Fledgling Spinner

The Tour de Fleece is well underway, and I have been diligently trying to spin a little as required, despite misgivings about reaching the end of the tour. With the little man due a mere three days after the tour, it is quite possible that this is an exercise in futility. However, I am willing, at this stage, to chance it since it is fun to try something new – spinning with sparkly batts.

I have spun from batts one other time, the butterscotchy amber colored Cappuccino batts from my mom. The rest of my spinning has been mainly from rovings and my own rolags and hand carded fiber. These batts I am tackling are also from my mom, a surprise she purchased me from BohemiaFibers, and the colorway is Scottish Highlands (click on pictures to see larger size).

All at once I was overwhelmed with how many colors are in each batt. The variation and layers are what I imagine geologists and botanists would find in the highlands themselves. A gentle blend of corriedale, silk, and firestar, I wasn’t sure where to start, but settled on making a two ply, since barber poles, where two colors swirl around each other when you ply, seems unlikely to matter with so much variation.

My prep was simple:

I decided to lay out all of the batts, to get a sense of the overall colors. In this case, the variations in the wool weren’t significant, but the silks varied from batt to batt, so I tried to picture how it would be best to distribute them as singles. I decided I would just pull each batt apart, ripping them into quarters, and then drafting them and making little piles I could pick from randomly.

A far more clever planner and spinner could determine how many bobbins of singles they might spin, let’s say four, tear batts into the same number of sections, and then use one part of each batt on each bobbin in order.

I took the lazy way.

I drafted into balls of soft fiber, ready to spin up. The fibers were meticuously prepared, so there were not a lot of chunks to contend with, as I have observed in some smaller carded prep samples.  Any thick/thin issues I had were my own shortcomings while drafting the fiber between my hands.

For a great tutorial on drafting to prep to spin, check this video out or this one for drop spindle.

Into the second bobbin, the colors are just delightful shifts and highlights with sparkle throughout. Can’t wait to see how it plies up, but I need to wait because I WILL be following the rules I read somewhere that say you match your last bobbin with your first bobbin, second with the second to last, etc. Keep your fingers crossed that it works out ok!

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!

I may be blog-quiet, but I have not been idle. With a belly o’ baby, I can also say I am actively doing something no matter how idle I may appear! I have been trying to clean up some old projects, and hoping to reduce the active Ravelry queue on the right hand side of the pages. I finally started to spin again after what seemed like ages. The fibre-y highlight to the recent days, though, was a chance to glimpse into the long life of a fiber enthusiast.

Prompted by a Rav post for a nearly local artist’s estate sale, I (and my fearless escort) braved the early Saturday morning highway to a seaside home that was filled to the brim with spinning and weaving and dyeing products from a bygone era. Most of the items were rusty, touched with damp, and completely lovable. The preceding image was a cute little book from 1943 that was hidden among a few moldy primers on dyeing and weaving. The giant cone of wool behind it was a natural mill spun 1-and-something pounds from Augusta, Georgia in the 1970s.

There were also two great wheels. Not a euphemistic great, but a stand up and spin great wheel from the pages of a pioneer book. They were gorgeous, and my trunk was small.

Looms, hand carders, all of these things that we pursue with delight were laid out as people filed by and I kind of felt a sadness……who could go through our stashes when we pass and know what we meant to do with each thing? Would anyone be able to imagine why I bought a braid of pink and purple roving? Would the smallish balls of sock wool be treasures or would they seem like waste? I scooped up the big cone and tried to imagine what she bought it for……or if she had just found it in a sale somewhere. I can tell you, she had great taste in chairs and I found a comfy bottom-catcher for spinning more yarns….yarns I might label with their own little stories to share one day with strangers.

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.

I have been “spinning” for over a year now. I cannot say that I have accomplished much. I can honestly tell you that I retain the fledgling part of my name. What I have learned is to just go with my gut…….and assume that if it was really that hard, all those people who developed it independently across the globe, well, wouldn’t have.

Basically, I press the treadle on the wheel and let the fibers go when I think they have whirled around on each other enough to not fall apart completely. I like to imagine there is instinct for this. Planning helps too. If I pull apart the fibers in a long strand (so-called pre-drafting) then it is already mostly there…..they just need the twist and a little help pulling apart along the thick bits.

The first full spindles of single ply fiber are so rewarding. It has all the potential wound up in there. There are no final ply issues or yardage concerns but the whole color palette of the fiber is laid out, plain as day. Singles are terribly romantic to look at. I think that this roving suits the color on the wheel very nicely.

I have not been spinner only – my spouse has also helped me to properly merchandise my latest etsy products. He created an amazing wee box for Caution: Live Yarns!

As surely as one will eventually lament the speed of their needlecraft, one will automatically begin to question their genetic destiny towards things like arthritis and carpal tunnel. I decided that I needed a night off spinning, carding and knitting. I have managed a sweater back in the impossible to remember basketweave pattern and one and a half spools of single ply yarn in the black fleece. I have quietly nursed a desire for a drumcarder to increase my spinning productivity and decided that first I must make the hand carders worth their weight in credit card spending. Although I fear for the overall size of the sweater and wonder at its likely stretchiness and my inability to knit a swatch to check for guage, I also remember the most important thing:

If I finish this sweater and it doesn’t fit Richard, I can always give it to a smaller man for christmas.

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.