Sheep to Shawl: Part III

Part I covered washing the fleece, Part II covered prepping it.

Today I am going to talk about spinning it.

While I am nowhere near done spinning the thousands of yards that I will need for this shawl, I am nearly finished with my first bobbin-full.

The current state of my bobbin. Notice the very fine white thread coming off the side: that is the single for the yarn.

I am spinning the finest singles I have ever spun on my Ashford Traditional wheel. This is one of the most popular wheels out there. Probably because it is simple to use and looks great.

My Ashford Traditional

A lot of the new style wheels are, in my humble opinion, really ugly. If they aren't ugly, they are above my price range. While I have no problem with functional wheels, I need to be able to not care that the thing is sitting in my living room all the time, and not need to hide it when guests are visiting.

This particular wheel was bought off of Craigslist, and the woman who sold it to me also threw in the fleece that I am working on (as well as a bunch of other fiber). It was a fairly large investment for my budget, but I have been spinning on it nearly every day, so I consider it money well spent.

One nice thing about having a fleece (or possibly three years of fleece: there is an awful lot of wool in those bags) is that you don't need to worry particularly about running out. So I did a half bobbin sample that allowed me to decide what I was looking for and to hone my skills at working with the flicked locks to make fine singles. I plyed my singles in two different ways.

Standard two-ply:

Two-ply practice skein

Close-up, as best as I could manage, with coin for size comparison

And chain ply:

Chain ply closeup, as best as I could manage.

The two ply yarn was had singles that were more variable than I would like, and I may or may not use them in the final shawl. The chain ply, because it was my first time doing it, was full of unevenness, and possibly unusable for large sections. I gave it to a dyer friend for experimenting with.

Books I have read recommend using two ply for lace, since it leaves the holes more open, so that is what I will be doing for the final project. But it was good to get a chance to practice chain plying: I have gradient top, and the technique will preserve the color progression.

Gradient top, and a nice change from all this white.

That is all for now. It may be a while before I talk about this project again: I have a long way to go before I get to the next step!

Part IV can be found here.

Spinning Lesson

Last week, I had my first real spinning lesson!

Now, you may be wondering: why pay for a spinning lesson when you spin all the time?

The answer is that teaching yourself is great, but at some point, you need some sort of feedback. Am I holding the wool too tight? Is the way I do it ok? Are my hands right?

There are, of course, lots of ways to spin (and knit). Everyone tends to find their own comfortable positioning and movements. For instance, I use my pinky a lot in controlling the movement of my knitting needles, because it makes sense to me.

But I have taught knitting to people who were making things a lot harder than they had to be with their hand positions. Many beginners (and not-so beginners) grip the needles so hard that they have less control. Sometimes, this is because they are holding the needles too far from the tips, which makes it harder for them to knit the way they want to. In an in-person lesson, I can see these small issues and make suggestions, until the person finds a new, better comfortable position for herself.

This is what I was hoping for - someone to look and say: you are doing this wrong (or right). Here is something small you can do to make your life easier.

So I went to my local fiber arts guild website and found a teacher (relatively) nearby. She was offering lessons for not-so-beginners: come and spin for two hours, bring your wheel or borrow one, and there will be an instructor to help you out and answer questions. Just what I was looking for.

So I drove up and took my secondary wheel.

View from the top, with flyer

View from the back of the wheel, with included cat butt

This wheel has never worked right. I bought it for cheap off of Craigslist. I oiled it up, and I got it spinning, but it broke in the spring. The problem with buying unbranded, vintage spinning wheels is that there are no spare parts, and you have to fix the problems yourself. I thought I had gotten in working (I oiled it, glued the crack in the foot pedal, and tightened the wheel's grip on the shaft) but when I took it to the farm, it just would not cooperate. The wheel would move, but only reluctantly. (I have since figured out what was wrong, but it took me awhile)

So I worked on a borrowed Ashford Traditional wheel. This is what I mostly use at home, so it was familiar. The lesson came with 4 oz. of roving, so I picked out a color that I liked in Blue Face Leicester wool roving, since everyone says it is a dream to spin.

BFL roving

I made a "novelty yarn" in those two hours.

Novelty yarn, in this context, means I tried lots of different techniques, including both short- and long-draw, drafting from the fold, and chain plying. I might make a weird hat out of all these funky yarns that I am making.

I finished up with a some leftover single, so my teacher used a ball winder to make a center-pull ball. I generally hate them for knitting, but I haven't tried them for spinning. But that is for another day.

Center pull ball, ready to make another "art" yarn

Pot Holders

So, I have made one foray into the world of design: a set of four pot holders.

I actually made the patterns for them while I was on my honeymoon in the Caribbean.

I had been playing around with double knitting. This is a technique where you knit two layers of fabric at the same time, alternating stitches. By switching the front and back colors, you can make a seamless pattern that is completely reversible (unlike, say, intarsia). This was around the same time that I was making reversible hats.

The double knitting technique is great for potholders, so there are hundreds of designs, because it is reversible, and also makes a thick fabric so you don't burn your fingers.

I decided to make, just for myself, a set for the four seasons. Winter would be a snowflake. Summer, a sun. Spring would be a leaf and bud, while autumn would be a pumpkin. I later changed the stem to make the pumpkin an apple on the back side, since I made it in red and orange, and a red pumpkin didn't make sense to me.

Darker side (with pumpkin)

Lighter side (with apple)

I could have used the traditional graph paper, but I didn't have any with me. So I downloaded a program called MacStitch. It is mostly designed for needlepoint (it can convert pictures into patterns, for instance) but it has knitting pattern capability as well. The best feature is that you can draw your pattern, and it will resize it to compensate for the fact that knitting stitches are rectangular, not square.

I was so pleased with how it came out that I decided to share my pattern on Ravelry. I didn't do all those things you are supposed to do, like have people test-knit it. I figured, since the pattern was free, people would get what they paid for. Of course, if they pointed out a problem, I would fix it, but I was not going to spend my time knitting it again.

So, what do you think?

Four Hats

Hats are a great, quick project. They are more interesting than scarfs, and more versatile than gloves.

I love wearing hats, and I love making hats, so let's look at some hats I've made over the years.

Let's start with some of my favorites: two sun hats I made in college.

The first hat was the Picture Hat from the book "A Gathering of Lace". The second was the same hat, but I modified it by adding the pattern from the Spiral Shawl in the same book. The hardest part of the pattern was finding a good starch to keep it from being floppy. The first hat, I used corn starch. The second, I used a glue-like stiffener from the craft store. These are definitely the fanciest hats I have ever made, though they are made with a very simple cotton yarn.

Moving on to warmer things...

Sorry for the poor pictures, but I no longer have access to the project in question.

For a summer in college, I worked as a telemarketer. Of course, I knitted the whole time. One of my fellow employees seemed really fascinated by the idea that I could design him any hat that he wanted, and he asked for one that was red and blue and said "Boston" and had his lucky number on the back. He bought the yarn (there was a LYS down the street), and I made him a simple rolled-brim hat. I got to practice my intarsia, he got a custom hat.

One more for today (although looking through, I have made a lot of hats. This may be a recurring post).

This is another hat that has sadly disappeared into the ether. I went through a phase where I was making hats that were reversible, and looked completely different on one side than the other. This one was done by simply making two hats without bottom brims. Both were started using a provisional cast-on. Then I removed the waste yarn, and finished with a brim for both.

The spiral pattern on the gray hat was done with duplicate stitch, so there was no intarsia involved.

That is all for today. More hats will be appearing in the future, I am sure.

Conservation Breeds

One of the things that drew me to spinning was the connection to our common past. Knitting feels "modern" to me, since yarn is available in lots of places. Spinning though, especially on the drop spindle, feels more ancient, more basic.

Because of this, I have been attracted to breed-specific wool for my spinning. It feels more authentic if I know that it is border leicester wool that I am spinning, and not generic "wool". Plus, breed specific yarns are hard to come by, and it is one of the advantages of hand spinning that I can pick for breed characteristics.

I am particularly attracted to the conservation breeds. Mechanization made sheep with non-white wool obsolete. It made sheep with variable wool obsolete. It made dual-coated sheep obsolete. Mechanization required standardized sheep.

But as a handspinner, I love wool that is different colors. Dual-coated sheep are interesting. There is pleasure in exploring the unique characteristics of a breed and making yarn that works.

A few years ago, I bought my first unwashed wool (by accident). I saw that the festival had wool from a "navajo churro" sheep, and it was an interesting color and texture. At the time, I didn't know anything about the wool, but was interested in exploring. I bought some "jacob" roving at the same time.

Dark jacob wool roving

Lighter jacob wool roving

1 lb unwashed navajo churro wool

After this, I went out and bought several excellent books on different types of wool, to figure out what the heck I was doing.

I discovered several interesting things about navajo churro wool.

1. It is generally considered ideal for weaving.
2. It is dual coated, so it is a pain to deal with.
3. The breed almost disappeared, but some enterprising people revived the breed starting in the 1980s.
4. The wool I had gotten had very short locks, so was not going to be very drapey.
5. It is generally considered an extremely odd wool to work with. I could tell that my locks had almost no crimp (waviness) and kind of looked like human hair.

The triangle shape indicates a dual coat

I decided to spend the time to separate out the locks into the outer and inner coat, although apparently most people don't bother when working with this type of wool. I took off the outer coat by holding the wool at the base in one hand and pulling off the tips with the other. The bleached tips helped. I then combed the wool. It still looked remarkably like human hair.

A bit of combed wool

It felt kind of rough. I had been planning to make socks out of it, since the outer coat is thicker and more durable. I was starting to get worried that it would be too rough for socks. Still, I spun it up on my drop spindle.

One single on the spindle

By the time I was plying it, I knew that it was very rough. I still hoped that a hot bath would loosen it up and make it softer.

After finishing

Nope! Still super rough. I decided to stop fighting against the inevitable and just make a non-clothing item.

Trivets

The trivets I ended up making were perfect for the wool. The original pattern was closed in the middle, but I made an extra wedge, because I liked how it looked this way. I am hoping to get three of them out of the yarn, but I might run out.

So, in conclusion, the lesson for the day is...
Conservation breeds are great, but pay attention to what they are saying they are for, and don't try to make next-to-the-skin garments from anything that wasn't bred for it.

Later: what do I do with the under coat?

One Thing Leads to Another

Knitting is mainstream, spinning is unusual.

You can find usable yarn in any craft store, and yarn shops with high-quality yarn in every city.

As a knitter, there was little push to buy new tools and try new crafts. Sure, I would go out and buy a different size of needle, and I bought a set of t-pins when I started doing lace. One project required that I do a crochet border. But I never felt deprived because I didn't have a spindle. Fantastic yarn was all around.

It helped that I usually bought plain-colored, worsted-weight wool yarn (now that I spin, I try to avoid buying yarn, since it is piling up so fast). That stuff is versatile and interchangeable. With it, I can make almost anything I want to wear or use, and if there is something else, I can buy a batch of yarn special.

But now that I spin...

At first, I thought that I would just buy some roving and spin away. All I would need is a drop spindle. But I went to my local festival and fell in love with some dyed locks.

Dyed locks

Suddenly, I needed hand carders if I wanted to work with them. And then I read that the best way to get out the little bits of grass in the locks was to get a flick carder. And then it turned out that the staple-length was too long for carders to work easily, so I needed combs.

Suddenly, my tools were multiplying like never before. And that is even before I accidentally bought a pound of unwashed wool.

And it wasn't just my tools that were multiplying. All I wanted was to spin yarn, and I found myself carding, combing, flicking, and washing.

I think it is because of where I got my roving. Because it is not carried in most craft stores, I had to go to the festival. And while there was roving (and top) there was also more soft and beautiful wool that was just waiting to be turned in to yarn with just a little more work.

I am resisting the final step, however. I had been very careful to try to always get colored wool, either dyed or naturally some other color.

And then I was given pounds and pounds of white wool. I am making a shawl, but what am I going to do with the rest?

I don't think I can avoid dyeing forever, but we will see.

Beach Skirt

So, in honor of the fact that I have been at the beach all weekend, I am going to talk about my beachy project.

The beach

I have been working on making a skirt for a bit over a year as my "don't have to think about" project. It is great to have one of these. A simple pattern that can be done in the dark, in class, or in 5 minute chunks.

I am often ambitious. I want to make something interesting. Interesting is good. But those beautiful lace shawls with 24 stitch repeats don't lend themselves to being worked on in class, which is when I have the most time to knit.

This skirt, however, is so easy that I had to spice it up a little bit.

First of all, I am using Brooks Farm Willow yarn, a blend of wool and bamboo. I thought it would be a stiff yarn, so I am using a pattern written for linen. Except that it is not: it is some of the bounciest, stretchiest yarn I have ever used. Hopefully the skirt will hug my curves, there is no way to know how it fits until I finish it.

Most of the yarn for the project

The other problem with the yarn is that it seems to have faded. i have no idea how this happened, since it was not put in the sun. I guess we will see if it continues to fade. I might end up with a pale blue skirt instead of a bright blue one!

The pattern for the project is from DROPS design. Of course I found this pattern on Ravelry, and of course I modified it heavily.

First of all, the skirt was all off-white. That is great, but I had two colors of yarn, both of which are blue. I decided to make the flounce in light blue, and the rest of the skirt in dark blue.

Second, the pattern calls for hundreds of rows of stockinette. That was just too simple for my tastes. So, I looked in my stitch dictionaries, and found a nice diagonal herringbone pattern that would give the skirt a bit of a twist.

Current state of the skirt on the needles

The pattern is very simple:
R1: Knit 3, pull yarn to front, slip 3, repeat around
R2: Knit (since this is in the round)
Repeat rows 1 and 2, advancing one stitch.

Here is a close-up:

I haven't decided how I am going to do the waist yet, whether just an elastic or with a drawstring, but I don't need to decide that in advance. I am more worried about the fact that the yarn seems to be going very quickly, and I might not have enough to make it a good length. I may need to add another color on top of the darker blue.

I do think that I will embroider some fluffy white yarn to some of the edge, to make it look more like breaking waves, but not until I know how long it is.

More to come, I will keep you all posted.