Answering Some Questions
Today is a day of rest Chez Keyboard Biologist as I take care of some other things going on in my life. But since I got a couple of questions from yesterday's post, I thought I would try to answer them here for everyone. Bear in mind, I'm not an expert, just an experimental beginner. Your mileage may vary, as the saying goes.
Okay, so I don't spin, but I enjoyed seeing the process step-by-step. How long does that all take, start to finish?
Preparing the fiber doesn't take very long. Maybe half an hour for this amount if you really get into therapeutic fiber massage. More takes longer. I'm now coming around to the idea that it's good to prepare the entire batch of fiber that you intend to spin. This way you can make sure that you know it's features well and you can control some of how it turns out by the order in which you choose to spin certain pieces. Sometimes hand-dyed rovings hide little secrets -- regions of intense color that only show up in one part or in one half. Changes in "dye lot" or other things like that. Best to know the whole story up front so that you can blend and control as appropriate.
The spinning part takes longer. It probably takes me 4 or so to spin the single (I am not exactly sure about this, as I don't really pay a lot of attention to the clock. Spinning really takes my mind away from things like clock watching and email inbox monitoring. If I was doing this on a wheel, it would take much less time.
It takes 2-4 hours for me to wind, wash and set the single (including drying time). Plying is much faster. I'd say it probably takes a little over an hour for me to ply my single into a two ply. Then another 2-4 hours for me to wind, wash and set the two-ply.
This means that my total time invested is somewhere in the neigborhood of 8 hours. Bear in mind, all this is for a lace weight single and a fingering weight/sock weight two-ply. Bulkier singles will take less time to spin and ply because there is less yardage. Doing this on a wheel would cut down the spinning time significantly. But I am just doing the spinning for me at this point, so I don't mind putting in the time.
Sue asked:
...have you tried to duplicate a coloway yet..to make more of a color of yarn to make something larger like a shawl?
Not yet, but that is certainly in the plan. Right now I'm wishing I'd dyed several ounces of this color way up. But the goal of this part of the dyeing adventure was to take good enough notes to start to create reproduceable colorways, in the event that I came up with a winner. I know which dyes I used and what concentrations and have a reasonable sense for the color intervals (the other reason why I take a lot of pictures). Certainly I'd love to have a shawl or nice accent scarf out of the stuff.
And a number of folks asked what I might do with this stuff. Well, I want to go with a water or wave theme. I've been digging through my Barbara Walker books looking for something evokative of waves. Perhaps a small scarf? I've also been thinking about a small bag or container that could hold herbs or pot pourri. I love lavender and having near my pillow when I go to sleep.
I don't see the message for Typekey authorization in your comments box.
There's a lavendar eyepillow pattern on interweaves site. I think it would be quite lovely in a hand spun.
Wow! Thanks for answering my question in such a cool (and public) way. I'm impressed that you can get that much yarn done in such a short time. I have no plans to learn to spin myself but do you think the fact that I'm asking questions about spinning is dangerous? I'm not going to start spinning. I swear.
I'm STILL trying to figure out this spinning thing. The fact that I can't spin well is partially due to the fact that I haven't practiced much. And I REALLY need to find somebody in my area to show me.
Hi there. I have been intrigued by the idea of hand dyeing and spinning solid-color sock weight yarns, for several reasons. First, I think it sounds neat to begin with, but also because I find it difficult to get the colors I want at most yarn stores, so being able to control the color and quantity of my yarn sounds like my thing.
Unfortunately, I'm not really sure where to start or what the initial start-up cost would be... or if I'm even going to like it all that much. I'm going up to Wisconsin for the Sheep and Wool Festival this weekend, so perhaps that will help.
By the way, it's nice to meet other Chicago-area knitters. I live in Oak Park.