contrasting yarn (like cotton) and use that yarn to show the direction of how the needle and thread should do the kitchner stitch. It helped many to do it this way, others who said they understood kitchner just fine, found the contrasting thread idea very 'in the way' of the kitchner process. I have no idea where I will fall in this debate, and it has me somewhat reluctant to start the grafting. The shawl is stunning, I really want to wear it, I just need to have about a day of no distractions and no urgent plans and get it done.

The other current big project was a partial stash toss one rainy day this week. I am finally starting to get actual pictures and listings on Ravelry of the stash, including some handspun yarns. This involved having the laptop in the stash room, internet on the laptop, a google document for a wonderful yarn inventory spread sheet I happened upon once, camera and many cups of coffee. I estimate I got photos and listings on the excel sheet for about 1/3 of the non fiber stash. I hit a point of being totally overwhelmed, went downstairs, and promptly went to knit picks for more yarn retail therapy. Only a junkie would understand.

Geeky bit alert, trundle on by if not interested, although I think it's really cool.

I had another hurdle too, which I solved just this morning. I have the photos from my camera on the laptop, but my camera takes photos at a nice high resolution, and that ends up being pictures kilobytes in size. And I am only using the free flickr account so there is a monthly limit on the photos I can upload and then show on Ravelry. I have a photo editing software on my desktop (which uses XP) but that software wouldn't work with Vista which is on my laptop. Upshot was I could not convert those massive pics into nice smaller versions for upload and storage on flickr. I looked through many descriptions of many photo editing software, and all would index, fix red eye, crop but not really change the size. I even downloaded the free version of my adobe software to see, but no, I would have to buy an expensive version to get that feature. So I hit the website freedownloadmanager and although it took going through pages of very out of date photo editing software, I finally hit paydirt. It is from a company Arclab and it is called Thumb Studio. It was free, it's amazingly easy to use, it takes your original photo and makes up to three different sizes (and lets you decide on the size) and even lets you bring in entire folders of photos and do them all at once. There are other features too I haven't investigated, but even if this is all it does for me, I am so pleased. The photo above was processed by the software, as well as others in a matter of seconds. I just love finding that perfect bit of coding that some developer sat and said, 'oh I bet someone would like to do this....'

That's all the geeky stuff

I will be traveling again, but driving, so no knitting. I will take the socks and hope to at least catch some time to knit now and then. And I hope to post again before I go, I have been at the dye pots and the colors are ummm 'bright'!

CW

Podcast update

2009-02-20T09:25:00.002-05:00

I am still putting out the spinning podcast, I just have not put a post here for each one. So there are two for January, and one so far for Feb. They can be found here or by subscribing to Yarnspinners Tales on Itunes.

The topic for the January technical podcast is spinning and dyeing silk. I talk about the different forms of silk and how to spin them. I even have a Youtube video here, to show how to get a silk hanky ready to spin. In the second part of the podcast I talk about my experiences with dyeing silk.

January's spin-in topic is about the fiber cashgora, the goat breed that it comes from and also my comments about spinning some of the fiber. I thought I might try and make an Orenberg-like yarn, using one strand of cashgora and one strand of silk single. That project is still in progress, I have a bobbin full of the cashgora so far. I am spinning it on my Ashford with the lace flyer. There's also some upbeat music to listen to as you spin, as well as my tale about keeping my balance, both on the ice and in my life.

The latest technical podcast talks all about woolen vs worsted style of spinning, how to prep for each as well as the actual spinning technique that makes the yarn either woolen or worsted.

Knitting update

2009-02-15T14:12:00.005-05:00

I still only have one major knitting project going. It's like candy to me, I just have no desire to knit on anything else but this:

It was previously known as Mystery Stole 4 and now has been named the Serendipity Stole. It's designer is Georgina Bow and here is where you can purchase the pattern from her.

The designer released six clues in all, and the pattern called to knit two separate parts following clues 1-5. Then clue 6 is knit only once on one of the halves, and will serve as the center of the stole. I am currently knitting clue six, and am happy that it includes beads. I find I love adding beads to the knitting, a surprise because I always figured I would hate the break in the rhythm of knitting. But I don't and the look of the beads on the lace is so appealing to me, I will be looking for other patterns to do again.

I also am in love with the yarn, Knit Picks Shadow in the color Lost Lake. It's a 100% merino, in lace weight. You know how knitters joke that if you are getting close to the end of a ball before the end of a pattern, you should knit faster? Well, I am at the opposite of that, I have lots of yarn, and not much pattern, and I am finding I knit slower, to make it last. Maybe after seeing the center, I could add another 'center' to the other end? I mentioned to hubby that I was almost done knitting it, and was sad about that, and his comment was, 'it's time to be done.' I guess he is getting tired of seeing the same knitting in my hands.

It's very hard to get a good photo of how wonderful it looks. I hope once I get it put together and can block it, I will be able to photograph it in all it's beauty.

Time flies faster than my knitting

2009-01-15T10:53:00.003-05:00

I officially joined the ranks of 'unactive' blogger. How did so much time pass since the last post? Easily. Day by day, of doing something other than typing a blog post. It got to the point where I didn't even add 'post to blog' on my weekly to do list. And then it got past Thanksgiving, and then past Christmas, and then the New Year slips in there one week later.

When I am an active blogger, I am even vocal about it. Hubby says, why are you taking a picture of that...for my blog I reply. Whatcha doing on the computer, he asks...writing on my blog. I don't think he's ever seen my blog, but he knows it exists. He doesn't seem to mention anything about why I am not taking pictures anymore though...

So I am using the metaphor, swinging my leg up and am back in the saddle again. Hopefully this gets the muse flowing again.

I did do some serious thinking about some of the things that make it harder to actually do a blog post. First off, up until recently my photo editing software (the thing that makes a picture nicer and smaller for uploading) was only on my desktop computer. And I spend 90% of my computer time on my laptop. So I installed a photo editing software on the laptop, and hope that will encourage me to post from the laptop. Second reason, is lack of content to post. I simply did not spin at all until new years day, and knitting has been sparse until the last two weeks. That's all to do with personal deadlines, holidays and other time consuming life stuff, that also hopefully is gone away for another year. I intend to keep this blog about the creative side of my life, and frankly I do not consider painting the dining room, creative enough for this blog. Perhaps I should adjust my attitude on that, after all it was my daughter, when younger, who taught me that wonderful designs could be created with joint compound when covering cracks in the wall. However that may be, no creative painting happened in the dining room, so no blog post will either.

Here's a photo of the one thing I did get knitted before Christmas (just barely before):

This is Christmas stocking for the same customer that I have knit for before. I have now made four stockings for her grandchildren. I told her this year, that she must tell the child when she is older, that the lady that knit her stocking would always think of her as a baby girl, and so she got a rocking horse on her Christmas stocking.

I did have a blog post planned to go with this photo, before so much time past. It had to do with my conversation with this customer when I delivered the stocking. I told her that having worked for years in a teaching hospital, I lived by the motto, learn one, do one, teach one. I suggested to her that maybe it was time I teach her how to knit. I received a good 15 minute explaination from her as to just why she does not want to knit. The excuse even went back 30 years to when her oldest son, then a child, got the knitting she was doing and ripped it all out. I don't think I've ever seen such a negative response to knitting, based on one sad experience. But I eased my conscious about charging for the knitted stocking by offering to teach her, so from now on, if she wants another stocking, I will knit it for her.

I had one other creative endeavor for the holiday that I want to share in a photo:

These three silk flower candle wreaths were so much fun to make. They were intentionally made very similiar to each other, and were gifted to various in-laws for Christmas. The wreaths are full size (not candle ring size) fake pine, and all of the flowers are silk. The best part about the whole thing are the candles. They are flameless, battery operated, scented, and look just like a real candle burning when turned on because the LED light flickers so realistically. I had seen the candles online and had to hunt for them a bit, but finally found them at Target. I started the gift idea with this candle, but felt I wanted it to be more, and hit on the idea of the wreath around them to sit on a table. The wreath is wired to a piece of Christmas foil paper wrapped cardboard, so the whole thing is easy to pick up and move. But also the wreath can be unwired and used as a hanging wreath and the candle which is not attached to anything can be used year round.

I found out years ago that I love working with silk flowers. And that is of course because the silk flowers have become so beautiful, realistic and often inexpensive. Since I was doing this idea at the last moment (in terms of retail availability) I found all of the stuff I used for the wreaths at 50-70% off at a Michaels. It took about two hours to do a wreath, and by the third one I was bored with the concept, but otherwise I love how they looked and were received.

I often find myself thinking long before Christmas about making presents. Rarely though does that happen. And this project, so spur of the moment was satisfying in so many ways. I suppose making Christmas presents has turned out to be like this blog...when the creative muse finally hits, things get done.

CW

Felting Fleece

2008-10-26T21:17:00.014-04:00

Episode 21 of the Yarnspinnerstales podcast is posted here and it's all about intentionally doing something that spinners fear will happen: felting fleece.

It all started this summer when I was asked to evaluate some Icelandic fleeces for a breeder unfamiliar with hand spinners needs in fleece. Although many of the fleeces were usuable, there were several that due to delay in shearing had let the undercoat mat. The fleece would not be spinnable, since the fibers were not going to be easily opened and removed.

However, in the true thrifty attitude that I have, I started looking at that matted undercoat, and started explaining how it was often easy to felt wool, and these fleeces had a good start of that already. What if....we just helped it along some, and made the fleeces into something that would at least be lovely to look at, if not usable.

And the rest is, as they actually don't say, a podcast. I thought that this podcast would benefit from lots of photos, so here they are, with some short explainations.

First I had to set up a work area, that would allow the soapy water to flow through the fleece, serving to keep the front from felting, and also to help actually clean the fleece. I came up with saw horses, a screen door frame, and a piece of wire fencing that had left over from making rabbit cages. Put all together it looked like this:

The source of water was my garden hose, so it was not hot. However Icelandic is not a high lanolin breed, and even with cool water, there was very little lanolin noticeable in the final clean fleece. I used Dawn dishwashing liquid for the soap, and a small circular piece of plastic needlepoint canvas, as my felting tool. I worked the soapy water into small areas of the back of the fleece, scrubbing in circular motions with the canvas. Here's how it looked, just getting started.

Now this was all an experiment, and so at this point, because I was getting very wet and soapy, I stopped taking photos. I really did not want to ruin my camera, it's the lifeblood of this blog. If you listen to the podcast I go into great detail about the whole process, from this point of felting all the way to getting the final fleece looking like this:

Here's a photo of the felted back:

It amazed me how well it worked. It doesn't amaze me that wool felts, just that I was able to put that felting to such an unusual use. The whole process let lots of soapy water run through the fleece as I was working, and I also let lots of water run through it, in the final rinsing. All of that made for a very clean fleece. After it was totally dry, I used a metal dog comb to fluff and raise the locks, not really combing, just gently using the comb to fluff and open the locks.

The deal was that I would take two of these fleeces, and try this experiment, and if it worked, to let the breeder pick one and I would keep the other. So when I was doing the second fleece I took more photos, knowing it would probably be the one the breeder kept. I was right. It's a smaller fleece, but an beautiful brown color. So here's a few more details on the process, with that brown fleece.

This is the fleece, lock side up, laid out on the screen, before any water has been applied.

This photo shows the back side of the fleece, before any water was applied. You can see the matted quality of the undercoat.

This is the actual felting process in progress. This is of course the underside, and the entire fleece has been saturated with water, and the soapy water is applied in smaller areas. I would work the felting process in sections, overlapping them, to make sure the entire area was connected by the felting.

This is the fleece after all the felting work is done, and before I did any rinsing.

And finally (drum roll please, this really is a lovely result)

OK I know it looks like a bear skin. It's not. It's wool and I could not be more proud of how lovely it looks.

======

For the second part of the podcast I put felting fleece to a more convention and practical use, a hat. Several years ago I attended a guild meeting and we spent the entire day making a felted hat from wool/llama batts. Again, all of the details are in the podcast. It's the same concept, soapy water and rubbing will felt and shape the wool. The guild was lucky in that the teacher had a wide variety of hat forms for use to use. These varied in style and size and shape and it's still amazing to me that she had that many to share. I later snagged one on Ebay, that is an antique and technically was probably used to steam shape wool hats after cleaning. But it could be used for the same process as we used that day, and I enjoy having the antique as part of my collection. Here's a photo.

And here's my hat from the class:

The wool/llama batts were dyed the green color before we started felting. The hat band is knitted in a lace pattern from hand spun silk. I used the same silk to do a blanket stitch around the edge of the hat for a more finished appearance. I have worn this hat now and then and it is very warm. It's especially wonderful on those days when it can not decide if it wants to rain or snow. The moisture just does not get on my head due to the wonderful thick wool.

So in spite of it being Halloween, and the time of spookiness, spinners can now see that felting fleece is not scary at all.

September podcasts information

2008-10-03T14:23:00.009-04:00

I have been recording two podcasts a month for almost a year now, and generally have been creating a post on this blog for each one. I did not post though for the first podcast in September so I will combine the notes for both in this post.

The podcasts are on this website and you can download directly from there, or subscribe in ITunes under Yarnspinners Tales (do a search in the podcast area of ITunes).

Episode 19 was a technical show, all about how the different drives work on spinning wheels. I explain the three main types of bobbin and flyer drives used in spinning wheels. These are the flyer driven, bobbin driven or the double drive. I found it very interesting to learn how each of these types of wheels work, and think that if a spinner has this understanding, they will be able to make the wheel spin the yarn they want to create, and not have to just take the 'luck of the draw' (now there's a spinning term I had not thought of before, I wonder if it does relate back to spinning, just like 'asleep at the wheel').

I have a wheel that fits in each of these categories and I include in the explanations specific details about each of those wheels.

I really did not plan to post any photos relating to that podcast, but while I was uploading photos for the rest of this post, I found a good close up of my Haldane, showing the double drive. In the double drive, both the bobbin and the flyer are driven by the treadling. This photo shows how the one drive band goes over the groove in the bobbin and flyer.

This second photo shows how that one drive band is doubled on the drive wheel. Treadling the spinning wheel while turn the drive wheel and cause both the flyer and bobbin to turn. Listen to the podcast for a very detailed explanation of why this makes double drive wheels very specific for the type of yarn they will spin.

The late September podcast, just released, is the more informal spin-in podcast. I talk about two different rare, but often available sheep fleeces, and then later, while spinning, go into a yarnspinner tale about why there is so much stash at my house.

One of the breeds of sheep that I talk about is the Jacob. This is a very old breed, and is thought to be relatively true to the original genetics, considering all the years and flocks that have passed. The sheep is small, horned and known for their distinctive faces and multicolored fleeces. The best part of working with the Jacob fleece is the fun of deciding just how to spin the yarn, using those colors.

You can take the shades, and card them together to blend getting a yarn like the one on the left in this photo:

You can pull the colors apart and keep them completely separate, spinning each color into it's own lovely yarn, like this photo:

Or you can get creative, like I did once for my state fair, and spin an amount of one color, then another, then another. When you navajo ply, keeping the colors mostly together, and knit, you will get a yarn that is self striping, like in this photo:

The second sheep breed I discuss is mostly found in the southwest of the United States, the Navajo Churro. This breed was brought to the new world by the Spanish explorers, and was quickly adopted by the native americans, since the breed was hardy and survived well in the arid climate. The original genetics was mostly lost, but a breeding program in the 1970's brought the breed back close to the original.

This fleece is double coated and tends to have an extremely long and coarse outer coat, and a shorter, softer undercoat. Generally it is not considered soft enough for next to the skin wear, but is highly prized for Navajo weaving, because of it luster, and lovely dyeing results. It also comes in a wide range of natural colors, which are again prized for their beauty.

This is a sample of a roving I purchased. It felt soft and I am not sure if the outer coat had been removed or if the fleece was just a higher quality. It was lovely to spin.

This is some sample locks and yarn from a fleece I purchased and processed. The first photo shows the variety of color in the fleece.

And this photo shows some of the sample skeins I spun, after either carding or combing the washed fiber.

Although both of these breeds are considered rare, there are breeders in the US that have flocks of these sheep, or a few of the animals in their spinners flock. Both fleeces are lovely to work with, and truly fun to spin, and I would encourage you to try some, if you have the opportunity.

My 200th post

2008-10-03T13:28:00.002-04:00

Wow, it's hard to believe. Now I am not one of those bloggers that can rack up hundreds of posts in one year. It's taken me exactly five years to reach this point. Other than a couple of practice posts earlier, this blog started in Sept 2003.

Everything's come a long way since it all started. Blogger has expanded and increased capabilities. Digital cameras became easy to use. The biggest hurdle of all was speed, when I finally was able to have DSL access from my home computer. It has made this blog easier to update, and fuller of photos.

I cherish this blog for being an archival tool, an outlet for my creativity, and most of all, for the fact that someone, somewhere is sharing all this with me.

CW

The next mystery revealed

2008-09-28T20:27:00.006-04:00

If you haven't heard the latest buzz, there's a new mystery knit along happening right now. It is called Mystery Stole 4 and the designer is Georgina Bow.

I have completed two clues and feel there's enough to show in some photos. I really like how this is knitting up and how it feels, and I think it is going to be a lovely stole when completed.

First the yarn:

And yes, those are beads sitting next to the yarn, because the stole is beaded in at least the first two clues. The yarn is Knit Picks Shadow in lace weight in a color called Lost Lake. The beads are size 6 seed beads in a color called Tortoise.

The stole is going to be rectangular, and it is symetrical in pattern. So it has been suggested that each clue can be knitted twice, for each end, and that eventually a clue will be knitted to connect these two ends, with a grafted seam in the middld.

So here's a photo of the two different ends, each on their own circular needles, each with it's own ball of yarn.

It's taking me twice as long to knit as the clues are being released (clue 4 of 6 was released this weekend). However knowing that I am doing both ends makes me feel like I am ahead, in the long run.

It's hard to really show off the beauty of lace, when it is still on the needles. But this final photo is a close up of the beading and lace stitches. See how the designer has the beading and lace playing off each other. I am so happy with how it looks!

This was my first knitting project that used beads. The designer recommended knitting the stitch and then placing the bead on that stitch. That makes the bead sit in that same row. If you place the bead while the stitch is still on your left and needle, and then knit the stitch, the bead sits a row lower. It really doesn't matter in the overall design, but the knitter does have to be consistent and do it all the same way. I am placing the bead after I have knit the stitch. I have a tiny crochet hook that will pass through the bead hole, and I can load four beads on the crochet hook. After I knit the stitch, I pick up that same stitch with the very tip of the crochet hook, pull it taunt, and slide a bead up off the hook and onto the loop of the stitch. The I put the stitch back on the right hand knitting needle. It sounds very fiddly, and it felt that way at first, but I really did get a nice rhythm going. Seeing the beads on the knitting is very encouraging and so I enjoyed adding more. In fact, the next two clues have no more beads, and I am a bit sad about that. I believe it probably is a good thing, design wise though, since beads running across the back could be uncomfortable.

So give me another month of so, and there will be pictures of the finished stole. I am really curious how it will be joined.

Can you knit in a hurricane?

2008-09-20T12:19:00.002-04:00

I am not joking. I really did try to knit last Sunday when Ike roared through my state at 70 MPH. I found it was not the soothing pleasant hobby I usually enjoy, nor was it able to distract me from watching the limbs break off my trees and fly past my window.

Maybe I choose the wrong project. Maybe I should have pulled out some bulky cotton and made me some new dishclothes I need so bad. Maybe beaded lace was not exactly the knitting I needed at that moment.

I got one row knit, about three times. I'd knit about five stitches, recount, look at my chart, recount, place a bead, knit seven stitches, recount, look out the window, look at the chart, recount, jump at the extra strong gust of wind, frog back three stitches, recount, look out the window, place a bead, knit....

It took me an hour to knit 66 stitches. Even though the back row is a nice comfortable pattern of knits and purls, I put the knitting away, until the next day. Even when Ike was through, and the winds had died (and so had the electric) I didn't pull out the knitting because I was exhausted. And not feeling like knitting by candlelight.

All is well though. Lots of large limbs down, and a broken storm door at the back of the house is all that happened to this old house of ours. We are lucky. And we are still bone dry too, not a drop of rain fell. How can it still be called a hurricane and still be dry? Ah weather, just like current stole knitting patterns, remain a mystery. Pictures of the mystery stole 4 in progress will be posted after I complete clue 2. I have just started that clue, so that will be soon....weather permitting.

CW

Podcast Episode 18 photos

2008-09-06T15:51:00.005-04:00

The Yarnspinnerstales August Spin-in podcast is up. You can find it here or through subscription on ITunes.

There's one thing I want to write about that I did not talk about on the podcast. The whole idea of the spin-ins is that I talk about whatever is on my mind this month, podcasting as I spin. I usually use either my Haldane, or Ashford spinning wheel. I have had several comments from listeners that they enjoy the fact that they can hear my wheel in the background as I spin.

Well, I did spin on my Haldane, while recording this yarnspinner tale, and during editing I noticed I could not hear the wheel. I had not changed anything as far as how I was recording, and was puzzled why it was not showing up in the background. It was finally the next day, as I was finishing a bobbin in order to ply the yarn, that I realized the Haldane was spinning very quietly. No rattles or wobbles like I am use to seeing, feeling and hearing. It dawned on me, that I had found the ideal combination of humidity, and heat, that put the wheel into it's perfect state. It was spinning like a Rolls Royce.

I find this amazing, especially the realization that I really will not have control over the environmental conditions in which this wheel lives, and that I have to enjoy the perfection when it arrives, and be glad for the lack of it when central heat dries the wood up again, for at least my listeners will be able to hear my wheel again.

I got busy and forgot to post the photos I talk about in the podcast. So sorry to those that stopped by, and didn't get to see the photos. Hope you come back later :)

I talk about two true rare breeds of sheep in this podcast. The first, California Variegate Mutant or CVM. This was the breed of sheep that actually started me on the collection of many sheep breed samples. I was part of an exchange, where I got samples from other spinners, with other rare breed fleece samples. I was able to locate both roving and raw fleece for the CVM breed, and so used those for my contribution to the exchange.

Here's a photo of the raw lock (upper left), the roving (upper right) and three small skeins spun from carded, combed and the lock.

This is a wonderful fleece to work with, especially if you find it already processed into roving. It's extremely soft, and comes in a variety of natural colors.

The second fleece I discuss is the Maine Island fleece I used for the Olympic spinning challenge on Ravelry. This recaps several of the blog posts on this project, and talks about my ups and downs while working with the fleece. Here's a photo of the three sample skeins I spun, two from drum carded roving and one from combed fiber.

Finally a photo of the pink superwash yarn, because for many podcasts now, I have been saying I am _still_ spinning this pink roving. I did finally ply two of the bobbins and ended up with 257 yards of a two ply yarn. It's really prettier in person than the photo, sort of a soft coral color instead of true pink. I like it but am not sure what I will be making with it. I still have probably 10 ounces left of the fiber, from the original pound I purchased.

There is extra music on this podcast too, just because I found so many songs I liked that talked about summertime. I hope others find the songs as much fun to listen to, as I did.

Alaskan Memory shawl

2008-08-31T12:31:00.004-04:00

Although it does not scream anything about Alaska, this shawl will always be my memory shawl of my cruise to Alaska. It will remind me of planning and swatching and starting the knitting process, while in class with Amy Singer. I will remember pinning the swatch out on a towel on the glass coffee table in our stateroom, wondering what the stewards would think of it, but knowing they wouldn't touch it. Everything else around it would be spiffied up anytime we were out of the cabin, but they had a great instinct about what to tidy up and what not to touch.

I will remember sitting on the couch in that state room, starting the actual cast on. I will remember that stateroom getting too sway prone, one day of very rough seas, and going to a more midship area, sitting in the common area, knitting and trying to not really look at the waves. It was enough to feel them.

I will remember being thrilled with Amy's creativity to come up with several lace patterns that had names and concepts for Alaska. We were instructed to pick two and work out the arrangement, and then cast on at the point of the triangle. With steady increases, adding more and more motifs, we would have a shawl. Oh and just because this was Seasocks Cruise 2008, we were invited to make it in sock yarn. This actually was a novel concept to me, and I find I really like the resulting shawl's drape and feel.

So in keeping with the theme, I knit a shawl shaped like a whale tail:

Here's a photo unpinned and draped:

I've worn it once, and find I like that extra bit that curves along the top. The shawl stays on my shoulders pretty well, being a non slippery yarn. But if I am moving and need to anchor it more, I can tuck those extra curved bits under my elbow and keep the shawl in place. The style will not work with a shawl pin, the shawl is too wide and therefore too shallow to really fit around my shoulders and pin in place.

The lace patterns I chose from Amy's suggestions were whale tail, and icebergs. The whale tail runs right down the middle of the shawl, and the icebergs pattern surrounds it. Here's a close up:

This has been one of my favorite shawls to knit so far, not just because it was a memory shawl, but also the patterns were pretty repetitive, and easily memorized, the increases were dependable constant, and the yarn was enjoyable to knit. I have thoughts of doing it again, because it's a great way to use those expensive hand dyed sock yarns that really never seem to be worth a pair of socks.

Here's the specific details on the project:

Yarns used: Mountain Colors hand painted yarns Barefoot, one skein in Lost Trail colorway, 350 yds. Patons Kroy sock yarn 2 skeins 384 yards, in Gentry Gray. Basically I knit until the yarn was all gone.

Circular needles size 5

Cast on 43 stitches. Instead of starting with just say 5 stitches for a point, I went ahead and made a flat end to the triangle, so that I could start the lace pattern right away.

Cast on May 11th. Finished Aug 5th. Entered into 2008 State Fair, no ribbons.

CW

Olympic spinning challenge finish line

2008-08-24T18:18:00.004-04:00

I finished the final bit of the challenge at 10 am my time this morning, two hours before the close of the Olympics Beijing time. The cat bed knitting was completed Friday night, but so far the cat has only stood in it, not laid in it. I suspect it's just not cold enough yet to want a snuggly place to sleep.

So here's the starting line

And the finish line:

The challenge details:

Fleece from Maine Island Sheep (rare breed) about 2 pounds unwashed

Washed, picked, carded batts for spinning: 1 pound 9 5/8 ounces

Three sample skeins spun to get required 9 WPI for knit project

Total yarn spun: 630 yards 2 ply 9 WPI (total spinning yardage 1260 yards)

Project knitted: Snuggly catbed used 280 yards of yarn

Yarn put in stash: 350 yards

I feel a bit at a loss for what to do, now that this is done. I have focused on it above all other projects. I have cast on for a pair of sock and have about an inch knit, so if I want I can work on those. But for now, I have been happy to have a day away from the fiber.

CW

Spinning Olympics update

2008-08-21T08:13:00.005-04:00

I am on my last lap of the spinning olympic challenge. I can almost see the finish line from here:

Actually I took that photo yesterday morning, so half of the batts are already spun into a single.

A quick update though of the progress so far.

Days 6 and 7 I carded the picked fiber and started spinning a second set of skeins.

Day 8 through 10 I did a little spinning, but mostly was away from the project. I went to the state fair on one day, and spent two days editing the podcast. Off and on during the mornings of these days I picked the last of the washed fiber for the third and final batch of carding and spinning.

Day 11 I worked at the state fair, but in the evening I finished the plying of the second batch. Yardage for that batch was 238 yards of a bulky 9 WPI 2 ply. The picking helped alot, but the yarn is still bulky and slubby. I have given up any hope of getting anything but that type of yarn for this fleece. This evening I also searched Ravelry for a project to knit with the first 210 yards and decided on a cat bed. I've wanted to make one for my cat for a long time and realized that although this maine island fleece is bulky and slubby, it is very soft and I think the cat will like curling up in it. I have had cats crawl into baskets of washed wool to sleep many times, so I think there is hope this cat will accept the basket as a bed.

Day 12 I spent the entire day on the project (in between housework LOL). I carded the third batch of fiber, put the first three skeins of yarn into balls for knitting, printed out the pattern, rounded up circular needles and put all that in a bag for knitting at my knit group Tues night.

So to hit the finish line, I need to spin, and ply those last batts, and finish knitting the cat bed. I have 30 rows left to knit, and with bulky yarn and size 9 needles, it should be done by Friday night. I choose a catbed pattern that is not felted, although I may see how the cat likes it that way. If it doesn't seem snuggly enough for her (too big) it is 100% wool and will be easy to felt later if I want.

The project has been interesting, and certainly challenging, with the poor quality of the fleece. I will say though that the fiber type of the maine island is wonderful and if you ever have the opportunity to purchase some (hopefully from a breeder more in tune with the needs of a hand spinner) I would definately recommend it.

CW

Photos for Podcast Episode 17

2008-08-19T12:37:00.009-04:00

The first podcast for August is now here at Yarnspinnerstales, or in ITune if you are already subscribed. It's a mixed bag of topics this time, so I am loosely calling it, What I Learned Recently, Tips and Techniques.

The first topic is about picking a fleece. I have already posted previously about the fact that the Maine Island fleece I am working on currently had so much vegetable matter in it, that I was having problems spinning a decent yarn. I realized I needed to go back to the basics and pick the locks open after washing and before carding. I talk all about that process in the podcast. Here's a photo of the fiber after picking and before carding:

It probably could be spun that way actually, it is so open. But I like using the carder because it gives even one more chance for all that bit of stuff to fall out before forming into a batt.

I want to go into detail here about the 'stuff' removed from the locks while I picked. This is what was causing me so much trouble as I was spinning. I either had to stop and pull it out, or let it spin into the yarn, causing lumps and bumps.

Starting in the upper left corner, there is an example of locks that were not entire. If you pulled on the lock, it just split in half. Those halves, carded into the batt, made for areas where you would come to a dead end of fiber while spinning. Yes you can rejoin the fiber, but it still breaks the rhythm and therefore the smoothness of the spinning.

No explanation is needed for the next three bits of problem fiber.

Dead center between two clumps of fiber at the top of the photo, is a thin wisp of fiber with a nub attached. Next to it, in the upper right as some of the little black seeds that were driving me to distraction while spinning. And finally on the bottom of the photo are two just plain short cuts which happen from the shearer recutting an area, or repositioning the blade.

There's no way to deny that I purchased a fleece with problems. I was going only for the fact that the fleece was from a rare breed sheep. I did see the fleece before purchasing it, but was not examining it closely because I was going to buy some no matter what. I can say the fiber from this breed type would be exceptional, soft and lofty. I just got it from a breeder that really was not raising the sheep for a handspinner.

Two topics in the podcasts that I do not have photos for are how to andean ply, and also how to find competitions to enter your spinning and to prepare the skeins for judging. I thought since we are still in the middle of the Summer Olympics, to talk about another type of judging that we as spinners and knitters might actually enter.

The last topic is about spinning fat. I recently worked on a skein for my state fair for the designer yarn category and decided to go for an intentional bulky yarn. I explain in detail how I spun that yarn in the podcast.

First I discuss the fact you need a roving about a pencil width wide, which is rolled to compact it before spinning. I forgot to take a photo of that roving, but here's the single after spinning.

And then some of the 2 ply winding onto the bobbin. What you want to end up with is a 2 ply that is about the same thickness as your original roving.

I was getting a 3 WPI if wrapped loosely, 4 WPI if I scrunched them together a bit.

Finally here's a knitted swatch of the yarn.

Yeah, it looks and feels like a hotpad. It would take a creative knitter to make something with this thick yarn, but it is certainly interesting to knit. The whole point to the process was to spin with an intentional yarn in mind and that's exactly what I did.

Olympic Spinning challenge 4 and 5

2008-08-13T11:46:00.004-04:00

The subtitle to this post is: Picky Picky Picky. It will be apparent as to why later.

Monday was day four of the Olympics and I did nothing with my challenge. That's not to say I did nothing at all though. Right now it is also state fair time and once again I will be busy with volunteer work in the textile department. I also have four entries in the fair, three skeins of yarn and the knitted shawl. I will post about those later. The fair opens tomorrow (Aug 14th) but all of the judging happens previous to the opening. And the judges need helpers, so my first volunteer day happened Monday, to help with the quilt judging. Those of us that do this, fondly refer to it as 'quilt wrangling'. Our jobs are to get the quilts from one category spread out one on top of the other on a large table, while the previously spread out category is being judged. This helps keep things moving. There are also scribes, which sit and listen and write comments the judge makes about the quilt, which are then mailed to the person that entered the item.

Quilting is a big thing in the state, and there are over 35 categories in the quilts alone. The number of entries per category can range from two or three to fifty. So it takes two judges, and about a dozen helpers to get them all 'wrangled' and judged.

I wouldn't miss this opportunity though, except every time I do it, I want to run home and start piecing fabric together. Ironically, if I entered a quilt, I couldn't then go to the judging. The compromise is to make the quilt and not enter it, something I am perfectly willing to do given the level of expertise I see at the judging.

But I come home very tired, and so did not even feel like spinning.

But Tuesday I got to spend the entire day spinning and watching recorded Olympic coverage. I am enjoying the Olympics more than I thought I would, and having it in such an exotic location is helping. To see bicyclists riding around the great wall, is just amazing.

I am not so thrilled with my spinning challenge though. The fleece is frustrating me and the yarn I am spinning is bulkier than I wanted. I already know I will not be making most of the ideas I had for the yarn, it is just too bulky for a nice afghan as well as maybe not having enough yardage.

This is what I am running into. First of all the fleece fooled me. It had a higher amount of lanolin that I anticipated and so it is still slightly sticky to spin. I really do not mind that in a yarn though, as I can use that to an advantage by making something for outerwear. It will help in the weatherproofing. But the fleece also fooled me by hiding a very large amount of tiny vegetable matter and the higher lanolin is holding it in the roving and not dropping out like it usually does while I spin. Also, there was hidden a larger amount of nubs. So I am starting and stopping all the time to pull bits of seed, and nubs from the yarn.

I almost quit, thinking well I will comb the rest and give this 8 oz up to a general loss. But I went ahead and at least plied the singles, and I liked the yarn better. Oh it's still bulky and I can still see bits of VM in it (OK can I now call it interesting additions to the yarn?). But the plying tended to even out the yarn and make it more appealing.

I don't have pictures of the yarn yet, I decided to wash it, so it is drying right now. I have about 160 yards of 2 ply at 9 WPI yarn so far.

Sleeping on a project often helps and when I got up this morning I realized that I needed to get back to the basics again and do something I had not done, hand pick the fleece before carding. In my feeling of needed haste for this project, along with thinking there was not much VM, I had skipped this step. The only thing I had done was open the locks some before putting it through the carder. It's no wonder there was a large amount of trash in the batts.

So I spent a hour and half on my porch this morning with about 8 oz of the remaining washed fiber and picked it open. It still did not remove all of the VM, but it does look better and will card up in a hurry, being already picked open.

Here's a lovely picture of the basket full of picked fiber. Hard to believe 8 oz fills the basket!

This is the trashy bits I gathered up off the porch floor after picking. Yes, it seems to be about the same amount of waste as I would get if I combed the fiber. It's almost the same process really, when you pick the fiber as hard as I do, there's alot of waste.

Later today I will card the picked fiber, and spin another 2 ply yarn. I imagine I could get a thinner yarn now except if I really want to knit something with this yarn, I should go ahead and continue with the 9 WPI and use it for something bulky and warm for this winter.

Olympic Spinning challenge Day 2 and 3

2008-08-11T16:43:00.004-04:00

In all honesty, I didn't do anything on the fleece on day 2. The weather here was perfect, and we were in the mood to play hookey. You know, take the day off, go somewhere together and ignore all the yard and garden work that needed done. It was a great day. We visited a part of the 'world's longest yardsale'. This is one specific highway that starts in Ohio and ends in Alabama, and along the entire length you can find yardsales, on the second weekend in Aug. I saw two spinning wheels for sale. Neither had any markings on them and both had had the fliers redone with modern wood. But they were functional and in good shape, just small.

So on Sunday I got back into the challenge by carding about half of the washed fleece. I ended up with 12 big fluffy batts, totally over 10 oz. Here's a photo:

I am disappointed in the batts though, because the vegetable matter is just not falling out while I am carding the fiber. Often when I card wool most of the VM drops out between the small and big drums, or pops off the big drum as it goes around. But these batts have a high amount of VM still in them. You can see it in the photo. Maybe it's because the fiber is white, and I am use to working with a dark fiber, and just don't see the VM in the dark fiber.

Since I am working this fleece up for the breed notebook, I went ahead and combed a 1/4 oz of it to test spin. I shouldn't have done that, if you have listened to my podcasts you know I love combed top, and it was proven to me once again. There was _no_ VM in the top and the spinning was smooth and easy, since I didn't have to stop and pull out nubs and VM. I should comb the entire fleece, but if I truly want to do this over the Olympics, I need the faster processing of drum carding.

I spun up three sample skeins for the breed notebook, as well as to decide what size I wanted to spin for my Olympic challenge knitting. This is a photo of three of the skeins:

In the photo, there's an obvious difference in the color between the combed top on the far left, and the two carded samples. The combed top is whiter than the carded yarn proving once again it pulls out all the junk when you comb. It measured a 16 WPI but it doesn't look that thin in the photo. I think it may have relaxed some and bounced into a thicker yarn. The two carded skeins were done to see just how thick I could spin the yarn and still get a reasonably non slubby yarn. The answer is the middle yarn, around 9 WPI. The bulkier is just not that nice, because the slubs were not pulled out. So middle of the road yarn it will be, for the knitted project.

One other thing I did was browse through some of my knitting pattern books looking for ideas of what to knit with the yarn. Now some will be determined by just how many yards I finally end up with. I found several afghan ideas, like I originally thought about doing, but I also found two other ideas. Both are from the Folk Knitting books. One is a stole with pockets, and the other is a garter stitch vest. I like both because I could start knitting while still spinning more yarn.

But enough of all of this warm up work. It's time to get my nose to the wheel, so to speak, and get spinning.

CW

Olympic Spinning challenge Day 1

2008-08-09T09:36:00.005-04:00

And they're off!

Although my olympic spinning challenge certainly didn't start with the pyrotechnics that was used in the real Olympics opening ceremony. Nor will my challenge come even close to breaking me into a sweat. I salute all the athletes competing from all over the world, for all of their focus and hard work. And say again, thank goodness that's not me.

I want to try and keep my notes here instead of a notebook for this project. First a few details.

Fiber: Maine Island fleece, unwashed, and only around 2.5 lbs. I only purchased a part of the entire fleece, when I bought this, because it was a breed I had not worked with before, and because I was unsure if I'd like the fleece. Also it was white, and I am not usually attracted to that color. I gravitate more toward the blacks, grays and browns.

Project challenge: Wash, card, spin the entire fleece. Knit something to completion with some of the yarn, before the Olympics close.

Here's a photo of the unwashed fleece:

The fiber does not feel soft to the touch, nor does it feel like it has high lanolin. The fleece had been well skirted, I will not lose much at all from having to pull out dirty bits. That makes the higher price per pound that I paid (if I remember right it was $12 per pound) worth it, since I also don't think I will lose too much weight from lanolin. That will be determined later, after it is all washed. There was a reasonable amount of vegetable matter in it, for an uncoated sheep, but nothing nasty like burrs. There is some yellow areas, that I am not sure if it will wash out or not.

So starting bright and early on day 1, I took half of the fleece and pulled out the obviously big bits of straw and such, and gave it all a good shake. This lets some of the vegetable matter as well as short cuts of wool to fall out. Then I divided that approximate pound of fleece into half, and starting washing.

I used very hot water and Dawn dishwashing liquid. I washed the wool twice in soapy water, and rinsed it three times. The first wash water was almost like mud, it amazed me how much dirt was in the fleece, and also just how white the wool was turning after the first wash. The tips that were extremely dirty stayed that way though, and I may find I will have to cut those off before I card the fiber to keep that from ruining the nice white color.

Here's a photo of two washed locks and an unwashed lock (which is on the right):

The locks are of average length, around 4 inches. The crimp is really different and hard to explain. If the locks are intact, the crimp shows as very tight bumps. But if you look at individual fibers it's almost as if you can not see any crimp at all. You can almost see that on the photo above, the dark area of the unwashed lock shows the crimping I am talking about. It will be interesting to see what this fiber does once it is spun, because the amount of spring to the yarn does relate to the crimp.

After I had both batches of the fiber washed I put them on my sweater drying mesh and put them outside. We are having a period of low humidity and light breeze and it helped the wool dry. But just to be absolutely certain it would dry by day 2, I put it in front of a box fan overnight.

You would think I have a plan for this project, but I still am going back and forth about whether to be linear, and wash it all, then card it all, or to basically work on all areas at the same time. Card some of this batch, spin some and start knitting from the bobbin. Or do I wash the yarn? I have never knit with yarn that did not have the twist set first by washing.

And I have still to decide what all of the yarn from this fleece will become. At first I figured I would do a sweater for me, but I am feeling that the yarn will be too scratchy for that. I thought about a shawl, but that just doesn't work with the fact I would like to spin this a worsted weight at least. I do not want white socks either. What I see when I look at this fleece is an afghan or at least a lap robe to snuggle under in the winter. I am not sure why, but I can not get that idea to change into anything else. So I am going to look at some patterns and see if any appeal to me. And if the pattern is a good one to stop and start, I may just try knitting it without washing the yarn, and then wash and block the whole afghan.

It is an easy decision though about what to do on Day 2. I will be drum carding the fiber.

CW

Project Updates A Rant and A Rave

2008-08-08T10:13:00.002-04:00

Today is the official start of the Olympic spinning challenge, there will be a post following this for more details on that. It's only relevant here, because my fleece is soaking in hot soapy water and I need something to do to keep from poking at it. I am trying a new formula of Dawn for washing this fleece (this is the Rave, I love Dawn dishwashing liquid for washing fleeces, that greasy lanolin pops right off with Dawn). It's a concentrated formula and it's called Simple Pleasures. The scent is lemon and tangerine, which I am loving. The verdict is still out if this will wash a fleece as well as the traditional formula, I will know that later. And it may be hard to find, I know my local Kroger is discontinuing the product, I do not know if that means the company is discontinuing it or not. But for now, it's got my thumbs up (almost a guarentee that it will go away).

No pictures with this post, just some details on what has been keeping me busy the last two weeks.

Items for our state fair are due to be submitted this weekend, so I've had the usual last minute finish up rush. I am entering three hand spun skeins this year and they are spun and washed. I need to skein them into two yard skeins, because that is the required skein length. It's a clumsy operation to get them into the skeins that size. I can set my skein winder to that size easy and wind the yarn onto it. However the yarn is currently already in a skein, that's how it's washed. And winding onto a skein winder, from a skein without a second skein winder is hard. Usually I have to try and put the small skein back onto the PCV pipe skeiner I have, and wind it that way. The alternative is to put the small skein into a ball and wind from that. I have done that in the past too. The best solution is to put the yarn from the bobbin straight to the skein winder set for two yards. I have tried that too in the past and have been unhappy with how the skein looks after washing that large size skein. And if I am unhappy with it, I am sure the judge will be too. So I fiddle, to get a nice looking two yard skein, and because it is so fiddly, I procrastinate doing it. It's a good TV watching project and I have a movie I want hubby and I to watch tonight, so I expect I will be doing it then. Maybe I can talk him into holding the small skein, while I wind the large. Ahhh togetherness.

The other two fair items are in final finishing stages too. The first is my Alaskan memory shawl, knit from sock yarn. It's in the towel after a nice Orvis bath and then I have to pin it out to block in a little bit. I am procrastinating on that too, so many pins. And now here's my rant. I used a well known, high priced specialty sock yarn, you know the type, hand dyed in amazing colors. And when I washed the shawl, that yarn bled, an ugly orange brown color. Now the colors on the shawl did not seem to be affected by this bleeding, and I didn't leave the shawl in the murky water. Even the next two rinse waters were still bleeding a terrible amount of color. It really upsets me. I can rant because I am a dyer. I know about bleeding yarns, and what to do about them. It doesn't have to be that way, and to have yarn sold at high prices that bleeds like that is just laziness or ignorance on the manufacturers part. I do not think it has harmed the shawl, and I did not want to dunk the shawl in vinegar and then submit it to the fair smelling like a pickle. They'd think I'd entered it in the wrong department and that it belonged in Culinary. No I am just going to have to put down an old sheet and pin the shawl to that in case it bleeds while blocking. And then I will consider what to do about it after the fair. What to do may involved never washing it again. I can not imagine how bad this would be if I had knit a pair of socks with the yarn.

Back from switching the fleece from soapy water to rinse water.

The last fair project has been an interesting challenge and it is the one that it the least finished. It may or may not go but it's been fun to make. I have learned how to weave on the 12 inch square loom and it's partner triangle loom and have made squares of handspun to sew into a table cloth. Technically it will be a tea table cloth. I needed 25 squares, and have eight more to go. And then I should wash and block those, and sew them together. Ideally I would knit them together with a lacy design. So I am at the decision point soon, do I finish it fast, and get it in the fair, or finish it pretty and enter it next year. Stay tuned....

CW

Two Sheep breed review in July Spin In podcast

2008-08-02T17:45:00.007-04:00

I have uploaded the July Spin In podcast and you can find it here or in ITunes under Yarnspinners Tales.

I talk about two different sheep breed fleeces in the podcast, so here are some pictures to go along with that discussion.

First, the breed of sheep that every new spinner is told to start with Romney:

Nice long open locks, moderate crimp and as you can see, combs or cards well. Combed skein is on the left, carded on the right.

Next, a rare breed, that was created specifically in the western United States, Targhee

This breed is part of the fine wool class, and has a very short staple, and very tight crimp. The washed locks feel cottony and did not like being carded at all. The combing produced a nice top but there was a high percentage of waste. Combed skein is on the left and carded, a very ugly lumpy skein, is on the right.

The yarnspinnerstale this month is about crafting and it's need for community. From the beginning when a crafter was earning his bread, there were guilds. Once machinery took over that task, crafters would gather to help each other, as in quilting bees. Now finally in this internet age, we have the height of the world wide community such as Ravelry. I talk about how the knitting Olympics started, and how it has grown to be a large community of not only knitters, but spinners too on Ravelry. And I talk about my personal ravelympic spinning challenge and the fact there are others doing the same thing.

My challenge is to start with a raw fleece and knit something from the yarn from it by the end of the olympics. That means washing, carding, spinning and knitting. I will challenge myself to have it all done through the spinning, and then I will knit a 'sample' which I have decided will be a mobius. I do not plan to knit the entire fleece by the end of the olympics, because that quantity of yarn needs to be a sweater or shawl. But a sample piece, to get an idea of the gauge is a perfectly acceptable finale for the challenge.

I have chosen another rare breed fleece that I purchased and have not had the time to work up yet. I will be keeping notes, just like I use in the podcasts so I can share the experience later. The fleece is from a Maine Island Sheep. Here's a photo:

And two close ups of the locks.

I have been spinning so many naturally colored fleeces lately that even though white seems boring, I am actually excited about working with a natural white for a change.

Stop by here now and then during the olympics, I will be posting pictures of the progress.

And if you are on Ravelry, I am on Team Tardis. Yeah, it's all about Doctor Who for me, because I just could not resist a team that boasts that they have already been and done the 2012 olympics and decided to come back for this one again :)

Help me hatch my dragon

2008-07-27T18:11:00.005-04:00

Thank you, my dragon is all grown and is an adult now. It is labelled as an earth dragon, able to throw boulders for defense and cause earthquakes by stamping it's feet. I am still waiting to hear it's name.

Edit: It hatched! thank you everyone. If you keep up the clicks, just one per 24 hours, the baby will grow into an adult dragon. I need to think of a name.

OK this is so not fiber related, but I really want to try and get this dragon to hatch. It takes unique clicks and unique views. I do not know if that means one time only, or what, but I thought putting it here would get more unique clicks.

It goes to the website for Dragon Cave, and to all my ability, the website is not harmful or spam. You do not have to sign up, just click on the egg. The page you will go to is my scroll, with the information about this dragon.

Thanks readers, lets hatch a dragon.

CW

A rebellious yarn

2008-07-25T09:39:00.007-04:00

It's true, I have a rebel in my stash. However, in my opinion, a rebellous yarn, is a rebel without a cause.

This all started two days ago, when I was searching for some sock yarn. I had not really stored yarns purchased over the last several months, and in the process of doing that, I came across a box of handspun yarn. I decided it was time to get all the handspun into one container. So I got all the skeins together and laid them out on the table.

Now I know this was a perfectly good photo opportunity, but I wasn't really thinking blog at the moment. And in truth this was not _all_ my handspun yarn, just the skeins I will not sell. That's either because I really love the yarn, or really hate the yarn. If I love it, I want to make something from it. If I hate it, well, I am too good hearted to take someone's cash for it.

I will admit, it made a pretty picture seeing all that yarn on the table. I got enthused enough to start pulling 'project' bags from the pile. One bag of 14 skeins of natural colored yarn for a sweater for me. One bag of big bulky black welsh mountain for a felted kitty bed. Several bags of hats, mitten, scarves for whoever. I do not have specific patterns yet for these bags, but I will, thanks to my many knitting books, or Ravelry.

So, that's when I found this: my rebellious yarn:
I remember very well spinning this yarn. I hated it, and posted at length at the time how I hated it. It was a scratchy wool blended with linen. I hated spinning it, and it shows so now I hate the yarn. It's overtwisted in spite of being washed, slubby and unevenly spun. It's only good quality is the very lovely lilac color that it was dyed. Since I purchased it in sealed bag, I had no idea of the quality of the fiber, and went on the color alone. Not wise, but pretty.

It continued to be rebellious this morning as I tried to wind it into a ball. OK, I was lazy, and should have used the swift to hold the yarn. The skein was winding off by itself oh so nice at first and lulled me into thinking I could continue that way. And then of course you hit all the kinkiness of the overspun yarn, and that rebellion rears it's grinning kinks again. It was only because I was on my front porch in the early morning coolness, coffee steaming on the table beside me, and birds filling the air with song, that kept me calm, as I worked through all the tangles and finally had it into a relatively tame ball. Besides, I consider it practice for later, when I have to once again untangle the ear buds of my mp3 player. Ever notice how yarn like those are, and how they seem to tangle the second you take them out of your ears?

I have four skeins of this yarn, close to 800 yards. Yes, I will use the swift to ball the rest, I learned my lesson. And I am too thrifty to toss this yarn. But fortunately I had a gleam of a possible project in mind for it.

One of the state fair categories this year is to weave an article from handspun. Now I am not really a weaver, nor do I have a functioning loom. I do however, have nail looms. A large shawl size triangle loom and two small sampler looms 12 inches in size.

Now I didn't want to make a shawl from this, I doubt I could stand to have it on my shoulders. I could have made two and joined them in the center for a tablecloth, an idea I want to do sometime, but not with this limited amount of yarn. So I decided to play with the sampler looms and see how the yarn looked.

There is nothing better for rebellious yarn, than putting it under tension again. And the weaving is going well. It's almost addicting, in that 'just one more row' kind of way.

Here's a closer look for details of how the yarn is pulled through the loom.

I am not going to go into details on the weaving right now. I had to consult the internet to learn the process and had to look in several places before it made sense and I was weaving. Once you learn, it becomes easy. The only difficult part is at the very end, when everything is very tight. Getting the yarn pulled through is hard work. You have to weave every nail, or the square will not stay together.

In fact that was my biggest doubt as I did my first square. I just couldn't believe that it would just dissolve into one big ravelly mess. But to prove it doesn't:

Now I normally would not show something so unfinished, but it's proof of two things. One, the square does stay together, and two, the square right off the loom is no where near finished. Whatever project I decide to make out of the squares, will definately be sewn together after a good washing and blocking.

But that yarn doesn't look quite so rebellious anymore, does it?

Carding and spinning cotton

2008-07-19T09:14:00.015-04:00

Yarnspinnerstales podcast episode 15 is posted and is all about carding and spinning cotton. I encourage you to go to the website and click on some of the links there, even if you do not listen to the podcast. I have links to videos, both on the website and on YouTube relating to this topic. There's a great video showing how to hand card cotton and create a puni, as well as video of spinning cotton with a support spindle, charkha and regular spinning wheel.

In one segment of the podcast I explain in detail how I carded dyed cotton lint on my Patrick Green drum carder with the fur drum. The pictures below go along with that explanation. Be sure to understand that the only reason this worked is because I had a drum carder with teeth about as fine as a cotton hand card. This process would not work with a wool drum carder.

I was very pleased with the final results of this fiber experiment. The cotton batt was cohesive and spun well with whatever spinning method chosen. The only draw back to the task is that the cotton lint had to be hand carded once to open it up. But that's true of any fiber before being put through a big drum carder. It just seemed like double work because so often wool fiber can just be picked open after washing and laid on the drum carder's feed tray, where as the cotton actually had to carded, it could not be picked open. Still, it's not a bad way to handle a larger amount of unprocessed cotton fiber.

This first picture shows the cotton lint after I had hand carded it once. I did not card to remove all of the lumps, I carded with the intention of opening the fibers. After one or two passes on the hand cards I just gently rolled the cotton off of the cards and laid them in a pile.

The next photo shows one of those hand carded batts being laid on the feed in tray of the drum carder. I found it fed into the carder best if the batt was laid so the fibers were perpendicular to the drum, which feels like it would tangle the fiber more, but really allows the teeth of the carder to do it's work, pulling in bits of that batt. If I laid the batt with the fibers parallel, the fiber would feed in too fast, in clumps.

The next picture shows one of the disadvantages of carding cotton on the drum carder, the fact that there is close to 50% of the fiber that will not feed onto the large drum, it wraps the small drum instead. The small drum is picking up the fibers that are shorter than the distance between the drums teeth, and for this cotton, that meant a lot of the fiber! I probably could adjust the distance slightly so the teeth would be closer, but that is a meticulous process and not worth the bother for this experiment. The fiber on the small drum would never be picked up by the large drum, so it is not worth the effort to try and recard it. Instead, I cleaned it off the small drum and set it aside. It will be usable by carding it with my hand cards and rolling into a puni.

To clean it off of the small drum, I use this small brush, which I keep calling a flicker brush in the podcast. I really don't think that's the proper name, but once I get a name in my head, it's hard to change.

This is what the drum carder looks like once the small drum is cleaned. I can now repeat the process, feeding more cotton onto the large drum, moving the location of the cotton on the feeder tray so I cover the large drum side to side in equal depth.

Once I have all of the large drum covered to the depth of the batt I desire, I need to remove the batt from the drum. The tool for this is shown below, stuck into the batt. On the large drum there is an area where there are no teeth, the starting and stopping point of the teeth's attachment to the drum. That area is covered with a smooth metal and this batt removing tool has a long metal pointed stick on it. That metal stick slides along the metal strip under the batt. Then when I lift the metal pointy stick straight up, the batt breaks and I will be able to remove it from the drum carder. Isn't it fun to think about the tool maker thought process, as that specific tool was being designed?

Once the batt is broken, I can grab the one edge of the batt with my right hand and turn the drum carders handle counterclockwise. This will turn the large drum the same way, which allows me to gently pull on the batt. It will peel off the drum, in one piece if I have carded it to a sufficient thickness. Here's a photo showing it peeling off the large drum.

And finally the desired product: a drum carded cotton batt. I made four of these during this experiment and stored them by laying each batt on tissue paper, with tissue paper between and gently rolling the paper and batts for storage.

To spin the batt just pull about a two inch strip the longways length of the batt. The cotton will spin just like it is, without the need for predrafting.

As I stated in the podcast, when I started this experiment I had no idea if the cotton would come off of the drum carder in a nice batt, nor did I know how cotton carded this way would spin. I am sure I am not the first person to try cotton on a drum carder, but it feels a bit like experimenting in an unknown fiber universe.

Things you find in fleece

2008-06-30T10:50:00.002-04:00

I've been washing a fleece these last two weeks. And of course, you can find all sorts of things trapped in the fleece by the sticky lanolin. Hay, straw, burrs, corn and this...
No it's not a japanese beetle. It looks like one, only on steroids. I have always just called them that, the beetle on steroids. I think it's real name is the June fruit beetle.

I have these at my house, and I purchased the fleece in the state next to me, so I am sure they are local there too. It's hard to get a photo of the very shiny green shell but they are startling to see. Startling too, to be swishing your hand through the fleece in the rinse water and feel something about the size of a pecan. I'm amazed it stayed so intact, it was hard to dislodge from the fleece and you can see the strands still sticking to it.

All in all, I'd rather find nothing in a fleece, but given a choice, I'll take this critter over live moth larva, or sticky burrs.

CW

June Spin In podcast with two breeds of sheep

2008-06-25T13:29:00.009-04:00

The June Spin In podcast was posted last week, but I like to put a reminder link in this blog for those listeners that are not subscribed to Itunes. Plus I have photos that I wanted to post for the two sheep breeds (cormo and montadale) I talk about in the podcast.

Cormo is a breed developed by crossing corridale and merino sheep. So it has many of the same characteristics as merino and is a very soft wool. It's harder to home process because of the higher lanolin, but wonderful to spin, especially in the lock.

Here's a photo of the locks from my breed sampler file:

I talk about how I like combing the cormo better than carding and that after combing I pulled some fiber through a diz and spun that. I also spun fiber straight from washed locks and I found that my singles from both methods were spinning to about the same WPI.

Here's a picture of two ply, combed and lock spun. Just like merino there's lots of bounce to the yarn.

The second breed of sheep I talk about is the Montadale, not a fleece most spinners will get to try unless they have a local shepherd raising that breed of sheep. It is a down sheep breed and is used for both meat and fleece. This means that the fleece is not a soft fleece, although it is certainly OK for socks by my standards and therefore probably sweaters too.

Here's the photo of the locks:

I had a very small sampling of fiber to work with on this breed, so I combed it all, and this is the sample yarn skein:

Seasocks 08 Stash

2008-06-24T12:24:00.011-04:00

Normally I don't brag about stash. In fact, normally I hide it in as many places as possible. In my latest podcast though, I talk all about the Seasocks 08 cruise to Alaska. I did not talk too much about the shopping done on the trip, and I had one listener ask me specifically if I bought Qiviut. So I promised I would be putting pictures on the blog of all the wonderful yarn goodies from the trip, both free and purchased.

I actually did not buy 100% qivuit yarn. I chose instead a brand called Qiviuk, which is 45% Qiviut, 45% Extrafine merino, and 10% mulberry silk (isn't all silk mulberry silk? after all that's all the silkworms eat, right?) The yarn store was in Ketchikan and had lace scarves knitted from both 100% qiviut, and this blend, and I decided on the blend because it was softer. And I want a knitted scarf that I will wear and not just look at. So I purchased two 1 oz balls with about 218 yards in each ball.

This is what $124 plus tax yarn looks like:

Believe me, I can hold the ball up to the screen and it is almost the same size as what you are looking at in the picture. They are tiny balls of thin yarn. I am going to enjoy making every stitch of whatever I decide to knit from this yarn, but I also will be a long time thinking about just what that pattern will be.

Photos from here on down are the rest of the stash from the trip.

First tools, all free.

The Pony sock needles were in our goodie bag. The two very tall and hard to photograph items that look like gigantic cigarette cases are needle cases, for long straight needles. Each person making a purchase at the yarn store in Victoria received one as a gift (there was a stitch marker too, I forgot to grab that for the photo shoot). Since my daughter claims she will never ever ever knit with long straight needles, she gave me hers. So now I have two. The stitch marker on the brown case has beads spelling the word SEAM and they were a gift from Heather Ordorver's class on sock heels. And the collection of markers were my door prize one night made by Rycrafty.etsy.com, a set of five with one of them uniquely marked for a beginning of the round marker.

Here's a photo of a sample skein of linen yarn given to each of us by Amy Singer for her No Sheep for You talk.

Opps, photos a bit out of order, this next one is the only yarn I bought at the yarn store in Juneau, and only because it was a sale price too good to pass up ($4 a ball).

Now, the best. The yarns in the goody bag.

Brown skein is Saucon Sock yarn, looks like I may finally have a color to knit hubby a pair of socks. Fuzzy multicolored yarn on the right are two skeins of eyelash yarn by SSK called Kolibri. And on top is a lovely skein of hand dyed merino/nylon superwash sock yarn by C*EYE*BER fiber. Yummy yarn.

These are the skeins I bought in Victoria at the BeeHive Yarn Shop (two photos). That yarn shop was the best on the trip, old store building, yarn everywhere, two stories, tables and books everywhere. And somehow, being in Canada made it feel like the yarn was special, and different than yarn I get here at home.

That's NOT true of these skeins:

Hempathy (actually darker maroon than it looks to me here) and Trekking XXL sock yarn.

But it is true of this yarn:

All together now....ohhhhh, ahhhh. Yes I finally have the chance to knit with some Handmaiden Sea Silk. This yarn actually came with a pattern, but I think I will be hunting some more for just the right item and pattern to knit with this wonderful yarn.

The last photo is not of stash, but a picture of the sample sock heel I knitted for the class. The idea of the class was to present many different styles of sock heels, knitted either toe up or top down. You cast on your usual number of stitches for a sock, knit some rows of ribbing and then, start turning the heel, following the directions for the specific type of heel. Then you knit a few finishing rows, no toe, and cast off. You can then slip the heel on to see how that style of heel fits your foot. Brilliant!

This was a sample of a dutch heel and is the only one I knit on the trip. Doing the other sample heels given to us in a booklet will make a very nice knitting project for my next road trip.

Cute huh? I do have to tag the final heel so I can remember what style it is, it will be impossible to tell the difference after the knitting is done.

Is he a closet knitter?

2008-06-21T11:52:00.003-04:00

It irritates me when hubby is right. But especially when he is right about my knitting. How does he know? He doesn't knit!

He amazes me when I have three unlabeled handspun skeins on the table and I teasingly ask him to identify the fiber contents, and he does, right the first time. So I have to give him credit for paying attention to my fiber doings.

Here's another time he was right. Several weeks ago, while cleaning out a chest of drawers, I came across a skein of recycled silk, not handspun but purchased when I made a scarf from that yarn for my daughter. I marveled that I had what looked like a full skein, not remembering I had that yarn at all. I thought knitting a scarf for me would be a relaxing, TV watching project so I grab knitting needles and cast on.

I had about six inches knitted when one night hubby looked at my knitting and said, 'if you are making a scarf, you are not going to have enough yarn'. I think I actually glared at him, and continued knitting. But the seed of doubt had been planted, and I kept looking at the 6 inches knitted, and the remaining yarn. Later, I casually mentioned, 'Oh well, maybe I'll rip it out and make it narrower.'

However, I could not get the idea out of my head that I would not really have enough for a nice scarf. That's why I had this evidently partial skein of yarn, I had to have used some to make my daughter's scarf a nice length.

So I started looking around for another ball of yarn to use. Should I buy another skein of the same yarn for $12? Well, then I'd be in the same stash predicament, I have some of it left. No, it be better to go into the stash and find a complimentary yarn to alternate with the silk.

I thought about a handspun skein I have that is a silk/angora blend, and it probably would have made a neat scarf. However that skein is a true white and I just did not want a white stripey scarf.

Then I found the remainder of the chenille that I had used to knit a chemo cap. I had also knit two pairs of slippers from the skein, but it had been a large skein and appeared to have about the same amount left, as the silk. I frogged the started scarf, and cast on again, and ended up with this:

I'm very pleased with how well the colors matched. In real life the chenille 'pops' more in the fabric of the scarf, and cuts down the beautiful shine of the silk, but all in all, it's a fun scarf, and easy knit, and uses up two balls from my stash. I couldn't ask for more from a project. I will knit until one or both of the skeins are gone. I wonder how close the yardage will be for the two yarns.

And no, hubby is not a knitter. Closet or otherwise. He is just good at those analytical, problem solving type of things. I just hope, when I am working on a bigger project, he catches any problems before I have too much knitted.

CW

Too Precious to waste on dyeing

2008-06-17T13:44:00.006-04:00

Life is nothing but a bowl of cherries:

and more cherries:

And even more cherries:

Now I am all in favor of natural dyeing, and I must confess, the bright red juice running from my fingers as I pitted seemed promising. But I refuse to waste something I so seldom get from my land, just to dye yarn.

No I much rather make them up into something that has as many calories as possible.

We have two cherries trees. They are the sour pie cherries, not really the kind of fruit that you eat more of than pick. But they along with strawberries are the first real fruit of summer, and are much loved by gardners and birds alike.

In my area we have to have a perfect spring to get a cherry crop. The weather needs to bring on the blooms, and then not freeze them or the fruit. The weather has to be balmy enough to bring the bees to the trees to form the fruit. If all of this happens, the tree starts showing along the first week of June big plump cherries turning from green to yellow to red. I swear the birds sit there and wait for them.

Except this year. Surprised to find that the cherries were not disappearing as rapidly as they ripened, I did a bit of investigating. It was easy to find out why, and amazing. At the same time the cherries were ripening, the 17 year locust hatched. First we heard them in the surrounding hills, then the trees on our land, and finally, walking in the orchard, I could see and hear them. They mostly preferred the apple and pear trees. But standing and watching the swooping antics of the birds proved to me, that they were eating the locust instead of the cherries.

So last weekend, we picked about 25 pounds of cherries. I preserved them in various ways, one being cherry wine. Unfortunately this is a wonderful but unstable wine, that only lasts a year. Too bad, because it may be another 16 years before I get a crop like this again. If-and only if, the weather is fine.

Bramble Soxx

2008-06-14T21:23:00.003-04:00

I finished the socks that were given me some problems in the previous post:

All in all, I am really pleased with the yarn, and I love the way the socks fit and feel. The bit of stretch adds a cushy comfort that I like. I wore them when we ran errands yesterday.

I ended up with remaining yarn on three balls, so now I have to figure out what to do with that. Given the stretch of the yarn, I am thinking I will make me a pair of house slippers. I find that slippers knitted in a worsted weight yarn and not felted, makes for slippers that ebb and flow. You wear them, they stretch, you wash them, they go back to the right size.

So I am thinking of taking the same 'granny slipper' pattern, and knitting with a size 2 or 3 needle and this yarn, and maybe I will have slippers that stretch, but then stay on good.

And I can recommend this yarn for knitting, if you are using circulars, or straights such that you can pretty much keep the stitches where they are suppose to be. The only time there's a real problem with the yarn, is when a stitch is dropped.

Project details:

Yarn: Soxx Appeal by Knit One Crochet Too Two partial balls of green and one of contrast color

Needles: Two circulars, size 2, with the occasional use of DPN size 2

Pattern: Bramble Soxx a pattern created by a local designer for the local yarn store

Time to knit: Embarrassing long

Lifelines for socks?

2008-06-10T14:06:00.003-04:00

I didn't realize that I would need a lifeline for a sock. That's just not normally necessary. Oh, sure, a lifeline in a complex lace knitted garment is a given. But a sock?

I am knitting a pair of socks, both on two circs at the same time. I love this method, even though it seems to take me forever to knit the socks (well, technically it's taking me the same amount of time to knit two socks at the same time, as it would to knit them one after the other.) I love the fact that _both_ socks get done at the same time. However, I have discovered that no matter how much sense it makes to knit the socks this way, I can not figure out how to knit the heels this way, both at the same time. So I always transfer the socks to DPN for the heels, and once both are turned, put the socks back on the circs and continue once again to knit both at once. I know many advocates of the 2 socks 2 circs method, but I would be interested to find out just how many of these knitters, actually turn the heel without DPN's. I bet it's more than admits up front.

I found another situation where I have to slip the socks off the circs and do one at a time, and that's when I am using up a ball of contrast yarn for the heels and toes and only have one ball of that yarn. Such was the case for these socks, and so when it came time to do the toe, I slide the first sock off the circs and proceeded to do those last rows in the contrast color, on DPN.

These are not fancy socks. No fancy patterns, except on the cuff. The main unique thing about these socks is the yarn. It's new to me, and has just enough stretchy, springyness to the yarn to be a problem knitting sometimes. One problem is pulling the yarn tight enough between the DPN to prevent laddering. I usually do this well, yanking the yarn tight on both the 1st and 2nd stitch after each needle. This yarn however, likes to be yanked, and then gladly springs back to it's original, and therefore laddering self. So my toes, were beginning to look a little lacy. The second problem with this springy yarn, is if you drop a stitch, that little stitch loop that you want to fish up and catch with your needle point, now decides to spring back into itself. A dropped stitch just about virtually disappears in the knitting below.

However, with vigilance over not dropping stitches and much yanking to avoid ladders, I finished a toe on one sock. I kitchner stitch it shut. I slipped my hand into the sock and spread the toe to see my neat seam. Only to see a big gaping hole! No it wasn't just a ladder, it was a hole. About half way down the heel. With lots of bars of yarn above it. Yep, I had dropped two stitches! and run they did.

So I undid the seaming (first major chore) and unraveled the knitting back to below the hole. Here's where the thought of a life line came in, and when I finished laughing at the thought of a lifeline in a sock, I slowly and patiently tried to pick up what looked like live stitches. Forty of them. I know, because once they were on the needle, I then unknit two more rows, just to be sure I had all the stitches on the right row.

Will I put a life line in here now? No, that be silly. After all, it's just a Stockinette stitch sock.

I will put all the yarn details in the post with the pictures of the socks. I don't have the information in front of me right now. Then you too can go and play with stretchy sock yarn.

CW

Dyeing cotton Naturally with podcast

2008-06-02T14:15:00.011-04:00

This is part two of the dyeing cotton blog and podcast. On both, I will be giving the details of how I dyed cotton roving and lint using the natural dye made from peach leaves.

The podcast for this blog is Episode 13 and can be found here.

First I want to talk about dyeing the cotton lint and then I will give a detailed description of how I got the dye liquid, and the process to dye the roving.

The cotton lint had been soaked in soda ash water by my daughter as a large batch, and when we were at her house doing the dye day, I decided to try and dye some of the lint by putting it into a crock pot filled with the peach leaf dye liquid and held at high for three hours. I was pleased to see as it was 'stewing' that the lint seemed to be taking the color. Here's a picture of how the lint looked after I took it out of the crock pot and popped it into a ziplock bag to take home:

However, the next morning, I took the lint out of the bag and began rinsing it, and discovered immediately that the color was not sticking to the fiber. Here's how it looked after rinsing:

This of course really worried me about the success of dyeing the cotton roving with the same liquid, until I realized that the lint had not been soaked in alum, a key mordanting point of the natural dye process. So with hope restored, I continued on to dye the roving.

Here's a copy of the directions I included with my swap fiber, and then after that I have a few pictures for you of the process. I did not take as many photos as I should have, once I get going in the process I forget to stop and take a picture. But I think the detailed written description will be plenty for anyone wanting to try their own dyepot.

Dyeing cotton with natural dyes experiment

05/26/2008

Dyestuff: Peach leaves, green and fresh

Method: Fill two large stainless steel pots with fresh peach leaves. My pots were 16 and 20 quart size, filled about ¾ full of leaves. Cover leaves with warm water, cover and set in warm spot (just my kitchen floor) for two days. On day three place pots on stove, bring liquid to boil and boil for two hours, watching liquid levels. Allow to cool and sit overnight. When ready to dye, dip leaves out of liquid and heat pot of dye to just boiling.

Cotton: wetting out steps

Cotton needs to be thoroughly wet in order to dye. It also should be soaked in soda ash water. So I filled my 12 quart stainless steel pot with a couple cups of warm water and soda ash using the ratio roughly figured from referenced books, 1/8 ounce for 1 pound of cotton. The book did state that if soda ash is not available, soap suds could be used, however I did not use any soap.
The cotton soaked in this solution for two days, on the third day, I did set the pot on the stove and raised the temperature to just below boiling, and allowed to cool overnight.
This step may not be necessary.

Mordant on fiber: alum
Ratio: 4 ounces of alum to one pound of cotton.
I took the fiber out of the soda ash water and allowed to drain well. I cleaned the same stainless steel pot well, and then dissolved the 4 ounces of alum in several cups of warm water in that pot, making sure all was dissolved. I then filled the pot with enough warm water that allowed the cotton roving to be immersed and well covered. This sat overnight and the fiber was dyed the next day.

Dyeing the cotton

After removing the peach leaves, I took my 8 quart stainless steel pot and filled it half full with the dye liquid. This I set on the stove and started to heat. I also set the 12 quart pot with the alum/cotton in it on the stove and set it to a gentle heat. Both heats were just a bit over a comfortable hot to the hand. When both were to that heat, I took enough of the wet cotton roving from the alum water, squeezed gently to remove most of the liquid, and placed that in the dye pot, gently and trying to get the roving as open as possible. I had plenty of dye liquid, so I did the whole dyeing process in these small batches, instead of dyeing the whole pound at once. I experimented some, the first batch was held at the below boiling heat for 30 minutes. The second batch was brought to a boil, and held at boiling for 30 minutes. Both batches dyed with the same intensity, so boiling is not necessary for the dyeing process. Although the dye seemed to strike almost immediately, and did not really increase in intensity with the 30 minutes, I did do all batches the same.

After the first batch had heated for 30 minutes I poured everything out through a strainer (I use an old wire basket from a deep fat fryer, works really well). I let the dye go into a pot to save, because it still seemed to have color. The fiber went into the strainer and straight into the kitchen sink, where I ran the hottest water from my tap on the fiber to rinse. There was very little dye in the rinse, just the obvious dye water still trapped in the ball of fiber. The fiber soon appeared to be clear of that dye, and rinsing clear. I squeezed the fiber ball hard to remove as much water as possible. I then slowly untangled the ball and draped the fiber into long open loops of fiber and laid it on a mesh sweater dryer in front of a fan to dry. I did try spinning the fiber out in the washing machine in a mesh bag, but did not find it got the fiber any drier, unlike wool.

I used new dye liquid for each batch, and repeated the process. Only one thing I noticed that affected the dye liquid and that was the dye color was deeper in the 20 quart pot than the 16 quart pot, I probably had more leaves in the larger pot. So I combined the liquid from the two pots, to more evenly distribute the color.

I also had one batch that seemed to be dyeing lighter, and I realized I had not squeezed out as much of the alum water before placing the fiber in the dye pot, thus diluting the color. To correct this, I poured part of the dye liquid off and placed new dye liquid in it, and then continued with the heating process.

The color appeared as a lemon yellow when wet and as a lighter, lemon aid color when dry. The color was certainly fast as far as washing out, although there will be no information on true color fastness of the yarn, or light fastness of the color until much later.

Dye Disposal

The dye liquid can be safely emptied outside, or down a kitchen drain into municiple sewer or septic tank. The alum mordant water should be copiously diluted with running water and then allowed down the kitchen drain.

References used:
Early American Weaving and Dyeing: J and R Bronson, Dover Publishing
Your Yarn Dyeing: Elsie Davenport, Select Books Publishing
Natural Dyes for Spinners & Weavers: Hetty Wickens, Batsford Craft Publishing

End of directions, begin photo :)

One of the photos I missed taking was of the peach leaves 'stewing' in the pot. Silly to forget, since the pots were hanging around my kitchen for three days. On Monday, getting ready for the grand dyeing experiment, hubby offered to take the pots out to the driveway and scoop out the leaves for me. I gladly accepted the help, and it was until later it dawned on me that I had not taken a photo of the leaves in the pot. When I commented on that, hubby even offered to _put them back in the pot for me_! He's wonderful like that, but I said no, my readers would have to settle for a photo of the leaves on the ground after being removed from the pot:

I did remember though to take a photo of the actual dye liquid. Look how yellow it is! Yes it reminds me of many years of working in a medical lab and all those body fluids, but trust me it smelled much better. In fact, it had very little smell at all.

Here's a photo of the roving soaking in the alum solution, which turns out to be a very important step for the dyeing to work.

Finally, a photo of the roving just as it's being dipped out of the dye pot. I was still on pins and needles as to whether it was going to work at this point, because remember the lint had looked yellow also.

But proof is below, the alum is the key, and the yellow color stayed on the roving after rinsing:

Now is when I did a happy song and dance, and proceeded the rest of the day with dyeing the one pound of cotton roving. This was rinsed and squeezed and rolled in towels to assist drying, and looked pretty compacted while it was drying:

However, once it was completely dry, it was possible to 'beat' it by either banging the roving on the table, or hitting it hard with a wooden mallet (my preferred method) and then rolling the fiber some with my fingers. The cotton softened up and smoothed out and feels ready to spin:

The very last thing I did, was to take all the cotton lint that didn't take the dye, and soak it overnight in a fresh solution of alum water. Then I took all of the remaining dye liquid and heated it, and put the lint in the pot. I held it just below boiling for 30 minutes and then let the pot completely cool. At this point I felt I had gotten plenty of dyeing from those peach leaves, and I drained the lint out of the pot, letting the dye go down the drain. It looked plenty yellow still, and who knows, I may have been able to dye lots more. But the experiment was over, and I had proved that those old reprinted books on dyeing were correct when they said 'dyeing cotton at home is easy'.

Cotton Dye Day with podcast

2008-05-30T17:59:00.016-04:00

Lots of photos to share! And there's a podcast to tell you all about these photos. It's episode 12 of yarnspinnerstales and if you have not already listened to it, I encourage you to check it out.

The podcast is on my website. Look for Episode 12.

Last Sunday four of us gathered to dye cotton. This is a totally new experience for me, I have only dyed wool in the past. I will be sharing in this post all about what the other three dyed, and then in the next post, I will talk all about my natural dyeing experience.

The project started in a Ravelry group called the Garden Spinning group. This group's focus is spinning with non wool fibers. During a discussion of cotton, which is so often (boring) white, it was decided that we could gather a few spinners, dye some cotton and then swap the resulting fiber. We limited the swap to 8 folks, and made a 2 oz sampling of fiber for each. One member, stashymama was very generous in sending a pound of cotton roving to three of us, and plenty of cotton lint for everyone, thus living up to her Ravelry name. Thanks Stashymama!

And one of our four had a wonderful stash of the old Cushings union dyes. These are no longer made, and do dye cotton wonderfully. So Anita shared her dyes. If you do not have these dyes, don't dispair! Any tie dyeing dye will work just fine, and I was able to find a wonderful selection of colors at my local art supply store, so you should be able to find some too, if not locally, then, on the internet.

First thing we all did, before arriving on Sunday, was to be sure to soak the fiber. Three of us soaked the fiber in soda ash/water solution. One only soaked her fiber, intentionally, in water. It was interesting that all four of us had different plans of attack, when it came to the actual dyeing process.

We set up tables, chairs and lots of dyeing equipment on the deck.

This photo just shows how it all started out. Believe me, things got lots messier later!

See those disposable metal pans? They really work great. Most everyone eventually decided it was better though to actually use the lids, which were plastic and not the bendy metal. The fiber was laid out in the plastic lids, the dye was placed on the fiber and then the metal could be placed over that during the warming period.

It was a bright sunny day, and since cotton only needs to be held just slightly warmer than body heat for 30 minutes, we found that just leaving the pans covered, out in the sun, did the trick. But we also did use the warmer rigged up by Anita.

The warmer is covered with a rubber tub:

And it you'd lift that up, inside you'd see a heating pad, wrapped in a towel, and a metal rack on top of that. Whether you are capturing solar or electric heat, the rubber tub holds it inside. The pans of dyed fiber sat inside for 30 minutes (or actually until we finished lunch).

The next photo shows the bottles of Cushing dyes. These are extremely concentrated, to be diluted by a ratio of 1 to 10. Note that since it is so hard to tell just what the colors are in the bottles, that small skeins of yarn are taped to the top of the bottles to show the color.

Anita did a gradiation study with the dyes and the following photo shows the bottles. Each end is a concentrated color, red on one end and blue on the other. 4 oz of dye was put in those outer bottles. Then first working with the red, she poured 2 oz of dye into the bottle next to it, and added 2 oz of water to the original bottle. That mixture was poured into the middle bottle, and again 2 oz of water was added to the original bottle. 2 oz of that was poured into the fourth bottle (and that's the one right next to the blue concentrate bottle). Finally 2 oz of water was added to the original bottle, making a very dilute red. The process was repeated with the blue, only going the other direction. When all of the dilutions had been made, the bottles were filled to the top with a mixture of soda ash and water. The soda ash is the dye activator, and the dyes will not strike unless there is soda ash somewhere in the process.

Once all of the eyeballing measurements were done, the fun begins:

And the rewards are great! Here's Anita's final roving.

Viki experimented with a different method. She soaked her roving only in water, counting on the soda ash in the dyes. The method from then on was the same, add dyes to the rovings, allow to be at 100 degrees for 30 minutes or so, and rinse.

Again, beautiful roving!

All of us just took the fiber home still in the dyes, and held the fiber that way (in ziplock bags) overnight. This gives the dye time to soak into the fiber as much as possible. And we all found out it takes lots of effort and time to get cotton roving dry!

The other fiber we all dyed was cotton lint. This is cotton about as raw and unprocessed as you can get. It does card up into punis with cotton cards, so the theory was to dye the lint in many different colors with the Cushings dyes, and then do the color blending with the cards. So here's a photo of the lint in a pan, being dyed.

Andrea also experimented with dyeing a yarn, and some carded cotton punis. The punis had not been soaked at all, and the yarn had been soaked in soda ash/water. No final pictures of those yet although she reassured me that those bedraggled punis really did fluff up pretty good once they were very dry, and that the yarn dyed well.

My dyeing was a completely different process, since I was using a natural dye, and I will be documenting that in the next post. However, just so I could go home with something pretty and purple, I had soaked some cotton/wool roving in water. This would be for me, not for the swap. After I got to the dye day, I soaked the roving in soda ash/water for 30 minutes and then made up some Procion MX dye. I put the roving in a large ziplock bag, squirted lots of dye on it, zipped up the bag and smooshed it to get the dye into as much of the fiber as possible. I left the bag in the sun for most of the afternoon and took it home and again left the dye on the fiber overnight.

When I rinsed the fiber, it looked like this:

And dried to a lovely variegated colorway. Just like lilacs in spring!

Merry month of May

2008-05-29T20:11:00.002-04:00

There was nothing 'May'-be about this month except my absence from blogging. Big life changes have no maybes about them.

I seldom write about personal things here, keeping this blog fiber related. It's much like those very specific newspapers that focus on world news from the perspective of the paper's focus. Lots of life happens to me all the time, but all I blog about is the knitting, spinning or podcasting that I manage to squeeze into free time.

So with that perspective in mind, let me say that a current life event will hopefully allow me with more time, for just those things. Maybe I will finally even blog more, maybe.

After working since 1976, I decided to take a sabatical. I am still required by hubby to call it that, to keep his faith that I have not quit working and retired for good. And in truth, I really don't feel ready to fully retire. Instead, I'd like a bit of time out (off) to decide just what I want to be, now that I am _really_ grown up.

I doubt it will be fiber related, this new career of mine. I say that because I truly have attempted that, although always while still working full time, and I find the fiber arts then become a job. Inventory has to be maintained (washing and carding fleece, spinning yarn) sales have to be begged online, or at local fiber fairs, etc etc. In short it's no longer fun.

No, I entirely want this sabatical to be fun. And if this first month is any indication, I am well on my way to just that.

Here's a bit of review. Note, most of this is the fiber bits.

Last day of work, May 2nd.

Frantic week of list making, errands, packing, getting house and pets ready for my departure for Sea Socks 08 cruise (yes, there will be pictures and details in a later post).

May 9-19th on the high seas, or in Seattle. Lots of knitters with me, lots of things to take pictures of, a few wonderful yarn stores, and even more wonderful yarn to buy. There was not much knitting actually accomplished, but it was lived and breathed every day.

Next week, a frantic week of unpacking, errand running, overdue paperwork and housework, and best of all, dyeing cotton both with my Tuesday knit group and by myself. That will all be explained soon, in the next podcast. All I'll say now is it was a surprisingly lovely shade of yellow and you'll never quess how I got it.

Last three days, a deep breath and finally relaxing into the wonderful fact that my time is all my own, for weeks at a time. I spent a good part of these days editing the next two podcasts, finishing a book I was reading, swatching for a new knitting project, and sleeping. Naps are a wonderful new discovery.

So for now, here's only the promise of more posts, more pictures, more knitting.

And a challenge: I plan to do the Olympic Spinning challenge again. Remember two years ago, my post about all the yarn I spun during the Olympics? This year I have something different in mind. I am still working out my details, just how much do I want to challenge myself. You all will be the first to know, when I decide.

CW

April Podcast is about washing fleece

2008-04-02T10:16:00.010-04:00

The April podcast is up at the Yarnspinnerstales website, and can be downloaded from there, or subscribed to in Itunes. If you search for me in Itunes, be sure to search under the podcast category, and use Yarnspinner Tales in the search box. The podcast should show up with that search.

It's officially spring at Yarnspinnerstales and that means spring cleaning. Windows? Nope, not a chance. But give me a fleece straight off the sheep and I jump at the chance to be up to my elbows in soapy water.

Here's what we are washing today:

This is the Shetland fleece I had spread out on my car hood several podcasts ago, and now I am podcasting about just how to take it from this state into fluffy lovely carded batts ready to spin.

If there's any doubt, wool really does take to hot soapy water. It just takes a very gentle touch, while it is wet.

I talk in my podcast about not really handling the fleece much, just moving it around as you work. This next photo shows how I just push the fleece to the back of the sink, in order to let the water drain out. The photo is actually of one of the rinses, which is why the soap suds are now gone.

After the fleece is rinsed free of any soap residue, you want to try and get as much water out of it as possible. Although you can just let it drain, or keep dabbing it with dry towels, I prefer the mesh bag method. You need a large mesh bag with a closeable top. Here's a picture so you know what I mean.

The fleece goes in the bag, and then in the spin cycle of the washer for 10 seconds. This creates a very fluffy and almost dry fiber. This fiber needs to be spread out so it can dry. I use what I call a sweater dryer, available in many of the mail order catalogs. This one hangs from my shower rod and actually has a furnace vent blowing straight on it, so the fleece dries quickly when I put it up this way.

Fluffy fibery goodness, all dry and ready to card or comb.

I wasn't sure how this fleece would do on my drum carder, because the staple length of the fleece is very long. However, it carded wonderfully. I still had to pull some vegetable matter from the fiber before carding, and much of the smaller bits fell out as I carded. I decided to pull half of the drum off at a time, which still made nice big batts each weighing around 3/8 oz.

Not bad for what I considered the 'worse' part of the fleece! It can only get better from now on. I always do the worse bit first, sort of a fleece washing swatch. That way I can check out each step of the planned process and if any of the steps are not satisfactory, I can change my plans before getting to the best part of the fleece. As it turned out, I will be able to process the rest of this fleece in exactly the same manner as I did with this bit. There is still some hay bits in these batts, easily removed as I spin. I forgot to weigh the swatch bit before I put it in the water, but the final batts produced 7.5 oz of spinnable fiber. I suspect knowing that lanolin adds weight and that I did toss about a third of it as I worked through the process (too much hay in it, or coarse fibers) I probably did have over 16 oz (1 lb) in the original bunch of fleece.

Be sure to check out the podcast!