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 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.

I might have already mentioned, but I know myself and my craftitis pretty well. When I wanted to learn how to spin I bought a copy of this book and tried the “first spinning” techniques suggested in the book. I got a hooked piece of a clothes hanger…the wire ones. I just made a tangled worm of roving. I tried a dowel and CD contraption and ended up with rubber grommets all over the garage trying to get them over the dowel.

Somewhere between off-center cup hooks and twirling fiber in my hands, I got a small bonus and decided that if I liked spinning, I would want a wheel. If I was really bad at it or hated it, the Ashford Traditional tends to hold value enough to find it a new home…

I have never tried the drop spindle until this past Saturday. My mom, the original craft loving enabler constant support of my hand crafts sent me two drop spindles in a goody bag with my visiting sibling:

I must admit – not as tedious or frustrating as I feared! I translated the drafting techniques I am trying to practice and manage some decently even singles on both. The Ashford top whorl on the left holds practice wool of unknown origin. The lovely dark wood spindle has a  50/50 merino & soysilk blend that is a bit too fast for my fingers at my present learning curve, but I love the colors. This roving is from SugarBee Art & Fiber Studios and I found it in She Sells Yarn, my nearest LYS..

I can’t decide if the dark wood spindle is a top whorl on account of the notch/turning details on the end of the shaft. However, there is a hook on the same side as the whorl.

New toys need new homes so I repurposed what I would consider a modern day “train case” for makeup. Those square bags are cute, but I love the rigidity of this MIL b-day gift. Plus there is a wee pocket for my cell phone or scissors.

I knit a little more on my Sideways Spencer, practicing my first I-cord bind off. I still need to do the button band and collar, but after that I can move along and block it….if I am not too busy spinning.

With the best of intentions, I have washed and carded the majority of Oreo, the black and white alpaca mama from the big bag. I started to spin what I can only describe in my amateur interpretation as her short and crimped fuzz bounty and am loving the softness. So many lines in the things I have read lend a certain amount of importance to the length of the locks you spin (staple length?) and hers are not too long but bathed in softness. The resulting single is still beset with some lumps and partial variation in thickness but I am determined to make two bobbins full and spin them together to make beautiful yarn. I have carded them after many minutes spent doing what one website calls monkey-picking – using my fingers to pull out the white bits from her fleece (she was named oreo for a reason) and any rogue pieces of grass or whatever – and rolled them in the worsted way (widthwise rather than lengthwise).

As far as set up, I have devoted an inherited tea cart to holding my spinning and knitting in the living room. A quick trip to a local craft store and I had one of those flat , square baskets to hold my roving. As I meandered through the aisles, a woman noticed my basket and asked me if I had read the newspaper. I replied that I had not to which she responded with an amazing declaration that there had been an article extolling the organizing virtues of baskets. “They can hold magazines and other stuff”, she told me. I was gobsmacked. I told her, “I just needed a basket. This was premeditated”. It was surreal. My husband pointed out that the news article was correct. Baskets have been used for organizing – for about six thousand years. We purchased and left. His archaeological accuracy aside, it was weird – no one should need a newspaper to tell them how to use a basket.

The basket use was short lived once it was filled with roving (carded bits of fleece rolled widthwise and predrafted…I think). I spun. And then I turned to knitting. I recently acknowledged that it may be the majority of a decade since I last knit a sweater for my spouse. He selected some wool and a pullover pattern from an older issue of Interweave. Spinning may have to give way to some knitting time as I have ground to make up. At this rate, we would be married half a century and he would only have five or six sweaters to show for it.