Recently in Spinning Category
This is the final result of my Bonkers Superwash Merino in "Limeola" spinning project. Two plies of tightly spun singles happily twisted together and enjoying a little time in the sun after a bath and a rest. Now they are soft, squishy and delicious! I've got just about 4 ounces and just about 400 yards. Just perfect for a pair of socks.
A happy Limeola rainbow, or perhaps water fall. This shot made me think of water flowing over mossy rocks, and captures well the true colors in the skein.Finishing up this yarn makes me really feel bad about how little use my wheel is getting right now. I love to spin, but time is short, and the time it takes to complete even a small project would take me several days worth of nap times. I should have done more spinning when a certain small person was less mobile! Ah well. I have no doubt that my wheel will wait patiently until I can eke out a bit more spinning time.
Anyway, when she finally settled in for an afternoon nap, the sun was out and it was warm enough to sit out on my balcony. I had been thinking about knitting, but then I noticed these two lonely bobbins sitting on my bookcase -- I finished those up in September with the idea that the plied product would be a gift for a friend. I haven't had a chance to use my wheel since! Remembering how centered spinning always makes me feel, I grabbed my wheel and my lazy kate and those two bobbins and sat out in the sunshine for an hour and a half and plied those singles into a real live 2 ply sock yarn.
I know there is good luck and something special about this sock yarn because when I finished plying, the singles ran out at the exact same time -- that's never happened to me before, in spite of all the weighing out of fiber that I do. I'm looking forward to hanking it up on my niddy-noddy and giving it a good bath so that it can relax and I can feel the real final product -- both the colors (there's a lot of great green hiding a layer under) and the hand. Since these singles have been sitting for so long, the twist was completely dormant. It made for easy plying, but it also means that the final yarn is going to be different than what I see on my bobbin. Working with my wheel was excellent therapy for the afternoon. It didn't chase all the weird energy away, but it did help me get a little of my mommy equillibrium back.
With the help of my daugher (she sleeps in her Baby Bjorn when I spin) I have gotten the second bobbin of my Bonkers Limeola superwash merino spun. The roving that I had shifted from the very limey green seen in the first bobbin to the pale aqua of the second bobbin, so I spun the fiber for the second bobbin so that I could demonstrate the extremes. I think the colors go well together, when next to each other, but I am curious as to what the resulting yarn will look like when plying occurs.
Plying, unfortunately, may take me a little while to get to. Not only is it hard to come by the two straight hours or so I will need to ply and deal with the final yarn, but I only have 6 bobbins for my WooLee Winder and now all 6 of them are in use... so I may have to work on some other things to free a few of them up before I can ply (yes, I do have the plying head, but for sock yarn like this, I like the results I get from my WW bobbins a bit better).
Which means I have to get back to working on that big bale o' moorit CVM....
Buying a little fiber at the Michigan Fiber Festival does seem to have got my spinning pump primed again. One morning, while Z was sleeping, I pulled my spinning wheel into my office and pulled out the Limeola superwash merino that I purchased. As it turns out, spinning is a very nice, relaxing thing to do while keeping an eye on a sleeping baby. It didn't take me too many nap sessions to turn this first 2 ounces from roving into single.
When I started spinning this yarn, I didn't have a specific vision for it. It's a superwash merino, so I had decided that I would turn it into a 2 ply sock yarn, similar to what I have done before with the same kind of fiber, and then I'd make some socks to commemorate the end of the summer or something like that. As I was spinning, though, I got the distinct feeling that I was not the final destination for whatever would come out of this yarn. I was the one putting the twist into the fiber, the one who would turn a pair of singles into a two-ply yarn, but I wasn't the one who was going to take this yarn to the next level. I have an inkling of this project's final destination, but no idea of it's final incarnation.
Sometimes it's interesting how fiber talks to you when you're working with it.
Apparently, when it comes to my spinning, I lack a certain amount of resolution. Especially when faced with the prospect of experimenting with some special fiber. What you see above is clearly not a skein of the CVM that I am supposed to be working on.
You see, on Sunday night, I decided that no harm would be done if I pulled out my Franquemont Fibers "Heartbreaker" and just weighed it. You know, so that I would know how much I had to deal with. But then it went a bit farther. I decided that, since I wanted to create striping intervals of my own design, that it would be good to know just how much of each color I had. So I opened up the little batt-buns and separated out the colors and weighed them. Then I got a bit carried away. I decided that I would "sample" a little bit, just to see what the superwash/silk/nylon blend spun up like, since firestar nylon is a new fiber to me. And then I realized that if I was going to spin just a bit, I might as well think about the color progression. How to make stripes that would knit up well in a pair of socks? And then suddenly I was separating the colors from one of those little batts into multiple small bits in a particular order and telling myself that one ounce of fiber really wouldn't take all that long to spin.
Which did, of course, turn out to be true. I can spin an ounce of fiber in about 3 hours. Especially when it is as well prepared as this fiber. No pre-drafting necessary on this stuff. It just slipped effortlessly through my fingers and into a single.
My goal with this fiber was to try to create two singles with similar color intervals, that, when plied, wouldn't barberpole very much. I've spun enough sock yarn now that I am pretty consistent within a particular range. So I wasn't too worried about my ability to get similar lengths of single out of equal weights of fiber. What I was concerned about was getting the equal weights of fiber. My scale, while okay for amounts above 5-10 g or so, doesn't do very well in the 1 gram range that I needed. So in the end, I decided that I would just have to wing it and use my eyeballs to "measure".
My results were mixed. On one hand, in most cases I did get the color bands that were supposed to over lap to over lap. And I did get pretty equal amounts of single on each of the two bobbins. On the other hand, I am pretty sure I ended up with a good deal more barberpoling than solid region once I got past the halfway point. I did contemplate breaking the singles and adjusting, but the nylon added some tensile strength that made this stuff harder to break and join easily. So after trying that once, I gave up and just spun my way on through.
Although the final result is not as close to what I initially envisions as I would like, it's hard to be disappointed in these colors, or in the resulting yarn after plying. I will tell you that this yarn is somewhat overplied (i.e. not balanced) and I will probably have to run it back through my wheel and remove some of the twist (or maybe not... it is for socks after all, and I don't think it's unbalanced enough to have a sever bias in a garment knitteed in the round).
From the 31 g that I spun, I ended up with 110 yards of 2 ply yarn -- pretty respectable, I think. Since this was about a quarter of what I ordered, I should have plenty of yarn for a pair of socks when the project is finished. When I soaked the yarn after plying it gave off no dye whatsoever, and it has a nice soft hand now that it is dry and skeined.
The nylon didn't turn out to be a problem to spin, but I did notice that the fiber was a little rougher on my fingers than straight wool or wool silk blends have been in the past. I can only assume that this is due to the nylon being a bit more durable than my skin. But this is sort of a minor quibble when I think about the added durability that will be present in the final yarn and knitted product. And it in no way detracts from how nice this fiber was to spin or how nice it will feel when worn in a sock.
I am not sure how I am going to handle the next three batts. A part of me would like to find a more precise weighing device, but given that I have just made another rather large purchase (more about that on Friday) I am not really prepared to invest in an expensive gram-sensitive balance at the moment. So, more than likely, I will end up using the eyeball method again. Any suggestions out there from anyone else who has tried this sort of thing?
While I've been busy working on log cabins squares and my quilting project, my Dad's been busy working on his spinning technique. Dad's mostly been working with undyed fibers and has played with blue faced leceister and corriedale. When he visited me a couple of weekends ago we headed up to see Toni Neil at the Fold so that he could talk about some of his current woodworking projects and get some advice about tools that spinners and knitters like to use. While we were there, he also got a chance to try out a couple of spinning wheels and got a few pointers from Toni on technique.
Just like me when I started spinning, Dad is working on trying to create consistent singles. And every batch of fiber he spins just gets more and more consistent. Since he wants to play with his own lazy kate design, he's been trying out plying. And his results are really beaultiful.
I haven't seen the yarn in person, but you can just tell from the picture that that natural colored yarn is just beautiful and squishable. One thing that makes my spinning very different from my Dad's efforts is that his singles tend to be wider in diameter than mine are, so he ends up with very different final yarns. I can't wait to see this yarn in person. And I can think of a number of projects that would be lovely for the yarn.
The blue singles are on bobbins that Dad made himself for his Ashford Traditional wheel. Lately Dad's been experimenting with bobbin construction and balance and he's been happy with the results. Nothing like getting a woodworking engineer guy involved with spinning! I'm always looking foward to seeing where he's going to go next.
Given my current fascination with knee socks, log cabin squares and fingerless mitts, I haven't gotten very much spinning done. But I have started a new spinning project. Remember this fiber? Lovely hand -dyed Romney roving from Fleecemakers. I'd never spun Romney before, but I've read the blogs of plenty of people who have nice things to say about it. This stuff is plenty soft, and the colors are deep and rich so I thought I'd try spinning up a bit to see what it wanted to do.
So far, the single I am spinning is considerably thicker than what I "normally" spin. I suspect this is because the fiber is a bit longer staple, but I think it also had to do with my attempt to get bits of all the colors blended into most areas so that I could avoid that whole stripey yarn thing. It may sound kind of funny, but I'm rather excited about this single, not so much because of the great color and soft hand of the fiber, but because I seem to have gotten some place where I am making more decisions about what the diameter of my single is going to be like. I think if I were to turn this into a two-ply, I'd get something closer to worsted weight rather than the something on the light end of DK weight, which is my "normal" result.
Now that I've finished up that pair of knee socks (more on that tomorrow when I can take some pictures during the daylight) and while I'm still thinking about designs for mitts, I suspect I'll put a bit more effort back into spinning. After all, I still have a whole lot of moorit CVM waiting to become yarn as well!
This picture is a repeat from my trip to the Michigan Fiber Festival last August. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only image I have of the 4 ounces of Wool, Angora and Silk roving that I bought from Jane Purcell (sadly websiteless, because her color combos are incredibly vivid and engaging). Those of you who know me in person probably know why I was drawn to this roving: the vivid color in that blue/green range that I just can't seem to have enough of. Unlike many rovings I'd purchased previously, this roving had also been blended so that the colors ran vertically through the roving instead of horizontally. And I was curious as to what kind of final effect that would create. Once I picked up the roving, it was hard not to pick up several more. To be honest, I now wish I'd given in to temptation. The wool/angora/silk combo is pleasantly soft and lofty and 4 ounces only gives you so many options.
When I started spinning, I was thinking something in the neighborhood of a 2 ply sport-to-DK weight yarn. I have to be honest, though, I really haven't gotten to the point in my spinning where I'm sophisticated enough to sample and work towards the yarn I envision. Mostly, I just start spinning a single and spin it where it "feels" right. Probably once I have become a more accomplished spinner, I'll push my fiber around more. But for now, I'm content to let the fiber lead.
The result of my efforts is this skein -- about 300 yards of tweedy happiness. It's about 14 WPI, which puts it in the light DK range. I wish that my camera could handle this saturated teal well -- all the pictures I took had a much bluer cast than is true to life.
Part of letting this fiber do what it wanted to do was to let the lighter green areas be a little slubby. I'm not sure, but if I had to guess, I'd say the light green fiber is probably mostly silk, given the way it behaves. Because there were little slubs in the fiber, I just let a lot of those come along as they wanted to. Between that and the general distribution of the light green and just a touch of midnight blue throughout the teal fiber, the result is a yarn with a lot of depth and dimensionality to go along with a very tweedy disposition. Something that appeals to me a great deal and tells me a lot about the kinds of rovings I should be looking for in the future. This is one of the first yarns that I have spun (besides the moorit CVM) where I really feel that I could make an actual garment out of this.
But, of course, 300 yards doesn't get me very far along the road to a garment. But I am thinking it might make a absolutely lovely pair of fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm while I use the computer -- now that the winter weather we expect to be present in January in Chicago finally seems to have come home to roost!
After talking about spinning up John's "Boyfriend" sock yarn, a couple of folks asked me how I "finish" my yarn. Finishing involves all the things done to the yarn after it's plied. My finishing regimen is relatively simple and has been derived from information from other spinners and bloggers. But it works for me. Rather than just typing out my "recipe" I thought I would illustrate the process with some pictures. In this case, I'm working with some "Sock Hop" sock yarn from Crown Mountain Farms. Since I'm planning to make knee socks fromt his and my Sloopy remnants, I wanted to make sure there were no differences in how my yarn and the CMF yarn was processed following spinning. And really, this process can be used for any commercial yarn when you aren't so sure about how it's been treated or handled.
If your yarn is already in a skein, then you can skip this step. Otherwise, I niddy noddy or a reel are handy tools for converting a ball into a more manageable skein.
Tangled yarn more or less sucks. I cut 4 ties to bind around the yarn in four places (you might choose more if your yarn is particularly slippery). In general, I prefer to make my ties out of yarn that is unlikely to bleed color, but the content of the ties doesn't reall matter. In this case I used white Plymouth Galway, but I've used other things as well.
I use figure 8 ties in four places that are relatively evenly distributed across the hank to prevent tangles. I try to avoid tying things up too tightly so that I don't have an area where the yarn is compressed or limited by the ties. I also always do this while my yarn is on the niddy noddy. I think it's just easier that way.
Generally, I do my soak in warm water. I have never measured my preferred temperature, but it shouldn't be uncomfortable to put your hand in, and except in special circumstances I never use cold water (note: this is just me... your mileage may vary and you should always take your fiber and how it has been dyed into consideration when you pick water temperatures... if in doubt, cooler is better). Just a pleasant warm bath. I add a little Eucalan for aromaticity and to help clean the yarn if it needs it. I also think Eucalan and other no-rinse wool-washes make life a lot easier since you don't have to spend a lot of time rinsing. And then I take the yarn off the niddy noddy and submerge it in the bath. I let it soak for 20-30 minutes at least so that it can relax in the warm sudsy water.
After draining off the water, I press the yarn against the side of the sink to help remove as much water as I can. Depending on the fiber content of your yarn, you can be more or less aggressive about this. Since this is superwash, I could pick it up and wring it and agitate it without worrying about felting, but other yarns require more care. Always err on the side of being gentle if you think felting could be an issue. The idea is just to make the drying process easier and shorter by getting out as much water as you can here.
If a lot of color has bled out of the yarn during the soak, I will rinse several times in cool water until the color exhaust subsides, but otherwise I don't do any rinsing at all.
Next, I place the yarn on a nice thirsty cotton towel (cotton likes water more than wool does, so it's easy to get the yarn to share with the towel) and then I roll the yarn in the towel and compress the roll to squeeze as much water out of the yarn as I can. This is clearly an optional step, but I think it helps to speed up the drying process. If your yarn likes to bleed color, you might want to have a couple of ratty old towels dedicated to just this process, rather than using your good towels. Also, you probably want to stay away from towels with a smooth chenille-like finish, they don't absorb as well as the regular terry finish ones.
This is an optional step. Some spinners do it, some don't bother. I do it if I remember and if my yarn isn't likely to release dye onto my white counter top. I think the idea of whacking your yarn against a surface is to help even out the twist. If I whack my yarn, I do it two or three times before shifting to another part of the hank for my grip.
The last step is to just let the yarn alone to dry. To do this, I hang it over a hanger and just let it hang loose without any weighting other than it's own natural weight. Usually I hang it over a place that can get wet and can be cleaned easily if there's some residual dye leakage, like a tub. I also like to have a place that is relatively warm and/or gets good airflow to help speed the drying process. I figure faster drying is good for two reasons 1) less chance of yarn mildew (yuck!) and 2) I get to enjoy the finished yarn sooner.
So that's it! At least for me. I think this process varies a lot from spinner to spinner. Some people will never choose warm water. Some folks like to use dish detergent or shampoo as their cleaning agent. Some whack some don't. Some swear that hanging a yarn to dry instead of lying it flat may make it harder to detect an unbalanced yarn because the natural weight of the yarn holds down the twist. There's definitely more than one way to finish a yarn.
Once I've got all my singles prepared, it's hard to keep me from wanting to sit down and ply them up. This was particularly true with this batch of superwash merino in "My Boyfriend's Back" from Crown Mountain Farms. I really wanted to make John a special pair of socks, and I really wanted the yarn to be ready by Christmas. So I fired up my wheel on the 23rd of December and armed with a bunch of podcasts, I plied up all 8 ounces. I could tell as I was plying that this yarn was going to be perfect for John. It had nice long stretches of color and there weren't too many bright patches or patches that might inadvertantly be misconstrued as pink. Most of it was dark and a bit moody and what I thought was just perfect for a pair of socks for John.
These before and after finishing shots are to help visualize how much a yarn can change from right after you finish plying it, to after it has a nice bath and a chance to dry. While in the top photo the yarn has been stretched over the niddy noddy a little bit, it still has that flat quality to it, even when you take it off the niddy. After a warm water bath with a bit of Eucalan, the yarn really comes to life. It poofs and contracts and gets some of the loft that you expect from a merino yarn. I let my yarn hang to dry, but I don't weight it at all. After finishing, it is also twist neutral (i.e. balanced).
One thing that did occur when I gave this yarn a bath was that I had a lot of red dye exhaust. Even after several rinses in cold water, I never got the water to run clear or even close to clear. I know that red dyes have a tendency to do this, and, as the wise Claudia has said on her blog, this is just the price we have to pay sometimes for beautiful vivid reds. However, I emailed Teyani to find out what she knew and to let her know about my experience. Of course, Teyani recommends sticking with a cool water bath, but she also told me that what's in your water may have an impact on color bleeding. Apparently, with her water, which is not city treated water and has no chlorine or fluoride added, she sees a little dye exhaust, but after a rinse it's pretty much stable. However, with customers that live in places with treated water, they often see what I saw when the dyes used were vivid reds or blues. Interesting, eh? So if you're an urban spinner of hand-dyed rovings, you may want to consider cooler finishing baths when working with intense colors, and you probably need to expect that you'll always get a bit of bleeding from the yarn, so you really want to make sure you wash whatever you make with the final yarn with like colors.
At any rate, I'm extremely happy with the finished product and it received an additional endorsement from the man who will be the recipient of the socks. Now all I need to do is finish up a few of my other projects so I can cast on for his Christmas socks! (Good thing I made sure that there was an XBOX360 under the tree for him as his big Christmas present, eh?)
P.S. to Rachel... "grist" is essentially a measurement of the number of yards of yarn per unit weight. In the US this is often measured as yards per pound and can be used like "wraps per inch" as a general means of comparing yarns or determining if one yarn can be easily substituted for another.
