Spinning: September 2005 Archives
Dying, spinning and plying are still mystical events for me. The single ply of this yarn felt much more gold to me. The two-ply version feels much more red and deep orange. Goes to show that the sum can be very different from the parts.
On the statistics side of the equation, I got 65 wraps around my niddy, and at 54"/wrap that gets me to almost 98 yards of fall red. I'm sure there's going to be some striping action going on here but I have a feeling that it may turn out to be a bit more subtle than the striping in the Blue Hawaiian colorway. Now I just need to find a pattern to try out. I'll be heading back to my Barbara Walker books to look for things with fire or leaf motifs, I think. I think it might turn out to be a nice project to take to Hawaii with me.
The response people have to crochet always interests me. It seems to be one of those needle arts that inspires rather visceral responses. I, too, have issues with texture under some circumstances. However, I also have several sweater/top items (not handmade) that I love to wear. I like the fact that it is possible to create a more rigid fabric, which is why creating a handbag appeals to me. So we shall see.
Now I'm off to get myself into trouble with computer games again. I just downloaded the demo for Myst V... the last in the Myst series. Last in a very final way since Cyan Worlds, the maker of Myst has shut it's doors and laid off its staff. It always makes me sad in a small little place in my soul when a small company that took good care of it's people and made a big impact on the gaming universe passes out of this world. I can remember back to graduate school when I first saw Myst and got hooked by the simple magic it created. Good-bye for now, Cyan. The adventure gaming world is a poorer place for your departure.
With a little bit of help from Photoshop Elements I have a better color representation of my Falling Leaves colorway. My camera appears to have issues with orange. Apparently it needs to have a long conversation with Claudia's camera to see how orange and red are done.
Yesterday I picked up a copy of Interweave Knits Crochet issue. My personal exposure to crochet has really only been to put decorative or solid edgings on my knitted garments. I have to admit that when I think of crochet, I automatically think of granny-square afghans in bright colored acrylics. But I'm trying to branch out and give crochet a better hearing. This issue has a nice basic introduction to how to read crochet charts, and, at least by my reckoning, quite a few cute projects. I like Norah Gaughn's Hemp Flowers Necklace and the kind of modern, kind of folksy Felted Folk Rug & Chair Pad. I'm intrigued by the shaping and the solid look of the Textured Tweed Clutch (though I am not sure about the bobbly looking things) and I could totally see myself wearing Annie Modesitt's South of the Border Jacket and I think I need to find someone to make the Granddaughter Socks for (you can download this pattern for free even if you didn't buy the magazine, along with several other designs). And how could you not want to crochet a Hyperbolic Plane? (Unfortunately there is no picture of this project on their website. But you can see it and more here).
So, overall, I consider it to have been a good purchase. And now I've got better things to remind me of crochet than '70's granny square afghans!
My camera refuses to let you see the lovely browns that are mixed into this fall-colored concoction, but here's the proof that I finished spinning that second Fall Leaves colorway. It's a fairly rich collection of reds, browns, golds and oranges (the orange comes in more or less as a result of the mixing of different reds and golds) with a touch of burgandy. If you've been through a fall season in the midwest (and probably elsewhere...but I've spent most of my alls in the midwest), you'll know these colors as the ones you see on the maple trees as they invite the winter in. It's still quite warm here in Chicago, but as we were driving back from Ann Arbor, it was clear that many of the trees in our region are fairly convinced that the end of the summer season is nigh. Soon the incredible display of color will begin.
Hopefully tonight I'll get better light for taking pictures and I'll be able to show off a good picture of the single after a little dunk in a warm bath. I used my Niddy Noddy to determine roughly how much yardage I had...
To wit: 130 wraps x 54 inches/wrap = 195 yards Autum Leaves single ply
This is pretty consistant with what I got from the Blue Hawaiian single. So it appears that Julie is very good at measuring out 0.5 ounces of undyed roving and my spinning is relatively consistant.
P.S. to everyone who left me comments about good things to do in Maui.... thank you very much! It's very helpful. We're sooooo looking forward to this trip and I'm really psyched because I think we've found some very nice places to stay. I can't wait to take a car up the road to Hana.
P.P.S to everyone who asked about the computer games....I haven't forgotten about you, I just haven't had time to sit down and answer your email. I will very soon!
Now I have real proof that I am actually still doing some knitting.
This scarf, which was knit from a roughly fingering weight two ply yarn made from 0.5 ounces of hand dyed Blue Faced Leicester, is about 29 inches long and about 3-3/4 inches wide. It was knit on US size 6 needles (4.0 mm). The final dimensions (after blocking) surprised me, because I wasn't thinking that I would get anything of useful length out 1/2 an ounce of of this weight yarn. But, in fact, it is enough to drape around my neck and hold in place with a pretty pin. So it may turn out to be a nice neck warmer in the winter.
I didn't really want this yarn to stripe. I've now learned that it is a lot easier to get a striped yarn than an unstriped one given the way I have dyed things so far. I need to do the dying process with much shorter color intervals so that the runs of one solid color are shorter. But I'm happy with the colors and the way they look together. Now I just need to perfect my dying process to get to what I want. I am now beginning to realize that I could probably create one set of four or five colors and just spend a whole afternoon doing variations on one color theme, looking for rovings that created looks that I really liked when spun and knit. This dying experiment is turning into a very interesting adventure for me!
I like the way that this lace behaves almost like a cable. It has a lot more relief and texture than I was expecting it too. The gentle curvature along the edges is a nice touch, too. Because of the striping effect, this yarn and this pattern are not an ideal match. My hope is to come back to this pattern with a yarn with much more subtle color variations. Perhaps Blue Hawaiian version 2!
I have almost no crafty output to show for the weekend. I did make a little progress on both spinning up the Fall Leaves roving and knitting a bit more on the Chinese Lace scarf. But certainly not enough to account for -er- 4 days. Saturday started well enough -- a good shopping trip and my first ever spinning wheel experience with Julie. Julie, brought her Ashford Joy along for me to try out. I learned enough to realize that I need to get my own wheel set up. I can tell it will take me a little while before I can co-ordinate both hands and feet, and it's probably not fair to make any good friend sit through that painful process. I can learn co-ordination, but it's usually not something I like to expose anyone else to!
The rest of the weekend was an exercise in getting side tracked. Amazing how the process of getting organized often leads me to new levels of chaos. Usually this happens because as I clean and sort I come across things that I abandoned by accident. When I find these things again, I immediately want to engage with them. This weekend the sorting process involved a closet full of old and not-so-old computer games. I was able to part with most of this treasure trove (looking for a PC computer game? let me know... if I have the one you're looking for, and it's in the pile that is due to be re-located to somewhere else I'll send it to you for the cost of shipping) but I did come across one that I always meant to play through... Railroad Tycoon III ....
Yes, sadly, this game is almost 2 years old and I am just now getting around to playing it. Lucky for me these simulation type games don't age too badly. Did I tell you I had a thing for trains? Oh yes, I have a thing for trains....
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of cargo to haul between Philadelphia and New York to support the war effort in WWII
P.S. to my Mom -- Happy Birthday!!!
So what will my weekend look like from a fibery perspective?
The flash makes the color look a little more extreme in the red zone, but this is still a pretty intense colorway. I'm getting kind of psyched to have all that red fiber moving through my fingers.
For my Blue Hawaiian yarn I wanted to find something that made me think of waves and moving water along a shore line. After a search of my Barbara Walker books the Second Treasury yielded up the Chinese Lace pattern. The movement of the yarn overs and decreases creates an undulating edge and there are lovely but subtle undulating motions in the lace as well. I only got through one interval, so it's hard to see the effect yet, but I have high hopes that it will make a nice, if very small scarf. I chose to cast the project onto US size 6 needles, so the stockinette has a little openness to it. It makes me happy to knit with this yarn. Even if I only end up with a longish swatch, I'll be happy.
I know that I keep bringing up the Barbara Walker books, but they really are the set that I go back to over and over when I am trying to come up with ideas for what to do with my yarn. If you only own a couple of knitting pattern books, her first and second volumes are the ones you should have. Simple black and white photos help you focus on the elements of the pattern instead of the color of the yarn. The first two books have all the instructions written out (the second two use charts), which is about the only downside to the books (I do better with symbols than with words when it comes to knittng charts).
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.
