Spinning alpaca

This is the alpaca that I machine washed and dried.  After picking it open, I drum carded it on my large carder.  The pound of fiber gave me 18 batts.

I decided to spin this on my Aura because of it's large bobbins.  I will spin 9 batts on each bobbin and then ply it to a two ply.  This is the single from one batt.  It spins up quickly and there is no waste.  I didn't even have to fiddle with the spinning wheel, just sat down and spun it up.  It's a good thing the whole process will be quicker than normal, since I have another 3 lbs to wash and spin from the same fleece.

The Suri alpaca on the other hand was difficult.  I talk all about that in a short podcast on www.yarnspinnerstales in episode 102.  After lots of trial and error I finally settled on carding it with my hand cards, which worked well to spin.

I even had trouble with spinning the Suri, I had to change drive bands on my Ashford to keep from getting too much twist in the single.  I finally got things worked out so the wheel was happily spinning the carded Suri.  I love the color, it is a deep brown.  I will ply this too but not sure yet if I will do a two ply or chain ply.

Neither yarn will be lace weight and may even be too thick for socks.  I don't like 100% alpaca for sweaters, they don't hold their shape very well.  So both yarns seem to be destined to shawls or afghans.  I am sure my cat would just love sleeping on my lap with an alpaca afghan under him!

Machine washing alpaca

I talk all about this in my podcast Yarnspinnerstales on Episode 101.  My thought was that since alpaca does not contain the scales that wool has, it will not felt as easily.  Also since it does not contain lanolin, I did not need to use soap, just hot water.

This is a lovely brown suri alpaca: 

This is the suri ready to wash in a small zippered mesh laundry bag:

I put two bags of suri and one large bag of Huacaya alpaca in the washer with a full tub of warm water.  I let it go through the entire wash cycle.  Then I put those bags into the dryer, for a low heat 20 min cycle. The Huacaya alpaca came out wonderful, but the suri ended up looking like this:



My first thought was, well that didn't work and I will toss it.  Instead I started picking at the suri and found it wasn't felted or even really matted.  The length of the alpaca locks had caused it to just wind around itself.  And just like one can pick open a lock of wool, so could these be picked apart.  Once I did the bag full it looked like this:



Beautiful!  and really almost ready to spin.

This shows the Huacaya alpaca which was in very distinct locks with some crimp to them.  The color is tan with a reddish band in the middle of the locks.  Here it is ready in it's large mesh laundry bag.


I opened the dryer to find that all of this alpaca had escaped out of it's bag, not really a problem I just gathered it up.  It was clean, completely dry and not matted.  It's not ready to spin though, it will need either carding or combing.

New year, not so new socks

My knitting friends know just how long these socks took me to knit, at least two years.  They were my portable knitting project, always packed and ready to pick up at a moment's notice.  I guess there weren't enough of those moments though!  I love the color.  The yarn is Online super sock cotton which is 45% cotton 40% wool and 15% nylon.  They called the color beach.  I like that, but it also reminds me of a lovely spring bouquet of flowers.  The sock pattern is by Erica Lueder for Dreams in Fiber  and is Hermione's Everyday Socks.

Finished skein of yarn

This all started with a 4 oz braid of fiber from Natural Obsessions.  She started a fiber club using a random tarot card to inspire her dyeing.  This was the fiber from the first month of the club.  It is dyed 80/20 merino/tussah silk.  The card (which I really can't show here) was the 10 of Pentacles.  She included a color copy of the card which shows 10 gold stars.  It was those stars that I wanted to capture in the final yarn. 

 

After thinking awhile about various possible ways to do that, I finally realized I wasn't going to like anything that didn't just pop with metallic gold.  I couldn't stop thinking about that crochet cotton you see with the metal thread as one ply.  I had even crocheted snowflakes from some of that type of commercial yarn, and those really did look like gold stars.

 

So I decided I would spin all of the 4 oz of fiber as a single and try plying with the commercial yarn.

I ended up with a single of 22 WPI.  Although I forgot to take a picture of the fiber in it's braid, you can see the way to colors fell and progressed in the final yarn.

 

I went and bought three balls of the commercial yarn, in a light color with gold threads.  I tried the light color with about five yards, and washed the sample, just to see how it would look.  The yarn was fine after washing, but there was not enough gold 'pop' to the yarn.  So I went to another store and bought three balls of a gold plied with gold thread.  That was what I ended up using for this final yarn.

 

The process took a long time, because my curiousity got the better of me.  I spun another fiber into a single and went through my stash and found 12 commercial yarns to ply with that single.  It ranged from very thick to laceweight.  The results were interesting and I did a podcast about it.  I even talked about splitting up those yarns and washing them just to see if it made a difference in the next podcast.

The key point to the whole experiment is you will have the most satisfactory results if the WPI of your handspun and commercial yarn is close to the same.  As it turned out that is what happened with this skein of yarn, the hand spun was 22 WPI and the crochet cotton 23 WPI.

 

These photos show the skein all on the niddy noddy I use, both sides are all part of one skein.  Each ball of crochet cotton was 100 yards, based on what I used I should have about 425 yards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shetland locks

I bought this shetland fleece specifically to lock wash and spin very thin yarn.  I didn't think too much about the yellow on the locks, because often the yellow washes out.  Here is a picture of the raw unwashed locks, as you can see, they really are not dirty or matted.

 

This is a picture of the locks getting basted into the nylon net 'bag' I make to hold locks in place while they are being washed.  I'll make three or four of these bags, which when folded over once lay flat in my kitchen sink.  I didn't weigh anything, on an average I get about 20 locks in a bag.

 

I took this picture to show there are parts of the fleece that I do not use for lock washing, pieces no longer in lock formation, or too small to really spin as a lock once it is washed.  This will be washed as I do any fleece and probably combed with my hand held combs.

 

This picture shows the washed and dry locks.  You can see the white is much whiter, but the yellow did not go away at all.  Although disappointed with this, I am not really surprised, once I thought about it.  In my experience, fleeces that had yellow on it that did wash away had a high lanolin content.  So the yellow yoking was laying on top of that lanolin and would wash away with it.  This shetland was very low lanolin.  I hardly felt any with handling the raw fleece.  So the yolking stained the fleece itself and will not wash away.

I took a photo of the single on the drop spindle, showing some of the yellow coloring.  I do not really consider this a problem, although I won't leave the yarn white.  I will plan to dye the yarn to cover the inconsistent natural color.  The yarn I'll make with these locks is definately worth that extra step, and I would not like a white shawl anyway, my intended project for the yarn.  If one was thinking of a baby shawl, then it would be worth looking for a white shetland with no yellow to it.

I sent most of the locks to a fiber exchange partner, but kept six that I combed out with a metal tooth dog grooming comb.  These I spun on my Bosworth mini drop spindle, shown above.  It was almost too lightweight but my next size up spindle would have been too heavy..  I found my arthritic fingers did not like that flicking motion one makes on the shaft to get it moving, and I went to the roll on the thigh which, once I got past the tendency to go into 'carreen' mode, actually worked really well.  Final details on the yarn:  (weight to follow, my scales battery is dead)  23 WPI 2 ply 5 yards sample.

Plying with commercial yarns

 This post connects with the YST podcast, episode 90.  I talk all about the why and hows of plying (and playing) with the concept of plying a hand spun single with different commercial yarns.

I have found that the blogger app for the iPad is wonderful for posting photos, but not so handy to then put text with them.  So I do the work around by posting the photos then using my desktop when I have the time to edit in the text.

How I decided to even do this spinning experiment is another blog post (coming soon, when I finish a certain yarn).  Once it had snowballed into the large, 'let's try this yarn, and this, and this' project, I knew I had to start with lots of a hand spun single.  I decided to go with a white/light color so the actual wraps of the ply twist would be highly visible.  That certainly came true, as you will see in my yards and yards of striped yarn.

I had purchased fiber from a local fiber producer here in Kentucky called Wandering Ewe Farms.  
They raise Clun Forest and Border Leicester sheep and have their own mini mill to process their sheep fiber.  This first photo shows one of the bumps of fiber I bought from them.  It looks white but actually has very pale pastels in the blend.  I don't know if it is one of the specific breeds or a blend of both.  I do know that it is the first time I had ever purchased a bump of fiber packaged this way.  That is one long tube of paper that the roving is wrapped around.  The roving was even and pretty thin, I did no predrafting before I spun the single. 

I spun all 8 ounces of the bump, although this photo is about half way through the spinning.  I spun it on my Aura.  It was lovely to spin,   You can see the hints of color in the single better on the bobbin.

The fun part was then hitting my yarn stash and selecting various odds and ends of yarn to ply with the single.  I picked a total of 13 but used 12 in the final plying.  I went from as thick as I could find (the white acrylic) to lace weight thin (red on the lower left.)  Other considerations was texture (very fuzzy or bumpy) and type of fiber (hand dyed cotton, and an amazing sea silk/silk blend, that tiny ball on the lower left above the lace weight).  Here they all are, before plying.

And this, is after.  There are two skeins on the niddy noddy, the left hand side being the thicker yarns and the right hand the thinner.  If you want to play match the yarns, start with the white yarn on the upper right  and _sort of_ work clockwise.  On the niddy noddy start at the left (see the white?) and go straight across.  The end yarns on the extreme right on the niddy noddy is the red lace weight, next to last, and then the sea silk/silk, a gold color.  Maybe you can click on the photo and get a larger size to see better. 

I am not going into details about each yarn in this post, I covered all that in the podcast.  And although at first I thought I would keep each skein intact, I have since decided to cut each yarn separately, and then cut those skeins in half, and wash half.  The goal is to get a before and after washing of each plying yarn, to see how washing affects the final yarn.

Katahdin fleece review. YST episode 86

This is not a rare breed, or even a breed of sheep commonly used for their fleece. However, a coworker raises these sheep and when she handed me a small bag of wool from her sheep, I promised her I would try spinning it. And as I often do, I shared the experience with my listeners in a podcast.

This breed is raised for meat, often by small farm owners. It's known as a hair sheep along with several other breeds because their fleece contains obvious thicker hairs all through the fleece. Another key factor is that they shed their fleece (known as rooing) which is a great benefit for small farm owners that can not get a shearer in for a small flock, or shear the sheep themselves.

Here's a link to a good website for information on the breed.

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep/katahdin/

I try to do my fleece reviews in a similar format, by using washed fiber, carding some and combing some. When I did this for this fleece, it became very interesting to find how it removed many of the hairs, in the combed fiber, but incorporated those hairs into the carded batt. When I spun my sample singles, the combed was mostly smooth, and the carded spun much thicker and showed lots of spikes of the hair.

I decided to leave the singles on the bobbins awhile (OK, so I did have to get the holidays over)and then knit something to show off the different textures. I knit straight from the bobbins, with very little problem with twist. The small sample skeins taken at the end of the singles after knitting do twist up, so there's still excess twist there. It just did not interfere with the knitting, since the single sat on the bobbin awhile.

Now I am quite use to handling wool, and to my fingers this fleece did not feel scratchy, unlike what you would think looking at it. Of course I did not knit a wearable item, instead I knit a small coaster.

In the photos you can see the singles on the two bobbins, one combed and one carded. The second photo shows the coaster with sample skeins. The center of the coaster is knit with the combed, smooth single, and the edging is knit with the thicker carded single. I used the same size needles, the edging looks thicker, because the single was thicker.

With all the wonderful fleeces in a spinner's world, I am sure there would not bea reason to do a whole fleece of this breed. However it was very interesting to work up this sample, for my sheep breed file.

A blanket for my grandson

It was a long time in the making, and then several months before I got this posted. But I did make a knit blanket to welcome my first grandson to the fact his grandma knits for those she loves.

I wanted something colorful, and had picked a color work pattern way back a year ago in Dec. I bought four yarn colors as suggested by the pattern. My choice was a variegated in pastels (but not the traditional pinks and blues) and three colors that matched the variegated. I cast on, knit the edging and started the pattern. I quickly realized this pattern really was not good for a baby. It was a blanket, but the pattern seemed to ignore the fact there was a wrong side, and that side was ugly with stranding. I was about three inches into it, when I decided that it was not what I had in mind at all.

It sat for two months while I looked for the elusive pattern I had knit years ago for a coworker's baby. It was slip stitch and you never carry more than two yarns. I finally found it, a copied sheet. I have no idea of the source of the pattern. It looks striped because it is done in two row sections then there is a color change. I started the edge with the variegated, then went in the same color sequence every two rows with two rows of the variegated between color changes. The variegated yarn was carried up the side of the entire blanket. The other colors were cut and the ends woven in as I went, a true disciplined act on my part.

The slip stitch in the pattern creates the honeycomb look as the slipped stitch is carried up the two rows. The variegated rows were plain knit.

Ethan arrived March 1st, six weeks early. The new pattern blanket had just barely been started. I finished it in Oct, and he loves sleeping with it.

Next step, plying

On June 30th I started spinning 12 oz of a BFL/silk blend dyed by Natural Obsessions. I loved this fiber and took my time spinning it on my Aura. But all good things end, and today I spun the last of the single. So the next step is plying.

This color way has long stretches of gold and blue with the intermingled green in between. Instead of splitting the braid in the middle, I did a longways split down the whole braid. I could lay the two halves side by side and they matched.

And that is how I spun each half, starting at the same end, not pre drafting but spinning from the braid half just as it was. Each half went on a bobbin.

But the start of the single was buried deep in the bobbin, and I felt I would get my best chance of long color stretches meeting if I started at the front. So I decided to wind the singles into balls and putting the start of the colors on the outside of the balls, ply from those.

I could only have done this with two good tools. One, a lazy Kate that had a tensioning string. And second, a jumbo ball winder. Once everything was set up it went well. Amazingly, the single only broke once, especially since the jumbo winder is not all that gentle in it winding.

I will ply this on my Aura since it would be the only bobbin big enough for all this yarn. Once plied, it is going to be such a big skein of yarn, I may not even try to put it on a niddy noddy.

CVM fiber study of two ways to comb

The fourth and final ravellenic project involved some CVM fiber I found at the very bottom of my downstairs stash basket. The fiber was unwashed and in two distinct forms, locks and not locks. Since I was now bored with carding/combing everything routine I thought I would try an experiment. What differences would I see if I washed the locks and combed them with a dog grooming comb, along with the washed non lock fiber combed with the typical wool combs. The processes should both be producing 'top' in the sense that it was creating straightened fibers to spin.

I went into great detail in episode 82 podcast about the process. What you get here that is not on the podcast is pictures!

The combed locks skein is 50 yards 2 ply 17 WPI. It weighed 3/4 oz.

The skein from the pulled top is 33 yards 2 ply 15 WPI and weighs 1/2 oz.

A quick math calculation shows both skeins are close to about 15 yards 2 ply per 1/4 oz. not exactly but close enough for me to say the skeins are very similar. Based on that the bottom line is it does not really matter, choose your method based on what you like to do best for processing.

Several comments about the photos. I have not been able to get the iPad app to let me arrange the photos, or label them so if you see this before I get on the real computer and do some editing, come back later for those as well as a link to the podcast. Meanwhile, enjoy the pretty pictures.

Non lock fiber hand combed top:

Locks combed with grooming comb:

Two unwashed skeins still with active twist, top skein combed with hand combs, bottom skein combed by lock:

Ashford lace flyer bobbin of CVM single:

Edited for links and photo descriptions 08/17/12

California red sheep fiber

It's a wonderful fiber, but the name sure is misleading. I didn't even get a pink tinge. This was the third ravellenic project I completed. It is reviewed much more extensively in the Yarnspinnerstales podcast, episode 82.

From what I read about the fleece, I really am glad I didn't. It seems the reddish brown tinge to the fleece comes from hairs of that color in the fleece. Hairs mixed in with wool staples mean a harsher yarn. This sample that I washed, carded and combed to spin was as soft as merino. White....not even a hint of pink, but super soft.

Given the choice, I preferred the combed sample to the carded. Even with my finer tooth carders I found the batts were not carding well due to the fineness of the wool. Combs however worked great. There was a lot of waste, there always is with combing but the yarn spun thin enough to still give good yardage.

So to pass on what I learned, if you buy this fiber looking for the red color, be sure those reddish brown hairs are in the sample. I am sure this varies sheep to sheep and even over the different areas of the fleece. You have to know this as you evaluate a fleece for it's usefulness to you.

On the left is the combed fiber skein, 24 yards 2 ply at 12 WPI.  On the right is the carded fiber, 28 yards 2 ply at 9 WPI.

California Red fiber, washed on top, raw lock samples on bottom:

Carded California Red fiber:

Combed California Red fiber

Edited for links and picture descriptions 08/17/12

Moorit Salish fiber

This is the second ravellenic event spinning project. I received the fiber in a trade for a few silk hankies. Each of us were receiving something we hadn't spun before in the trade. I wanted the fiber to review for my rare breed file.

Rare in the sense that I could find very little about it in my usual go to books and the Internet. At this point the best I can say is Moorit is the description of the color, and Salish is an area in the pacific northwest. Where and how this fiber was raised and then obtained by my trade partner is now lost in the mists of the time it dwelt in my fiber stash.

But it was a fun project to spin for review. I love the color and it carded and combed well. Unlike most of the samples I review I had a massive amount, 6 oz. The staple was long enough that I could use my large clamped combs to make the top. It reminds me of alpaca when I comb it that way. My sample skein was 30 yards of a 12 WPI 2 ply.

I carded with the hand cards although it would drum card fine too, in fact that is how I plan to use up the remainder of the fiber, since I decided I liked spinning this fiber woolen. My sample skein spun woolen was 10 WPI 2 ply of 30 yards

Photos will show the fiber before prepping, and the sample skeins.

Ryeland fiber

The ravellenic event is on and I have five projects I want to complete. While most ravelry members tend to knit during this event, I am of course spinning.

The first one done is a small sampling of a sheep breed's fiber I have not spun before called Ryeland. It is short stapled, moderately soft wool that could be carded or combed to spin. Although the combed top spun thinner than the carded prep, it seems that this is not one of those wools that 'wants' to spin thin. Instead it seems happiest at a nice 9-11 WPI thickness.

(still learning the posting on the Blogger iPad app so I am not sure the order these photos will upload).

In the three photos you can see the carded and combed prep, the pre washed sample skeins and the skeins after washing. The combed prep has a bit too much twist in the skein but that relaxed out after a good hot bath. Ah, but don't we all!

iPad starts my blog again

I had lost the interest in posting to the blog and knew I wanted to fix that. My biggest problem was the photos. Taken with a camera meant getting it off the card, maybe resizing and then uploading. During the Tour de fleece on Ravelry I found out how quick and easy it was to take a picture with my iPad and upload it to a forum thread.

So next was to see if blogger worked with an app and the iPad and here is the first test post. I believe it is going to be super easy and that makes me very happy to be blogging again.

Just one test photo for this blog, most of the yarn I spun during the three weeks of the TdF, hanging to dry.

Stitches Midwest 2011

Better later than never, here's a few photo from my adventure in August, going to Chicago for three days at Stitches Midwest.

I talk all about this in the Yarnspinnerstales podcast episode 69

First were the classes.  Friday afternoon I took the 3D Knitted Beads with Betsy Hershberg. 

Beading in small bits of knitting, rolled into beads which then can be stranded into wearable art.  Her samples were stunning, and according to her, will be shown in an upcoming book by her on this topic.

Here's a basic bead:

And here's a bead showing a beaded cast on and cast off:

Saturday I took and all day class called Intentional Pattering with Hand Dyed yarns.  I not only own dyed yarns by other dyers, but also dye my own yarn, I was sure this class was going to be of interest to me.  I was so right!  It was an amazing class taught by Laura Bryant of Prism yarns (oh those yummy samples we got to knit with in the class!).  The concept, also soon to be released in a book by Laura is that if one can figure out the repeatable dye progressions in a yarn, then one can calculate a 'magic number' and use it in any pattern to make the color show up in patterns instead of a random splotch of color.

This is an example using one of Prism's yarns.  See the center color pattern developing as I knit?

Sunday morning was a fun class with the blogger and fabulous artist and amazing knitter Franklin Habit on Working with Antique and Vintage patterns.  I have always loved the old old patterns although they so often seem in a foreign language to me.  Franklin brought some enlightenment to that language, as well as some samples knit by him from the old patterns.  I also was able to buy one of his original shawl patterns, which he signed for me.

 

Speaking of buying, some people only come to Stitches to go to the Market and here's why:



That's only a quarter of the market, so widen your view four time, and then you'll have a taste of the vastness and goodness of a knitting market of over 200 vendors.

I bought yarn, fiber, and patterns, but did not really take photos of everything.  I do want to include my one purchase here because I talk about it in my podcast.  This is a trindle drop spindle and the beauty and grace and speed of this very lightweight spindle was reason enough to buy it:

However, here is the best reason of all.  This is my sock box, a small purse I carry with my ever present knitting of a sock.  The trindle's spokes are removable from that rubber ball attached to the shaft, (see them in the plastic bag?) and then my trindle fits nicely in the sock box.  So now I not only have a quick knit pick up box, but if I get bored with knitting, I have spinning I can do.  How perfect is that? both my fiber loves in a to go box!

Fiber on the spindle is dyed by Louisa Sousa, and was also purchased at Stitches.