Roving and Top: Gray and Blue

Maybe it is the return of warmer weather, but I have been on a spinning kick recently. Very little knitting getting done, but plenty of spinning. Along with the  project on my spindle that I showed you last week, I have also started an easy project on my Ashford wheel.

My newest project: thick merino. (The colors are totally off though)

Last year I bought some dyed merino top at Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. It was an incredibly good price, and it's one of those fibers that you have to use at least sometimes: super-duper soft and fluffy, great for garments. However, because it is so fine, it doesn't wear very well, or so I have heard.

The history of merino sheep is actually pretty neat. In the 18th and early 19th Centuries, all merinos were owned by the Spanish crown. To sell a sheep to anyone else was considered treason and the punishment was death. In the 19th Century, they gradually loosened the restrictions, and they are pretty ubiquitous today.

I haven't decided what I am going to do with this yarn yet, but it is going to be a thick two ply yarn, with one skein of blue and one of black.

Merino top from Delly's Delights Farm in Louisa, VA. This is closer to what the color actually looks like

Same as above, in black.

In other fiber news, I learned a useful skill.

Because I might be teaching more spinning in the future, I decided to get some ugly, cheap "learning" wool that I can give to students. I got two pounds of this:

4 oz. of "domestic gray wool" roving from The Woolery.

I didn't want white wool, because it is hard to see the twist, so I think this gray stuff is just about perfect. Has some neps (little bits of broken fiber) and is a bit dirty (with a very "sheepy" smell). But t is quite soft, and the color is nice, if boring.

The main question was how to store all of that wool. It came in bags, but just stuffed in there - recipe for tangles.

Some of it I wound into balls, just like I would do with yarn.

4 oz. roving ball (and Sandy, looking for attention)

But I had also seen roving braided, and wanted to try. It looks better than the ball, gets more air, and I think is a bit more compact.

The first thing to know about the braiding is that it isn't a brain, it is a crochet chain. That means that if you want to get the wool, you just have to tug, and it will come undone. The second thing to know is that I am pretty sure the other braids I have seen were only two ounces, because my braid was something like 6 feet long. It think I got the hang of it though.

What do you think?

"braid" of roving: closeup.

Playing with Color

I'm home sick today with a bit of a cold, so I figured I would update you on what I am working on. I haven't been in much of a knitting mood, but I have been spinning with my spindle like crazy.

I finished a second skein of that brown Navajo-Churro yarn. It is a tiny bit lighter than the first skein - oops!  Guess I should have sorted the blond wool into the rest more evenly. I will have to treat them like different dye lots, which will mean alternating rows when I knit them.

Besides that, though, I finally managed to finish spinning up the whole pound! That was the first wool I bought that I took all the way from washing to yarn, and I got through it. It only took me...(checks records)... two years. And I still haven't knit the undercoat into anything. Well, no one ever said that hand spinning was a speedy endeavor.

Well, as that was drying on the hanger, I also started a new project with some wool that I bought at the same time. Both are pre-cleaned locks. I am not sure of the breed for the colored wool, but the white was labeled as a lincoln crossbreed from Barnswallow Farms in Dewittville, NY (sorry, no link, she doesn't seem to have a website).

Oooooh. Pretty colors of wool.

Lincoln Crossbred locks

They are both extremely lustrous (that means shiny) and fine, and the locks are a good six inches long.

Individual locks

So, I am making a very fine, fluffy yarn from them. I am not doing much fiber processing, just picking the locks apart and spinning away. This is resulting in a lot of ends sticking out, kind of like a mohair yarn. Hopefully, though, since the wool is a bit less slippery, the "halo" won't grow too much as the fabric is worn. 

Fluffy singles on the spindle

I am also playing around with color. I have quite a bit less of the colored locks than the white, and the colors are a real mix. I could blend them together to get a pale pastel heathered yarn, probably lavender. But why hide that beautiful variety?

Instead, I am alternating locks. I spin 3 to 5 white locks, followed by a colored lock. The plan is for a three-ply yarn. I have no idea what it will look like when I ply, but I'm hoping for an interesting result!

Another view, after doing a lock of purple.

I'll keep you posted.

Teaching Spindling

Whelp, I have officially taught my very first class on spindling. I think it went well, though it was cut a bit short. I misread how long the class was going to be, and should have gotten to the spinning part faster.

The first part, though, was getting spindles for all of the kids. I had heard that you could make a good, cheap spindle from a dowel, hook, and wooden toy wheel. Unfortunately, the dowel and the hook were easy to find, the wheel I had a bit more trouble.

First, I bought wheels and dowels from Michaels, but I ordered off the internet without reading the sizes super-carefully. BIG mistake - the wheel was much too small, the dowel too big. Next, I attempted to remedy the mistake by going to a Michaels store near me and finding either a dowel that would fit the wheels I got, or a wheel that would fit my dowel. I found the first, and I found something that could kind of be a wheel-like thing for the second.

But the small wheel made a spindle that was too light to spin very well, and the wheel-like thing turned out to have a tapered hole, so it was useless. I finally gave up on Michaels and went to a specialty website, where I was able to get exactly what I wanted.

The three bears of spindle whirls

I decided on the 2 and 3/4 inch wheel, with the 3/8 inch hole. I got a 12 inch dowel to go with it. Although it is a bit heavy (1.6 oz) It spins fantastic - it just goes and goes without stopping. I got hooks from the local hardware store. It doesn't have a notch, which I know might be a problem later, but for now, it is working great. The wood of the shaft is even soft enough that I didn't need a drill, just some hard pushing and screwing.

Whirl, shaft, hook.

The finished spindle, next to the less  successful one made from the small wheel. The smaller dowel was too narrow to take a hook, so I carved one with a pen knife.

I also put some directions on the whirls, to help out. I put the weight of the spindle, as is traditional (so that you know how much the wool weighs, when you weigh it) but I also wrote which direction to spin for z-twist and which for s-twist.

My helpful tutorial.

Now that I had my supplies, I put together a whole kit of wool and string and glue to let the kids make their spindles and learn to spin. I picked some of my cheap, dyed wool top of unknown breed for the lesson, since it is easier to see the twist in dyed wool.

They also decorated their spindles with markers. I hope that this inspires them to keep using them, and they also came out beautifully.

Decorated spindles from the kids

Some of them decorated the shafts too.

I gave mine a bit of decoration too.

We didn't actually get to much spinning today, but I hope that they got some of the basics of how to spin the spindle and what makes yarn. We will pick it up again in two weeks, and I hope that they can do something neat with it.