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!

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.

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.

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.

It always seems like there is a universal joke in which all patterns have gauge to show you what you should do, and hardly any knitters actually test with a swatch first. I have maybe three or four swatches for every dozen things that get cast on. Like most people (I imagine….or I could just be projecting on the needlework masses) I kinda measure when I have knit on a piece for a while or if something appears to be going hideously wrong.

So it is with the hopes of the magic of knitting and yarns that I keep my fingers crossed that the Very Tall Socks I cast on which are written in a pattern for worsted will work in the fingering I am actually knitting them in. I have done several rows already and put them on waste yarn once to see how they fit…..just in case.

In other size news, I have also been playing with some 7mm drop stitch markers….something which required some tiny hand/eye coordination to get miniature stitch markers. I think they worked out okay – I still love the brains the best.

Those are Size 2 needles, for reference.

I also broke down and pre-drafted some of “Vatican”, I couldn’t help myself. I still haven’t given the Merletto Mitts to the intended wearer, but I figured they might motivate me to make my own.

When I first started researching online to learn about hand spinning, I watched a few videos on YouTube. There was one by chicksinrubber that was a favorite – it made spinning on a wheel seem delightfully accessible. She has this sweetly honest part where she talks about how spinning keeps you from eating sweets, since you don’t want to get your spun yarns all sticky, it does make delightful sense.

Post Halloween, I could take it a step further and suggest my recent bout of wanting to start new projects (even though I have some lingering old ones) could be a good preventative for eating more lil’ chocolate bars and candy.

So far, I do have one knitted finished object to show the world – my first hand spun wool meets hand knit object. In fairness to the huge amount of pride I feel for this, it was a quick knit. And one of them is slightly larger than the other due to smaller spun product. Still – I have touched them and gushed over them a lot.

They are knit from the “Tuscany” roving from the Knit Witch. An Italian named roving becomes Merletto Mitts – Italian for lace according to the Ravelry description of the pattern – for a friend who is Italian. Hope she likes them!

In other start-itis news, I received some sock yarn from TurtlePurl – gorgeous and squishy and soon to be cast on for socks of some kind or another. I cast on a pair of Very Tall Socks for my friend in Toronto, I have gone a couple of repeats into a Sideways Spencer, and now I want a shawl. Oh, and I pre-drafted the “Vatican”. That is it though. Til I finish something else. Promise.

I still haven’t wrapped my head around how much yarn is a good amount from roving. I would imagine it depends on how consistent and large around your singles are….then the number of ply can eat up a goodly amount of yardage. I have never wrapped my finished yarns around a ruler and am not sure what that would show me anyways…..but I was pretty thrilled by my progress with the first braid of Tuscany.

One of these babies is 83 yards and the other is 64 yards, based on the careful, albeit primative, counting done while wrapping them on a niddy noddy off the bobbin. Now I just need to find the right pattern to make what I want out of them, when I am done petting, photographing, and admiring them of course.

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.

I guess that at least once, in the life of every blog – there is a gap of time that posts slow or stop altogether. I am sorry blog, for ignoring you. I honestly had a lot of things to do. There were handknit Christmas patterns:

The shawl is from this Knitty pattern – highly recommended it. It was a fun knit! The scarf is a hybrid of Jean Greenhowe-style animal heads and my strange imaginings for a man’s scarf. (it’s a market bull and bear, for those who wondered)

There was also gratuitous fiber purchasing in the form of Louet silk/merino in Lichen.
There was also a garden filled with yummy treats, some of them too soon gobbled by humidity and heat
So you see, there were genuine excuses. Things that were also fun. Reasons for not spinning the alpaca like I was supposed to…….