Spinning: August 2005 Archives
I'm not sure if what I am doing today is so basic as to be unnecessary or if it will be helpful. But I thought I'd use the spinning of my Blue Hawaiian roving as an opportunity to describe how I prepare a hand-dyed roving for spinning. If you can do this in your sleep, just skip down to the bottom few photos which show the Blue Hawaiian colorway in all its spun up and ready to knit glory.
I find that after dyeing, the ends can be a little matted and hard to deal with, so I just snip the ends off with scissors.
After getting rid of the ends, I spend a reasonable amount of time teasing and fluffing the roving in preparation for dividing it into strips that I will spin from. This helps me get rid of tangles and understand the construction of the roving aand identify the natural dividing lines.
I try to split the roving into two roughly equal parts as I start the dividing process.
Then I try to divide the halves into roughly equal width pieces that have an amount of fiber that I am comfortable spinning from. Usually this involves dividing each piece into two until I reach a minimal width.
I'm almost ready to start working on it at this point. I like to use this stage to see how the different pieces play against each other. Are some more dark or light than others? I've gotten better random color distribution when I don't just work from one side of the roving to the other.
I take each piece and tug all the way up and down to pre-draft the fibers. I do this by holding my hands about 6" apart and just gently tugging to loosen up the fibers. Obviously it's not good to pull too hard or you separate the fibers. This makes the roving pieces nice and fluffy and easy to spin from. It's also a good way to figure out which end of the roving is easier to spin from. It seems like there's always one direction that works better than the other. I'm not sure if this is because of the scales on the wool, static electricity or some other wooly property that I don't understand.
Spinning up the stuff on a drop spindle is the subject of an entire post on it's own. If you want a good intro, check out this quarter's Spin Off for a nice intro (there are also a lot of good resources on the web... just google for drop spindle instructions). Here's the Blue Hawaiian yarn as a single. Lots of nice luminous blue and green. You just gotta know, given my color preferences, taht this colorway makes me happy.
After spinning th single, I wind it off onto my niiddy noddy, tie it in 4 places and dump it into a warm water bath with some Eucalan to help set the twist. I don't actually have to do this step, but I find it helps me get better control of the yarn when I'm plying. I was able to wind this single around my niddy noddy 126 times and it's about 54" around one time, so the total yardage is about 190 yards! That's a lot of yarn from .5 ounce. Amazing to think that I have spun enough from this little piece of wool to go up and down a football field almost twice.
After setting the twist for the single, I create a center pull ball with the help of my ball winder and swift and create a two ply yarn by spinning from both ends of the center pull ball. I've found that I like plying better when I use my Bosworth spindles which are heavier weight than my Charis spindle. This is a shot of the two-ply yarn after another dunk in some hot water to let it relax and let the twist set. This yarn is happy, soft and balanced. After plying, I've got about 93 yards. It's very similar in diameter to the Sunset roving after plying, but I haven't calculated wpi to confirm.
Here's a close up of my favorite hand-dyed, hand-spun yarn to date. This yarn is really quite close to what i had in my mind's eye when I started thinking about the color way. I wanted something that would have a tweedy quality when knit up, but would be closer to a solid color. Engaging, but not gaudy. The color in this picture isn't perfect (I think the colors are a tad richer in real life), but close enough to give you a very good sense for what kind of personality this yarn has. Makes me want to grab my knitting needles and dive into the water.
I'm spinning like a fiend right now -- all my drop spindles are whirling as fast as I can make them go. If I could make two spindles go at once, you know I would be. Dyeing wool is painting on an empty canvas, but it isn't a finished product, at least not to me. The real magic doesn't start to happen until the wool becomes yarn, and until the yarn becomes a fabric.
This weekend, my goal was to get the first of the Sunset rovings to a two-ply yarn and to get my Hawaiin Shore roving (which I have taken to calling "Blue Hawaiian" in my head) spun into a single. I accomplished both goals. Each is it's own story, however. And since the Blue Hawaiian remains to be plied, the Sunset gets to the blog first.
Unlike the spindle shot from Friday, this image shows off all the colors in this single. Truth be told, I wasn't really looking to have all that pinky stuff in the yarn. I also wasn't intending to concentrate it all in one place. I wanted a more random color distribution, but this happened because of the way I split pieces off the roving as I spun. I split the roving in half, width-wise and didn't realize that the sides weren't balanced very well. As a result, most of the deep gold ended up on one side and most of the pinky stuff ended up on the other. Lesson learned. I will now prepare the whole roving for spinning before starting and randomize the pieces a bit better in the future. I'll probably also stick to horizontal instead of vertical stripes. I dyed this roving this way as a learning experience, and i can definitely say that I learned something from it!
This is just another gratuitous pretty yarn shot. I thought it looks so nice and happy in that center pull ball. It also gives a better idea of where the individual stretches of color are concentrated.
Here's the yarn after being two-plied. I like the colors in this a great deal, but would like a little more gold, a little less pink. I did a wraps-per-inch measurement and get about 23 wpi , which makes it a fingering weight yarn. It doesn't really seem that fine to me, but I can see it knitting up nicely on US size 3 needles. Ninaclock asked on Friday what I was going to do with a mere .5 ounces. Well, intially I wasn't really planning to do much with it at all besides see if I liked the result. But this stuff calls out to be knit into something, I think. I'm wondering if I have enough for a small scarf/lacy neck warmer....
Makes me glad I took notes and know how to reproduce the colors!
So now I have to think about what I might knit up with it.
While there hasn't been a lot of knitting around here lately, there has been a little bit. Look what finally got to be blocked this weekend?
This scarf is about .8 ounces of hand dyed BFL roving spun into a lace weight single. It ended up about 5 foot long and a little over 8" wide the way I blocked it. Pretty respectable length for a small amount of wool.
Stretched out and basking in the sunshine, it occured to me that this scarf would also make a nice table or dresser runner. I am pleased by the fact that the garter stitch bars still stand out a bit after blocking. I am even more pleased by the fact that while the striping is not random in terms of color order, that the widths of the stripes are quite random. This is due to both my spinning and to the fact that I did not spin from exactly equal pieces of roving. I do like the effect.
A more classic, if slightly skewed, shot of the scarf just being a scarf. After blocking, the lace holds its shape quite well. No picture of me wearing this thing because, well, it's an 80 degree day here in Chicago. Not really wool scarf weather. Plus, the husband was out doing some yardwork.
No "look what I made" post would be complete without a closeup of the lace pattern after the project was blocked. I cast off the project in the loosest and sloppiest way that I could. Made a big difference in terms of being able to get nice shaping on the cast-off edge. I am not as pleased with the edges of the scarf. I should have added a few selvedge stitches to the edge. As the scarf gets worn, I doubt that will be something I notice much. So it doesn't really bother me too much.
The thing that turned out to be a pleasant surprise is that both the back and front of this scarf are attractive to look at. And actually don't look that different from each other unless you are quite close to the scarf. Another little benefit of blocking the bejeezus out of lace -- the difference between stockinette and reverse stocknette becomes somewhat blurred.
So now I can say that I have actually turned some of my handspun into something! How cool is that?
Just a quick post to show off the colors in one of my "Sunset" colorways (this is the lower roving in the picture from yesterday). I'm very pleased with the luminous yellows and deep reds and am looking forward to converting this single into a two-ply yarn.
I'm not sure yet whether I am going to spin the second Sunset roving or go to one of the other colorways. I have to admit that my inner blue person is attracted by my ocean inspired colorway. I just love these 1/2 ounce pieces, though. I can easily get it spun up on my drop spindle in an evening. I know spinning isn't an instant gratification sort of fiber art, but I still like it when I can finish something in one reasonable sitting.
Want to see Julie's rovings all brushed out and happy and place a vote for your favorite color in her group? Just click here.
I really do love my drop spindles. I love the way they feel and the rhythm of the spinning process. I love watching the yarn on the shaft grow and grow as I work my way through whatever roving I'm spinning from. In chemistry, people talk of state transformations where an element or compound changes from a gas to a liquid or a liquid to a solid by applying pressure or decreasing temperature (or both). The different states, gas, liquid or solid, each have defining qualities that make the states distinct from each other. And the transformations can occur in the opposite direction as well -- going from solid to liquid to gas.
The fiber arts seem to have their own phase transformations... from sheep to clean fiber from fiber to yarn from yarn to knitted or woven object and sometimes from knitted object to felted object. Some of the phases can be reversed... certainly it is possible to turn a knitted item back into yarn and, while not particularly fun, it is possible to return yarn back into something tha has the consistancy of raw fiber. Each phase has it's own unique properties that make it interesting and some input of energy is required to convert each phase into the next.
Right now I am very fixated on the fiber phase. I'm interested in understanding the process of making fiber take up color and making fiber into yarn. I'm interested in understanding the effects of painting a roving in a particular way when it gets translated into a spun yarn. I'm interested in the technology that can be used to turn fiber into yarn.
And thus, when I'm not communing with my drop spindle, I'm working my way through a couple of great books. The first is Deb Menz' Color in Spinning.
This book doesn't go into color theory quite as deeply as Deb Menz other book (which I also own), Color Works, however it definitely explains well the dynamics of color in the process of yarn creation. Why do some colors, even in small amounts, seem to dominate a yarn? How can such a color be balanced? How do different depths of shade work together? What helps to make a color palette, and thus, the final yarn more sophisticated or more boisterous. She also provides excellent lessons in dying and handpainting, including safety tips. And the color photos in the book are just stunning. It really makes me want to jump into the exploration of color in fiber feet first and just keep on going.
The other book that I've been reading through, little by little, in hopes that it will help me understand more about the mechanics and technical terms of spinning, is the Alden Amos Big Book of Hand Spinning.
When I realized that I had gotten the hang of the drop spindle and that it was only a matter of time until I started to do this spinning thing on a wheel, I decided that it was time to invest some more time understanding what people meant when they mentioned "orifices" or "scotch tension" or talked about the "grist" of the yarn. I wanted to know more about why certain wheel styles had evolved. This book definitly provides all that an more. I'm not that far through yet (it's fairly dense and it takes me time to absorb it) but I've already learned more about how yarn is measured and defined than I ever thought I would know and I found his discussion about the process of wool preparation to be fascinating -- in a "that's cool but I definitely want someone else to do it for me" kind of way. Amos has a folksy style that you will either love of be made crazy by, but it's clear that this is one of those reference bible type books that will be a staple in my library for some time to come.
To those of you who can't believe that I could incur a spinning injury, well, you have to understand that under most circumstances I am the most accident prone person around. In college I had a friend who nicknamed me the "spillmaster" for my incredible ability to upset full glasses of brightly colored liquid. In high school, I was walking down a hallway once while talking and walked face first into a metal support pole. Graceful and catlike I am not. If there is a way for me to injure myself doing something simple and innocuous, I will find a way to do it.
Fortunately, like most accident-prone people, I am fairly resiliant and after around-the-clock Advil therapy I was able to get down to the important business of getting my singles plied. I'm now about a 1/3 of the way through my 4 ounces of red cormo/silk. And it gave me a good lesson in what hand-dyed means. Notice that the skein on the top is just slightly more orange than the skein in the middle (the newest addition). Yuppers, this stuff might have come out of the same bag, but there was a lot more red in the second batch. Even so, I still think they are both quite lovely and I'm already looking through my pattern books to find a small lace pattern that might work well. More and more this yarn is telling me that it would like to be a small neck scarf or shawl-ette.
The blue/green cormo has actually received favorable reviews from the man of the house. So who knows. If I can find the right item, it might end up as some manly item... assuming that any manly item can be made out of fingering weight yarn...
This weekend I treated myself to something that I hadn't done in a long time: I slept in until noon on Sunday. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not the proverbial early bird, but noon is usually a little past my normal weekend wake up time as well. Sometimes you just have to let your body take the lead and tell you what it needs to do. In my case, apparently, it needed a good long stretch of unconsciousness.
This weekend saw a little more progress on getting my Cormo and Silk blend rovings on their way to being a knit up project. I finished off another ounce or so of the red/orange and my first batch of the blue/green made it through the bathing and twist setting process.
I was hoping to actually get this plied as well, but then I went and did something that I didn't think was possible -- I pulled a muscle in my shoulder drop spindling! I spent the better part of Saturday and most of Sunday dosing myself up with Advil to deal with the pain. Now I know I'm getting old, when leaning over a bit to twist a spindle can cause this kind of effect. Maybe that's just one more hint that I need to get a functioning spinning wheel. Good thing I had my Pearl Barred Scarf to work on. Knitting was a bit more comfortable than spinning for me.
My shoulder felt better today, so I'm hoping that there will be some plying in my future. Nothing like having some delightful Cormo yarn slipping through my fingers!
Not too much to say tonight. I'm working on one of those projects that relates to my future. Funny how I can go 180 degrees on some issues. Funny, how hard it can be sometimes to turn on my brain and think through a problem. Good thing I have a husband who doesn't let me get away with turning my brain off. A quote from last night "I'm hearing a lot of 'so and so thinks this' and 'so and so thinks that' what do you actually think?" At the time it felt like I'd been smacked upside the head with a two-by-four. This, my friends is how you know you've found yourself a good life partner -- someone who isn't afraid to be honest with you when it counts, even though he knows it's going to lead to an evening with an uncommmunicative and ornery person. But when I woke up this morning, it was clear that he was completely right. So I've been thinking for myself, and a number of things are taking shape in my brain.
One of my big problems or big assets, depending on how you look at it, is that I am inherently an action oriented person. If I'm not doing something I'm generally unhappy. I am still learning patience, to learning to withstand the pressure of watching things I can't control play out so that I actually can have enough information to make a good decision. I think realistically, I'm probably never going to get all that patient, but I can get better at finding things for myself to do that help me get through those times when I need to wait things out. Hence my personal thinking exercise today.
Okay, 'nuff said about cryptic personal things. Onto something of much greater general interest: Hand-dyed Cormo wool blended with silk. The dark blue and green top is Cormo and Tussah, the reddish stuff is Cormo and Bombyx. One spins up like the most incredible dream, the other makes you fight a bit more. When I was at the Fold in Marengo, I learned that even commercial mills don't like Bombyx silk -- it has a tendency to gum things up a bit because of it's nature. Tussah, on the other hand, behaves itself much better. And that is the exact experience I am having. My tussah/Cormo singles are quite even and un-slubby and very fine. My Bombyx/Cormo singles have a lot more texture and are rather less fine than the tussah/Cormo singles. I'd almost say they are a little loftier as well. It will be interesting to ply the Cormo/Tussah singles and compare the the two different Cormo silk blends when plied.
While I contemplate my future, I've been trying to get in some spinning. Since it's no secret that I am a lover of the jewel toned fibers, it should come as no surprise that my Jewel of the Nile Wensleydale Top from Blue Moon Fiber Arts didn't stay in an un-spun form very long. For once, I can say that the colors in the picture above are quite true-to-life.
While I like the colors and the sheen, I have to say that the jury is still out on the Wensleydale itself. At first, I was amazed at how easy the top was to work with from the point of view of separating and drafting it. But then I found that it was really really easy to pull apart when you didn't want to. I found spinning it to be somewhat challenging even on my lightest weight spindle. The fibers don't like to grab each other very much and I spent a little too much time wondering if drop spindles got their name from the technique or the possible problem that can be had with them. I did learn something, though. It's clear to me that smooth long staple fibers want a lot of twist to stay together and that the process goees better when I put a lot of energy into spinning the spindle and the spindle rotates rapidly.
Because I had avoided plying my last multicolor single, I decided to live on the edge and turn this single into a two-ply yarn to see what would happen with all the color. This is a slightly unfair test because of all the turquoisey color that I got at the beginning, but, hey, not everything about me is scientific. To make my life a little easier I soaked and dried the single to set the twist (and it was relatively balanced after the process) before proceeding to ply the single from a center pull ball.
As it turns out, setting the twist made this plying process a good deal easier than the last time I tried plying from a center pull ball without setting the twist. Yet another lesson well learned.
No need to adjust your monitor, this skein is, in fact, somewhat fuzzy. Now that I have worked with two long staple wools and gotten a bit of a fuzzy halo, I am beginning to think that this might be one of those things that happens when I spin this kind of wool. Which is to say, either that is just what this fiber type does when spun, or my drafting technique for this kind of fiber is still a little lacking.
And because no post would be complete without yet another closeup, here's the final product in large form. I rather like the colors together, but have no idea what I would turn it into from a garment perspective. It's not particularly soft, but I think I've become spoiled by the Cormo that I've been spinning. Perhaps I will just admire it for a while. But I could, possibly, imagine it as the cuff on a pair of mitts or an accent on an otherwise simple piece.
P.S. Much thanks to those of you who left messages of encouragement. I know that post was very cryptic... right now I cannot be more clear. A blog is a very public space, and sometimes a bit of discretion is required
