Art & Books: August 2009 Archives

I brought home a couple of locks from the fleece my fiber buddy and I are splitting, and today I washed up one of them as a reference.

That's washed on top, of course. Both locks were about the same size; this stuff poofs up very nicely in the bath. And the lanolin is very light, which is welcome. I just gave it one go-round in the soapy water (well, I actually use shampoo, because if it works on my hair it should be OK for fleece), and all the grease was pretty much gone.

The fleece is a cormo, entry #1193 from Sue Reuser, who as far as I can tell pretty much doesn't know how to produce a bad fleece. I'm thinking I may buy direct next year, if I have any need of fleece at all (which seems a little unlikely given how much fiber I have now and the fact that I'm going to two more fiber events before the end of the year).

Technorati Tags: crafts, fiber, wool

So, finished my fourth-ever skein of yarn today. The Ashland Bay merino/silk was a really nice yarn to spin, but I have to say I kind of wish I'd plied it on the wheel; the spindle was a bit tedious.

Anyway, I did finally finish plying it last night, right at the very beginning of a dinner party. It was pretty heavy, the yarn plus spindle weighing in at a total of 6.0 oz.

This morning I wound it off onto my swift to make a nice big skein, then washed the skein in hot water, whacked it against the wall a couple of time to help distribute the twist through the yarn and bloom it up a bit, then threw it into the dryer (on the sweater rack) to dry off.

Then I went outside to turn the compost and play with the chickens, so I would not constantly be checking the dryer to see how it was going.

I came inside to a nice, even, fluffy yarn. It's about 24 wpi, which is somewhere in between laceweight and light fingering -- the yarn itself varies in thickness and it's hard to say exactly what weight it came out to. I have 555 yards (from 4 oz), which is enough to make a decent sized scarf thing; I'm thinking something lacy and large.

And because I just can't get enough, here it is with my novelty dime:

Technorati Tags: crafts, spinning, yarn

Sunday night I finished spinning the singles of this merino/silk I've been working on, at long last. Then I spent yesterday evening making a plying ball. Basically, I put the two full spindles into coffee cups and wound the singles off them and onto a firm ball. I didn't use a core -- some people seem to find it easier to start with a rubber ball or something, but I didn't have one that was not all spitty from dogs -- so I just started with a little bundle of fiber as I would for a non-center-pull yarn ball.

I did find that the newer method of wrapping the copp works better: you can see that the completely horizontal method results in collapses (and resulting tangles). This is especially true with slippery fiber like silk.

I had a ridiculous mismatch in the amount of yarn on the two spindles, in no small part because my spinning got quite a bit thinner as I went. But also because I just put more yarn on the second spindle, I don't know how (I thought I measured it out evenly). So I tried using a plying bracelet to handle the leftover yarn, but there was really too much for it to be workable, and I lost quite a bit to tangles and chaos. In the end I had this lovely plying ball all ready to be plied from:

That's a ball of two plies running alongside each other, so all I do is feed off the ball and onto the spindle. I could have plied this on the wheel, but after doing the singles on the spindle at such length, I wanted to keep it all on the spindle.

I've even sort-of decided what I'd like to knit with it, but I'm not sure I'll have enough.

Technorati Tags: crafts, spinning, yarn

Since last weekend I've been haphazardly knitting at a Switchback Cowl (pattern by Kira Dulaney, who gave me a copy as a thanks for a ride home from spinning group last Friday).

I've gotten 3 12-row repeats done, mostly going so slowly because for whatever reason, this week has not been conducive to sitting and doing anything, much less knitting. I'm really liking the pattern, how simple it is (easy to keep track of and hard to lose your place) and how complex it is (not boring). I'm also using up some of my homespun yarn, the 200-someodd yard ball of Dorset left over from a class that I'd been looking for a pattern for. When Kira showed her sample of the cowl at spinning group (4th Fridays in Berkeley at knit-one-one), I knew I'd found the right thing to use it on.

There's one catch: I like the natural Dorset colour just fine, but it's not a colour I usually wear next to my face. I think I'll see how it comes out when I finish and block it, and maybe I'll end up overdyeing it with some reddish shade.

Technorati Tags: crafts, knitting, lace, yarn