Broke out the loom this weekend!

I was going to write about New Zealand but I spent a lot of time on fiber-related pursuits this weekend so this is a fiber post, not a travel post.

First of all, I finally warped my Flip rigid-heddle loom! I bought it shortly before I went to China and apparently had only partially assembled it. When I took it out to warp it, I found that the apron rods were not attached. I couldn't figure out the instructions so I had to search online for better instructions. Amazingly, there isn't a video on how to put it together. I guess since it is 90% assembled, one is not needed except for people like me. I finally found what I was looking for in a video on assembling the Cricket loom which comes in many parts. The instructions talked about a chain in the cord that was supplied and I couldn't see the chain until it was pointed out in the video.

After that it was sort of plain sailing. I have the Craftsy class on rigid heddle weaving and I went back and forth between the lesson on warping and actually warping my loom. I made a few mistakes. The warping paper wound on crookedly so a bit of the warp is on and off the paper. I also didn't do a surgeon's knot when I knotted the warp but it is quite tight.

It took about 4-5 hours to get it all done. Now I have loads of weaving to do which can be done in bits and pieces. I did a bit this afternoon.

 I was going to use this cone of alpaca for warp but it wasn't strong enough. So I ended up using it for weft. I warped with Silk City Kashmir - a merino, cashmere, silk yarn I got years ago. I have it in 3 colors and used the white to go with the white in the alpaca above.

 Here is the bit I wove this afternoon along with the warped loom.

 And a close-up of the weaving. It is going to be a stole - about 18x65". The loom is 20" wide so 18 is pretty close to the full width of the loom. To add some interest, I may weave a few stripes of leftover yarn when I run of the main yarn in the shuttle. Just to add some color to the plain stole. Let's see.

 I started a sweater for my husband last weekend. It is in Rowan Felted Tweed DK in a color called Midnight. It is a bit darker than the photo - almost black with tweedy bits. It is going to be a plain stockinette sweater with saddle shoulders, worked seamlessly per Elizabeth Zimmermann in Knitting without Tears. I started with a provisional cast-on because I only have 10 balls and am not sure if it will be enough. If I don't have enough, I can do the ribbing in a lighter blue or a very dark purple - which I have in stash. The idea is to bust the stash.

I have also been slowly spinning the Kraemer Sterling Silk and Silver roving. I had started this in China and spun the big ball you see in the photo. It was a full bobbin like the one next to it. I wound it off when I got here because I needed the WooLee Winder bobbins reamed out at Rhinebeck by Nathan Lee. I didn't want him to have to deal with the fiber on the bobbin. Since then I finished up the rest of that single and the other single and now I have 2 full bobbins and 2 partial bobbins worth. I will probably start plying this evening.

It is roving so I spun it long draw and hope to get a worsted weight yarn out of it. Let us see.

I am spending an hour or two spinning or now weaving after dinner. I found that if I sat in the family room and did something, I ended up munching on something even though I didn't need it. By going upstairs to the guest bedroom and doing something other than watch TV, or even be around the TV when it is on, I am not motivated to munch. It is a win-win. Good for my waistline and good for getting fiber-y things done. I watch spinning or weaving videos or listen to podcasts.

Last weekend, I organized my stash. Wow! I have a lot more fiber than I thought I did. I had a lot of partially filled boxes of yarn in my closet so they all got combined into large plastic tubs which have been put up high. I put yarns of the same type together and found quite a few that I can use for weaving. I was going to get rid of some of it but decided against it because the weaving will use up yarn faster than knitting. Plus I like all of it!

The fiber also went into plastic tubs but lives in the guest bedroom closet. Once that closet is cleaned out and decluttered, my yarn is going in there too. The good news is that I have less yarn than I thought I did. And a lot of it is fine yarn which is good for weaving.

I will try and get to posting about New Zealand during the week.

Repeat after me!

Do not do as I do.
Do not do as I do.

After I finished the triangle shawl, I decided to finish up the spinning project I had on the Tina. If you remember, I was making faux-rolags and spinning them. I had finished the first single and wasn't happy with the rolags so I tried a slightly different method for the second single.

I took the bobbin with the first single off and put it on the bobbin holder on the Tina. I then put an empty bobbin on and started spinning. I was doing long draw, focusing on the rolags and whether they were easier to draft or not. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the bobbin on the holder was slowly revolving....

Would you believe that the end of the single was caught in the center of the wheel and it was slowly winding off the bobbin and onto the axle of the wheel?

My phone was downstairs and my first instinct was to fix the problem. I let the single I was spinning go through the orifice so I wouldn't be removing twist from it and manually rotated the wheel to the left. I was spinning to the right and so this was the opposite direction. I slowly unwound the single and wound it onto the bobbin. After I was almost done, I thought about taking the photo. So you only see the very last bit on the center of the wheel in the pictures.

I was able to salvage almost all of it. This is what I lost

Whew!

So pay attention to where the end of your single is. It shouldn't be hanging off the bobbin, waiting to be caught in something. Fortunately, this is a pretty thick single so it held together. Also, the fiber is sticking to itself and while that made drafting tough, it helped in this situation.

The second round of faux-rolags worked a bit better. Where I had really predrafted it, it fed smoothly. The rest stuck together and required a little bit more forward draw type drafting to get it unstuck. But I finished spinning the second single last night and will be plying soon.

I didn't like spinning this at all. I may try faux rolags again but I think spinning from the fold is a lot less work and achieves the same result. 

Faux-rolag fail

I started spinning the faux-rolags I made the other day. I didn't do a very good job, or the fiber isn't right or it isn't all that easy to spin. I am able to spin them but it isn't easy. This is merino which is is crimpy and maybe doesn't draft as easily. I haven't spun a lot of merino so I can't dismiss that option.

It isn't drafting very easily. When I spun from rolags, the fiber drafts easily. This needs a little help from my leading hand. I am getting a nice soft single, but it isn't easy. I am pulling the rolags apart and really spinning from the fold.

It is going relatively fast. So I think I can finish the first single tonight and I will spend more time making the faux-rolags for the second single. I will draft out the fiber more and make smaller rolags with a thinner inner core.

More later.

Finished cotton skein

Just a quick update to my previous post... Here is the finished skein after boiling and drying

As usual, I have a quarter to show relative thickness of the yarn. I have been doing this with all my handspun so I have something to compare them with each other, if necessary.

First attempt at spinning cotton

 Since I won a supported trindle at the Tour de Fleece this year, I decided to learn to spin with it using cotton that I had acquired in various ways. It was all combed cotton top.

I started with the red skulls that I had won with the trindle. It was a lot of fun spinning with that.  In fact I spun with red skulls and a spider bowl on Halloween!

I initially spun only around 15-20 mins a day as it was tough getting the spindle to spin and draft at the same time. I did a lot of 'park and draft' type spinning. I spun the trindle to build up twist and then I would draft a bit and then spin it again.

Joining was tough in the beginning. I would end up throwing out bits of fiber when I joined as I just wasn't getting it all caught up right. That worked itself out as I got more proficient.

Over time, it got easier and I could draft and spin the trindle at the same time. I found the red skulls a little light as the cotton cop built up on the shaft.

 At Rhinebeck, I got some heavier disco balls, which helped a lot. The trindle spun slower but longer and that helped build up twist so I could draft out while it was spinning. I also found that sometimes, it was easier to just spin on my thigh rather than in the bowl. It depends on what you are wearing. It worked well on jeans but not so well on sweatpants.

 As the cops got built, I wound them off onto weaving bobbins. I used a shoe-box kate because it was easier than some of the other things I had around.

I ended up with 3 weaving bobbins worth of singles.

 The three weaving bobbins fit nicely on my new Will Taylor kate and I plied from the largest and one of the others first. After the smaller of the two ran out, I started the third. One lesson I learned was not to leave the cotton dangling while plying. I put a rubber band around the weaving bobbins so I wouldn't lose any twist. But I forgot about the single hanging there.

When I got back to plying later, I had to toss about 6-8" worth of singles before I had a strong single with enough twist in it. I made a bracelet with the last bit after the second bobbin ran out and finished plying as usual. I added a good bit of plying twist and there was a lot of twist in the singles.

 There is a decent amount of yarn from all this. It is essentially 'free' yarn as I paid for it as part of a class or a retreat. I thought I would just have a sample skein but I think there is enough to make something with it.

As you can see, the skein is skewing to the left, to the plying side, to show how much plying twist I put in. This is pre-finishing.

Finishing cotton seems to be a matter of many different opinions. The Intentional Spinner says that it should be finished similar to protein fibers. Spin Control says it should be boiled for 30 mins with washing soda. Stephanie Gaustad also says boil with washing soda in her Spinning Cotton video. I found boiling with baking soda and boiling with detergent as other recommendations on the web. Since I didn't have washing soda and I wasn't going to buy some for this skein, I just boiled it for 30 minutes without any additions.

I then cooled it immediately with cold water, squeezed out the water, snapped it between my hands and also thwacked it for good measure before hanging up to dry. The skein is straight now. Let's see how it feels when it is dry.

Overall, a successful experiment. I am very comfortable with the spindling technique, I liked spinning the cotton and while this yarn is a bit thick-and-thin, I definitely got more even at the end. So I can produce a nice yarn if I do this again.

I am now going to start some supported spindle projects with wool and see how that differs from cotton.

Finally, success without a twist

I started the cowl again. Yes, it had a twist. No, I cannot figure out what happened. But I don't care any more. I went back to some well-loved dpns. I was using a new set to start the other because they happened to be handy and I didn't like them with this yarn.

 There it is. Half done. I started on the size 4 ebony dpns above and just switched to the size 3 ones below. They are rosewood. Both have lovely points for lace. Not too sharp and not too blunt and they feel like heaven in my hands.

 A close up of the gorgeous yarn with the beads. The beads sparkle nicely in the variegated yarn.

 I also make some faux-rolags to play with on the wheel. This is Spinners Hill merino from last year's Rhinebeck. I made them following this method, which I have wanted to try for a while.

And a close-up. I've done half the merino for one single. I think I want a skinnier thing to roll it on. I used the roll from contact paper as I thought my rolling pin was too thick. Next time I will use my skinny rolling pin from India.

Un-plying

I just spent a couple of hours taking plying twist out of the last fiber I finished. It was just too tightly plied for my taste. I wanted a fluffy, lofty yarn and it was exactly the opposite. I spun it woolen to get that lofty, fluffy, springy yarn. So I wanted to fix it and get what I wanted. Interestingly, after I took out some of the plying twist, it took up more space on the bobbin!

 This is the picture of the yarn after the first plying, when it was too tight.

Now look at it after taking out some of the plying twist. It barely fit on the bobbin and is much more spongy.

 I finished my Tour de Fleece project also. The skein is finished and done.

I am not a big fan of this yarn but it actually looks better in the skein than it did on the bobbin or the spindle.

I also took a few pictures of the Girl Friday sweater after it was completed. And I started a new knitting project.

 I think the sweater is lovely, even though I say it myself. It really was hard on my hands though, more than anything else I've knitted lately.

 

 I am knitting a second Dancing Cranes stole for a gift. Same yarn as before, different color. It is an easy knit and looks great. The new one is purple, although it looks blue in this photo.

It has been a busy week as far as knitting and spinning are concerned. I have not done much the last couple of days as I had to have a vertically fractured tooth extracted. It was completely unplanned. I thought I was going to have a root canal and came back sans tooth. I am doing quite well now although the past 48 hours have been a bit painful.

Plied up a storm!

I finished spinning and plying the Coopworth/silk that I was working on. It is looking lovely.

I also thought I had finished plying the Targhee I started during the Tour de Fleece. But I hadn't. I have one spindle full left! big sigh 

I will have to wind it off and Andean ply it. At least the rest of it is still on the bobbin so I will have one skein. looking for the silver lining

Now off to plan more spinning. I also started knitting a new project but I haven't taken pictures of it yet. That will be for the next post.

Catchup on my own fibery doings

I know I've been chatty lately but I've had a lot to share! Think about that when I'm silent for a week or two. It all averages out in the end, doesn't it?

What I have not done is shared progress on the knitting and spinning front with my projects.

Spinning-wise, I finished spinning and plying the first set of singles from the Spring Fling bump. There is still a little on the second bobbin, which I have not finished because...

... I have two small bits left to spin. I had a bit more than half a pound of roving and I think the bobbins on the Tina don't hold more than 4 oz each. I will be spinning these onto two free bobbins and then finishing up the plying.

 On the knitting front, I finally finished the Girl Friday sweater. You only get a flat picture today because I washed it last night and it is still drying. I will take a picture on a person and post it later. It looks skinny and long because the lace pattern pulls in.

That's all, f-f-folks!

Making multi-colored yarn out of single colored fiber

We spent a half day making lots of multi-colored yarns from a pile of solid colored rovings. I am showing you some pictures of the samples Maggie showed us along with some of my experimentation.

First and simplest in concept is to hold multiple rovings together and spin them. Judith Mackenzie showed us an example of this in a retreat I attended last year. I will talk some more about that later as I experiment with that technique myself. But Maggie's ideas are simpler. You can hold the rovings together and spin as is - across the colors or you can predraft them together. Predrafting blends them a bit more as the colors thin out. You can also predraft more of one color to get more of it in the mix. These two pictures are of a sample knitted like this.

Another option, to create an ikat effect, is to plan the lengths of the colors in the yarn you want. Maggie had a knitted sample like this but I am showing a woven one. The warp was spun with longer lengths of the white with the other colors having shorter lengths. The weft was spun with very short bits of the other colors so they wouldn't pool on the shorter width of the scarf. One way to get really short bursts of color is to spin them over the fold. Maggie had a mosaic knit piece that looked as if it had been knitted with a Noro-like yarn. What she had done was spin that with solid colors spun from the fold so each color was a very short length in the final yarn. This made each part of the mosaic that showed have a different color in it. Very cool.

This next set of samples was to do a gradual change of color by spinning sections of solid color with transitions planned by holding the two colors together. The advantage of this, if you want to plan it out, is that you can spin longer lengths of color for the body of a sweater and shorter lengths for the sleeves so you can get the same width of the various colors in both sections. Also, for a triangular shawl, you can increase the lengths of each color segment to accommodate the shawl's getting wider from top to bottom.

If you want to spin for socks and want even stripes, you can measure out the length of each color and spin your singles in the same color sequence. The key here is rewinding the bobbins and starting to ply from the beginning so that the colors match up better and slight variations in the length will become color transitions.

Now, similar to Judith's technique, Maggie showed us two samples. One was spun across the web, worsted, with multiple colors. You hold them together and spin across the colors to get lengths of each color in the single. You can also spin woollen long draw by spinning one for a while and then another.
The sample below is a 3 ply spun this way, with more periwinkle than the other colors.

The sample below is a 2-ply spun with 1 color more than the other. It was spun long draw with more periwinkle than the other colors. 3-ply tends to blend the colors more than 2-ply.

Blurry pictures of the entire samples below. Sorry about the quality of the photographs. Maggie was showing them to us, talking about them and then passing them around. So I was listening and observing and photographing as they came around.

 I spun some singles in various ways but then I picked a bunch of colors and drum carded them together. Below you can see a sample skein I made by woollen spinning 3 different colored rovings and plying them together. When I ran out of one, I continued with just a 2-ply. You can see a bit of it where it is just brown and gold.

The drum carding was fun. This blends the colors more and gives you little heathered bits of color as you spin.

One side of the batt.

The other side of the batt.

I then spun a single, woollen long draw, from the batt. I plied that single with my other colored singles and even some worsted that we had been spinning when we were talking about worsted-spun yarn. So there are a lot of colors in this skein. The colors move from one to another with varying lengths based on what I was trying.

This was one of the most fun parts of the class. We played a lot with colors. I have some solid colored roving from Judith's class and I plan to play some more to practice these techniques. I hope this gives you ideas and inspires you to play with some of the fiber you have. You might not like a color by itself and you can spark it up or subdue it by mixing it in various ways with other colors. You could card them together, of course, but you don't need to.