Fledgling Spinner

The Tour de Fleece is over and baby stayed on the inside, so the only newness in our house is 318.5 yards of worsted weight yarn! I spun most days, although I may have missed one or two official ones – don’t tell anyone! The singles were amazing to look at but it was hard to predict where some of the more unique shots of bright magenta or turquoise might land. I was completed winging it as I matched first single to final single bobbin, but I think it turned out to be a nice two ply, 10 wraps per inch (WPI). Click pictures to see details!

I am thinking the perfect destination for this yarn is a simple garter stitch project, something that will really show all the colors without competing like lace or cables might.

While baby continues to make himself comfortable, I am thinking of tackling another part of the stash, maybe the soy/silk I started on a drop spindle so many months ago. I might also dive into a secret fiber surprise I received yesterday – I will have pictures of that as well, but bit of fiber porn will have to wait; the fall Interweave is sitting here, begging to be read.

When I first set out to make the fiery red yarn, my intent was to spin up the 4 ounces of wool I had and Navajo ply it. I figured that a three ply any other way would be a pain in the behind and a tangled mess to make without a fancy, tensioned lazy kate. Most of those are horizontal (as opposed to my vertical three bobbin holder) and have a strip of something that keeps them from spinning out of control when you pull yarn off of them (like the line and springs and hooks on the scotch-tension wheel). I thoughts without one of these, I would have three singles coming off the kate, dragging, twisting, and tangling. In the end, I was completely mistaken.

I had already started spinning one bobbin full of the wool, not really paying attention to how the two were divided when I took those stash pictures. I knew that the original kit, a gift from my mom, was for socks and included 4 ounces of superwash wool and 2 ounces of silk. They were all dyed in a colorway called ‘Fall Maple’, perfect reds & oranges with small sections of magenta. They were Blue Ridge Silk Works from the Dye Pot. Somewhere halfway through the second bobbin, I started to feel guilty for not using the silk. Most of my silk spinning experience has been with little clumps in batts or roving – how the heck was I supposed to fit 2 ounces of silk in with 4 ounces of wool? Sometimes I am not very clever.

Once it dawned on me that a 3-ply made the most sense, I tried to eyeball-portion out the remaining wool onto the two bobbins, then tackled the silk. If you have never spun with silk at a wheel, you probably know more than I did when I started. I changed to one of the smaller settings on the wheel so it would make more rotations for every treadle-push I made. It was slippery, but almost in a fun way…..I can imagine how someone with more control could spin whisper-fine singles to make lace-weight wool. I just tended to lose the end of the single as it got whisked into the flyer. In the end, I had three respectable singles of spun stuff.

Plying them together was much easier. Stacked on the lazy kate, I just tied the ends of all three together with the leader and spaced each of them between my fingers. No fancy kate or diz or tool required; just my hands. The close up show you how my three wobbly singles come together. The silk was obviously milkier in color, even though I am sure these are the same colors of dye. It gave such a neat shimmer to the final wool.

I should note that my estate sale find also helped make this possible. The wheel originally came with this kate and four bobbins. Since you need to have one bobbin on the wheel, this can make things kind of tedious (especially when bobbin #4 is still full of black alpaca singles). Since I have the spare kate (which was missing the fourth bobbin) I was able to just change things out without stopping to wind off the bobbin to make room for more yarn. Here they are! All 93 and 115 yards, respectively.

Thing is, I have more yardage and a slightly smoother-looking yarn than if I had defaulted to the Navajo ply. Don’t get me wrong – that technique seems perfect to me for painted rovings with large blocks of distinct color. This just seems more practical and now I have less silk abandoning guilt. Score one for the stash-busting!

So I know this batt was called cappuccino something, but it keeps making me think of warm amber, more so than it makes me imagine a frothy beverage.  All told, it delivered nearly 140 yards of a scrumptious two-ply that was nearing even in some areas and seems fairly balanced:

When it was all said and done, I cast on to make the ribbed edge of a sweater (which ended up in the frog pond for size related reasons). My intent was to fill the body of the sweater, actually a vest, with this Arctic Blue heathered wool I got from KnitPicks. The two colors looked amazing next to each other, so all was not lost. I proceeded to use it again to make a hat….also ending up with size issues, which I think was still pattern related.

On the handspinning front though, knitting with this two-ply brought home an interesting point to me. First of all, I do not “set the twist”. I am not really sure what that means or why I should do it, but I haven’t had any issues with my handspun yarn, so I don’t do it. Maybe it’s like gauge, where you regret it only on occasion. What I did notice was random splitting….which ties in with a video I saw on Interweave’s previews which suggested that if you spin the singles clockwise, and ply counter-clockwise, sometimes the resulting “twist” of the yarn may not suit your final purposes. I never gave it much credence, but apparently as an English style knitter (sometimes called throwing in that I tension and move my working yarn with my right hand), counter-clockwise plying may be best for me….while someone knitting continental-style (where tension and such for the working yarn is done with the left hand) might prefer a clockwise spun ply…..Crazy the things I still have to learn!

Anyways, my knitting is growing along with my belly as I work towards more baby related knitting projects. I have a hat in mind for the wee guy that has horns and needed a red yarn. I only have red roving handy, but the fiery colors in it will hopefully make the perfect yard for a Lil Devil Hat. I’ll try to keep you posted.

I recently had an opportunity to participate in my first swap. I know there are all kinds of swaps out there….knitting, sewing, cooking, etc. Just a little extension on the old penpal idea I guess. This one was a Ravelry swap with a vampire and Beltane theme, and since I am practically a Beltane baby, I hopped aboard the swap wagon. I had been wanting to knit this cowl for a while. I had made one before with a very pale lavender mohair and purple beads for someone who was a fan of purple, but it was lost nearly two years ago between here and a city in Canada. Neither the USPS nor Canada Post claimed to have it, but somewhere there is a cowl with a set of handknit mittens, languishing.

I digress. Since this was a vampire theme, I decided that the beads could be red (for blood droplets) and we could call it Blood Queen. Behold, her majesty.

I honestly love the way it turned out, but still kinda hate knitting with kid mohair. There is absolutely no way to tink back rows when you spot an error. And forget an easy unravel of a provisional cast on. I used the smoothest yarn I could find and still struggled for almost an hour to take it out. Now that I have unleashed the swap package out into the world, I have turned back to my wheel. Since my energy levels dipped to the lowest station during the winter, this lovely basket of drafted wool has been gathering dust. It was a yummy “Cappuccino” batt that I tore into strips and drafted like you would prepared roving. I think this one has wee blobs of silk mingling in it as well.

I am still not sure if I want to make this a Navajo or two-ply yarn. I am leaning towards a two-ply, planning to fill two bobbins worth. I don’t want to get into a Navajo-plying rut (I adore it because there is no leftovers on the bobbin at the end. When you do two-ply, there is always one bobbin with more than the other.) but I do love the color. I have been imagining blues and ambers lately. Mostly because of a scene from a movie we watched recently that was done in those two colors and looked so inviting.

With Swatches!

So the Knit Witch roving in Vatican that I was spinning is now all done. I got a couple of 100+ yards of squishy two ply. It is a funny thing with two ply: two bobbins full of singles equal one bobbin with two ply and one with the end of whichever length of single was shorter. The math never makes sense to me….I mean it does. I get that I am stretching one of them a little more or when I predrafted one might have been thicker and ended up longer. I think it is the reason I favor Navajo ply though since that uses exactly that you have on the bobbin as it chains back on itself.

When I looked at the first bobbin with the sad leavings of the first skein of two ply, I figured I would save it for sampling. I would knit a swatch with the single, knit another with the finished two ply yarn, and a third swatch would come from a Navajo ply piece chained up from the other left-behind single.

My results were a fun, albeit kinda obvious now that I think on it, exploration into how the color play across the swatches for each:

The largest is the single ply, the so-called “energized” knitting that some books show. I am not a big fan of how the singles knit up, but it could just be me. The colors on that one obviously had the longest runs.

Looking at the two ply on the left and the Navajo on the right, I have to say I am glad at the way the two ply turned out. It seems to have softer borders or transitions between the colors (I am not sure what the technical term is). The same colors seem more distinct on the three ply and, with the “chain” in the Navajo, the color runs are more pronounced or concentrated to me. I can understand why the fingerless gloves with the Tuscany turned out the way they did. (Still love these colors).

In other news, I am being a button procrastinator. I don’t have  a large vat of buttons and these two seemed the best choices for the Sideways Spencer. I am kinda leaning towards the purple-y shell looking ones.

Roving, like yarn, is never a promise of what a thing may become. How I see it, how I work it, and how it unfolds under care of my hands could be world’s apart from what someone else would do with the same medium. I like to think of it as birth because the possible combinations appear reasonably infinite.

Take this lovely roving I oggled and ordered from Knit Witch:

Commercial rovings were intimidating to me at first. I wasn’t confident my spinning techniques were “worthy” or anything other than the alpaca roving I labored over. I was wrong. The luxury (so to speak) of having things combed and ready for your artistry was almost easier than fussing from beginning to end. I digress.

First things first, take the label off the braid and unwind to get a good look at all your fleece has to offer. Note: not all ready-to-spin fibers come “braided” like this. Combed top, slivers, and batts all look different. More on that as my addiction unfolds. In principle, I would say the plan of attack should be the same.

The braid is basically one long run of prepared fibers looped up on each other in a pretty way to keep them together and neat. At least this is my interpretation. I deconstruct the pretty and look at the whole pile.

I knew I wanted to do a two ply so I imagined the best way I could divvy up the fleece over two bobbins. To this end, I laid out the sliver/top (still not sure which is which) and tried to match color repeats. It is SO long there is no way I would predraft the whole length of it so I knew I was going to be tearing it into manageable lengths. This exercise helps me decide where to make the tear.

For this fiber, I divided the whole into thirds, which gave me a blue/silver/teal repeat I could wrap my head around. Each of the three got divided into quarters and I predrafted and wound into loose clouds from the same end for each of the four. I kept the same quarters together. When I was done I had a basket that could be translated into text thusly:

Four balls of blue/silver/teal/silver/blue/silver/teal (you get my drift), four balls of the next chunks of color and four balls of the third. In this way, I could figure on nearly correct color alignment if I took one ball from pile #1, next ball from pile #2, next from pile #3, back to pile#1, #2, #3. Stop, End of bobbin. Then I had two of each left for the second bobbin.

I figured my reasoning was sound. The only complication I considered as I spun is what anyone who braids knows – sometimes the ones that have more overlap are shorter. If I pulled a little less on one of the balls and a little more on the next bobbin the whole thing could be thrown off. But it was as close as I was gonna get.

The next step is to have the Chief Inspector make sure your bobbins full of singles pass his high standards. Then ply.

Not too shabby in the match-up department…..

There it is, all 100-and-lost-count-on-the-niddy-noddy yards of squishy two ply.

So I recently ordered some delightful dyed superwash and it arrived yesterday. The colors were even better in person!

KnitWitch Roving

They are the “Tuscany” and “Vatican” colors from the Knit Witch’s shop. I saw the Knit Witch at SAFF last year and loved the sock yarn I bought, so I have been coveting more of her things since then. So fate was kind enough to step in and make me the lucky winner in a random drawing for a gift certificate to her shop!

So confession time – after the alpaca I have spun (I am almost done with the third fleece – the fawn colored one),  the Louet merino silk bag I spun up (pictures coming soon), some merino/silk roving my mom gave me that started the whole “want to learn to spin” thing in the first place (yes, those pictures coming soon too!) and a couple of random samples and one BFL braid from SAFF, I have never actually knit with any of my finished yarn.

There. I said it.

I am so scared that:

- whatever I make will fall apart if my spun yarn turns out to be subpar.

-  that I will run out of wool for the project and can’t get more of it.

- that the yarn will split and be awful

I am also reluctant to part with the cuteness of the finished skeins!

Last night I changed all of that. The rovings were so yummy that I put what I have learned thus far into play.

1. Break off a manageable length of roving.

2. Split it lengthwise to a workable thickness.

3. Predraft the fibers, being careful not to pull them apart.

(that’s the spinning “predrafteddon’tmesswiththis” basket)

4. Relax and spin, being careful to test it to make sure it won’t break.

5. Stop before you get too into spinning the singles.

6. Navajo ply a sample because you remember somewhere reading that a three-ply was good for socks. Oh, and it is supposed to preserve color changes a little better?

7. Wind off the bobbin. Make a skein. Knit on needles……

I am the happiest spinner, ever.

…or a week. It has now been seven days – give or take a couple of hours – since I started down this road. It is an incredible thing to see what changes as you learn and also how restrained you can be when it comes to the urge to pet and/or cuddle the first two ply skein that looks so fluffy and soft and inviting.

I give you the yarn bounty:They are organized from right to left in order of completion with a sock stuck in for the day where I began to worry about wobbly spinner’s knee and the funny click my ankle was making. I told my husband that I will have a new rule so as not to overdose on spinning – knit one day, spin the next. Barring work interruptions, I figure that will allow me to process all the alpaca goodies sometime before mid-winter when I hope to present a multi-coloured shawl to the gifter of fleece.

I hope that it will seem interesting to her; a shawl with all the natural colors from cream to black to brown of her alpaca flock (are they a flock?). That is my beginner spinning goal. I also had my first fleece coveting experience today. Never having spun before and then being chock full of fleece, I have never looked on fleece sites to shop.

A quick peek at the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair website led me to a woman – Miss Babs – website which has all manner of beautiful colorways and dyed roving & top for spinners. These things will, of course, come later, when my singles lack the slubs (wee patches of thickness along my attempts at thin, even spinning).

I can still look though.

There can be no doubt that some things alter your plans irrevocably. I wanted to be a simple knitter, now I have shunned laundry and dishes for most of the holiday weekend on favor of this:

It was fantastic! Without the stress of perfection as so many writer’s had cautioned against the notion that your first yarn would be anything but lumpy and thick, I went full tilt and spun and spun rolags until they were all used up. Then I carded more and tried to think about small, thin, even single ply yarns.

I drafted with my right hand, I drafted with my left. I tried the treadle with each foot in turn lest one side of my body have a heretofore unknown innate ability to spin. I decided that there was no genetic imprint for spinning but know now that should tragedy befall one joint on one side or the other, I can learn on the other.
Sometime on Saturday I produced a reasonably even pair of single ply yarns. Loading both bobbins on the lazy kate, I proceeded to make my first two ply. Thick and not particularly even, it was nonetheless balanced as the books tell me, spinning in no particular direction when I took it off the niddy noddy.

I laid out my skeins of first yarns and made two ply soup.

Labor Day saw me dispense with my chores in short order so I could return to this:

A single ply on a full bobbin which pleases me greatly. It is destined for navajo ply, something I was first brave enough to try this morning on the leftovers from the two ply adventure. I will scarce be able to pay attention at work tomorrow which makes me think of only one thing – Columbus Day.