I love progress!

It is amazing how much one can get done by committing an hour a day to doing something! Then of course insomnia helps because you can spend more than an hour doing something.

I plied the two yarns I spun over the past few weeks. I finished - skeined, washed, dried all the yarns I've finished in the past few months. How's that for progress? There is a bit more photography and math to do to calculate yardage on the last 3 skeins and to document the grist in my usual way. I measure it on a quarter :-)

 Like this. This is a skein I had finished a while back but had not photographed with the quarter.

 This is one of the skeins I finished earlier this week. It is the first of the Gotland skeins. The wool and the beaded thread aren't sticking to each other so the wool singles is sliding around on the thread. I may have to go back and ply it with a binder thread. But I'll try to use it before I do that. It is a little over-plied because I didn't add some counteracting twist to the beaded thread so it could take the plying twist and be balanced. Not a big issue and one that will be corrected if I have to ply with a binder thread.

 This was the sample fiber that came with the Hansen Pro. Abstract Fibers as a reminder. It is very nice.

 This is the second skein of the Gotland hanging to dry. You can see the plying twist causing the skein to twist to the left at the bottom. It isn't much which is why I don't think it will be a problem.

These are the two skeins from Maine Top Mill. I am thrilled with how these turned out. They are soft and yet I think I have enough twist to hold the short fibers in place. The twist is nice and even and the fibers bloomed beautifully.

I also started weaving the first scarf. This was the result of the insomnia. I had an issue with the warping so I was putting off starting till I figured out what to do.

This is the warp beam with the rolled up warp. I got a wide roll of brown paper but I wasn't very good at cutting it. It was 24" wide and my loom is 20" wide. So there are a few spots where it is narrower than 20 and so warp threads in the last hole and slot on this side were longer because they were over the paper on some turns and not on it for some turns. I knew this would come back to bite me. I also didn't want to put too much stress on the threads. So I ended up taking some scrap yarn and making a loop with a weighted pill bottle. I had this from fixing the broken warp thread on the towel.  The abrasion on the warp thread is not much as it is a soft yarn that is holding the pill bottle in place. and I am advancing the warp frequently so the weight isn't in one place for long.

Now the tension is right and I have had no problems weaving. Eventually that extra length will match up with the rest of the warp as we get to the turns where the paper is more even. I am going to buy a roll of 20" wide paper.

After that I wove some scrap yarn to spread the warp and started weaving. But I forgot to leave a length of thread to hem stitch! I had only woven 3 picks of the weft so I thought I could unweave it. Well, I had loaded my shuttle with a lot of yarn so it kept getting caught in the warp and I had to untangle the weft from the warp a few times. But I did it, restarted with enough length to hem stitch, did the hemstitching, put in some contrasting yarn for a border, and have started weaving in earnest. I will do some random stripes of the border yarn in the body if the weaving starts looking too boring.

 That is the hemstitching on the bottom and the border. The weft yarn is the dark one and the border is the textured yarn that looks lighter in the photo. This photo is to document what I did on this end so I can replicate it on the other. I found that invaluable in working the towels. I can count the picks and match it up.

This is what the body of the shawl looks like . Right now the warp is a gray color. Then it will move through white, gray, black, gray, white, and gray before going back to black at the other end.

I am looking forward to weaving some more tonight. I will probably start another spinning project over the weekend but tonight I will make progress on the shawl. 

A textured yarn

I finished spinning the Gotland and plied it. This is only the combed part. There is a lot of combing waste - shorter fibers - that I plan to card and make another yarn. What I did with this one is to ply it with the beaded thread that I showed you earlier. Wow! I have a lot of yarn. I am not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I was trying to emulate the curl of the Gotland locks so I did a spiral ply where the thicker yarn spirals around the finer beaded thread.

I ended up with 3 bobbins full of singles. At this point, I've plied 1 but left the other two so you can see how full they were. The Tina II bobbins are small.

Part way through plying.

A close-up of the yarn so you can see it better against a dark background. It varies in thickness but most of it is a fingering weight.

This is the beaded thread on its bobbin. I have a lot of it. I bought out everything they had when I went on that yarn crawl in Shanghai. It didn't unwind very easily. I had to pull it with a lot of tension and periodically, the beads would get caught on each other. Then I had to go and jiggle the thread to get it unhooked. It was impossible to see how it was actually caught.

And these are the two final bobbins. 2 of the singles bobbins are plied onto the bobbin with the larger quantity and the one remaining bobbin of singles is on the second, smaller bobbin.

Finally, a closeup of the yarn with a bead visible in the middle near where the 2 strands cross. 

I am not sure what I'm going to do with this yeat. I am not sure how it will knit up. It might work better in weaving. Also, the featured breed at Rhinebeck next year is Gotland so maybe I should plan on submitting a skein and a finished object from the yarn in their contests. Let's see. I will wind it off and finish it and I will sample a bit in knitting. The advantage of having so much yardage is that I have plenty to play with.

I started spinning again!

I have had a tough time getting going with spinning this summer. There just didn't seem to be enough time to do anything. But I went back to my Gotland fleece the other day and started spinning it again. I really want to get it done.

You can see the two full bobbins on the bottom left and the current bobbin on the flyer. I think I'll end up filling most of that third bobbin by the time I am done.

I also finished the skein I spun on the Spindolyn a while back. I haven't taken the photo with the quarter to show the yarn weight but it is a nice fluffy yarn. Pretty colors. There is another bit of mystery fiber that came with the Spindolyns and I may spin that next.

On the negative side, I tried to wind off the cop on the Nano Trindle and made a mess of it. It is going to take some patience to fix it and right now I don't have it. I have decided to put it away and continue spinning on another small spindle like my Kuchulu. The cashmere sticks to itself and it has always been a bit of a pain winding cops off that Nano.

Lastly, I decided I needed some casual sweaters so I will keep the Schleeves gold shawl for traveling and knit a couple of sweaters out of Calmer. In planning this, I pulled my Calmer stash out of the closet and ended up selling a couple of the colors. Then I went through a few iterations of picking colors. I ran through a bunch of patterns but decided on the Cadenzia Hoodie with a zipper rather than with buttons. I will also shape the hood a la Rogue, rather than the pointed one on the Cadenzia.

The color I finally decided on is Garnet, which is a nice red. I don't have a red sweater and red will be a nice color to knit in the dark days that are coming up. I really want to be done with the grey spinning too and move on to a bright color for the winter. I started the Gotland in March when it felt right. It has been going on too long!

I also did a little bit of clearing of the craft room which is a bit of a mess. I want to finish up these projects and put away these tools and pull out the ones I need for the next set. 

More from Rhinebeck

 I handed out dozens of these pins on Thursday and Friday as I checked in people. We like people to wear their pins so we know that they belong in the workshop area. 

 Remember the squirrelly singles from the singles class I showed you last week? I finished the skein and now you can see the after.

 Pretty straight and not squirrelly at all! The key is to semi-felt them. I soaked them in a wool wash like Soak or Eucalan and hot water. Then I went around the skein rubbing a section between my hands. After I did that twice, I started to see the yarn sticking to itself, so I shocked it a couple of times in cold water (hot to cold to hot to cold) and then squeezed out the water. Snapped it between my hands to straighten out the skein and hung it up to dry.

 I have too much twist in some places but it is straightening out. I do have to go around the skein and separate the strands as they are sticky. But they pull apart easily. A little more and I'd have a lovely felted necklace. The Shetland was the worst. The natural is the Shetland.

 Here you can see some over-twisted (for singles) thinner parts.

 Not too bad for a few hours worth of work. I'm hooked on how easy singles yarns are! I think I could get a cowl out of this. I have to see how many yards it is but loosely knit, it should work. And since it is semi-felted I can knit it loosely without worrying about it falling apart. 

The key to getting this is to add enough twist so that the singles does a lazy curl when you let it go slack. For a good twisted yarn, you want a nice ply-back that is even and hanging straight. For this, you want a bit of a curl, maybe a few twists and that is it. Of course it needs to hold together. The thick and thin was easy as I used the technique that Jacey taught us last year in the Thick and Thin coils class. I really need to play with this some more too. They are fun yarns to make. I think this winter I will focus on sock yarn and textured yarns.

We also spun a DK weight singles and a lace-weight singles in class but I haven't finished spinning them yet.

 This is the DK-ish weight. The fiber is Falkland. They are all Spunky Eclectic dyed colorways.

And the laceweight. This was the hardest to accept. You have to have faith that the fiber will hold together. The red is Wensleydale - no problem there. Long staple length. The purple is merino. That is a challenge. I think I will get light fingering and not laceweight out of this. All of them get finished the same way as above. 

 I live in a beautiful area. The other morning, I was walking downstairs and the colors and the light caught my eye. It was like a painting to see the fall colors in the early morning light. That is why there was a Hudson River school of painting. The light is amazing!

 Looking out over the Catskills above.

 This is angled a bit the other way because there were clouds catching the reflection of the early morning sun tinging them with pink. Remember the pictures of Uluru at sunrise and sunset. We looked at the reflection of the light in the rock. This is exactly the same thing. Isn't it beautiful!

 I was working in the garden today cleaning up the dead annuals and perennials like the peonies which are done. I'm usually pretty lazy about this but I've been working hard in the garden all year and I'd like to put it to bed properly. It gave me the chance to get some fall shots of the yard. I tend to focus on the spring and summer. That's a burning bush with a weigela in the back and an Eastern redbud that is going to make a giant mess in a day or two.

 The grass - which I will cut down in the spring so the feathery plumes remain all winter - against the dwarf weeping maple. That one will turn a lovely dark crimson in a few days. I'll try and catch it when it does.

The smoke tree, which turns a beautiful burgundy. One of my favorite trees as it is beautiful in the spring, summer and fall. 

 Now on to the Rhinebeck purchases...

 Wood Beams for my spindles and my kitchen cabinet handles which need a spruce-up.

 A 1 lb Cormo fleece from Foxfire farm. The color is just gorgeous. And look at the crimp and the length of the locks!

 The Gotland - 2nd place winner. I have a little more than 1 lb. I don't know if you can see the silvery gray in the picture. It gleams. I think I might make a singles  yarn with this. Don't know yet. It has lovely long staples and is soft. I love the curls.

 A braid of 75% organic Polwarth and 25% silk for socks from Gale's Art. I thought the extra 5% compared to the usual blend might help with durability.

 I got two spindles. A Forrester - apparently from his private collection. That red bit is leather. He is selling off his spindles and has had a stroke so no more masterpieces from him. And I lucked out on a Jenkins Egret. It is larger than the Swan but roughly the same weight - 35 gms. Maybe I can do some low-twist singles on it? I have been wanting to try that on the Swan too.

 I don't think I showed you this spindle. I bought it a while ago on a destash and haven't spun with it yet. It is a Bosworth Moosie. 

 And, I happened to be at my computer the other evening at 9 pm, which is an uncommon thing. There was a Jenkins Finch update and I snagged this little beauty. It is only 14 gms and will fit right in with my Kuchulu and Delight. I just realized that I have one of each of the Jenkins spindles except for the Lark. I need to do a major project on a couple of them. The Kuchulu, Delight and Swan have been used a lot. The Aegean not so much as I got it right before I went to China and I spun mostly on Trindles there.

 I think it is time to give the credit card a rest and focus on doing something with these babies. 

 I am setting myself a Tuesday blogging schedule so that I can catch up on all the travel. I may go backwards from now or just write about the things that occur to me. I don't know. But doing it regularly will help.