Spinning: March 2006 Archives
When the weather is dreary and a chillier than it should be, there's no better way to spend the day than spinning with a friend. On Tuesday, I got to test out my new Bag Lady wheel bag and I headed out to visit Julie for an afternoon of spinning and chatting.
In the interest of preventing my very large ball of CVM roving from becoming the largest dust bunny in my house, I decided that I would start doing a little sampling to find a yarn that I thought would be suitable for making the simple and pretty cardigan I have in my mind. I thought I would start by making a two-ply and a three-ply yarn. I wanted to start with the three-ply, but, since I only brought three bobbins out with me, I ended up starting with the two-ply instead.
My African violet is helping me out with the modeling tonight since there's really still no green outside. This little skein is 42 yards of what I would estimate to be somewhere between fingering and DK weight yarn. It surprised me with it's behavior. When I spun it and plied it, it didn't feel as elastic as the chocolate brown CVM I spun. I gave it a long soak and let it hang to dry -- after which it developed that springy character that I really like. I guess that nice warm bath helped the fibers get some of their natural springy happy goodness back. A good reminder that one should always make sure that newly spun yarn should always get a beauty bath.
It's not a dramatically colored yarn, but I like the soft heathery color of the yarn. It reminds me of oatmeal with a bit of brown sugar laced through it. However, it's a little finer than I want it to be for my cardigan. So trying out a three ply yarn will definitely be in order. I'm kind of excited about that since I've never tried to spin a three ply yarn before.
Since we're talking about yarn, I thought I'd finish up my report on the indigo dyed skeins. The large grey skein that we over-dyed at Toni's is finally washed and dried. Initially, I was just going to show you the big skein on its own, but I thought the nicest way to evaluate the color was to put it together with the other two skeins so that you could see the range of blues.
That overdyed grey skein looks suprisingly like the color of one of my most recent denim purchases.
Hopefully I'll have Pearl pictures tomorrow. I've been hoping for some nice weather so that I can get some nice outdoor shots. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.
What's my new fiber passion?
CVM
Which stands for (as you might have guessed from the title of today's post) California Variagated Mutant. CVM sheep are also Romeldales with a mutation that gives them some beautiful color patterning. For a bit more information on this breed, you can check out the American Romeldale/CVM Association. Romeldales and CVM sheep are fine wool sheep (like Merinos), that have relatively short staple length wool. They are also, as I have just learned, relatively small sheep An average CVM fleece weighs 4-6 lbs after skirting.
I want to start this off by saying that Liz is a dreadful (in a good way) enabler and I am going to hold her compeltely responsible for my developing addiction to CVM wool. In order to get a break from fine weight cormo and silk, I decided to spin up a small amount of the batt we prepared from the dark chocolate colored CVM from a sheep named Sydney. What a treat! This wool isn't quite as soft as merino, but it has incredible elasticity and I found it a lot of fun to spin and ply into this 37 yard skein:
You know, it's kind of fun to spin up small amounts to make a little sample skein. It doesn't take very long and going through the whole process of spinning the singles, plying and setting the twist makes it possible to understand the real character of the yarn I've spun and it feels like finishing a small project. It's a bit like swatching for a sweater when you don't know quite what gauge would give you the best fabric for the project you have in your head. I didn't really spend much time worrying about the final result on this skein -- I tried to let the yarn tell me what it wanted to twist like rather than forcing it into what I wanted it to be.
Here's a close-up perspective on what the fiber wanted to be for me. Ignore those little silver grey fibers. Those are a lesson for me about using a drum carder -- you've got to clean the drums well between fiber varieties or you will get transfer from the first one to the second one. Most of this yarn probably varies between fingering and DK weight.
Perhaps the most remarkable quality of this fiber (after it's rich color and soft hand) is it's incredible elasticity. A small demonstration:
I don't know too many yarns in my stash that I could stretch by an additional 15% in length, unless you count things like Cascade Fixation (which is cotton and lycra). This stuff could be a fibery rubber band.
This CVM wool seemed special from the moment that Julie and I started sticking our hands in the sample bags Liz sent us. It didn't take me too long to decide that I needed to know where this kind of fibery goodness came from. She sent me to Myrtle Dow at Black Pines Sheep. Would it surprise you all to know that I have 2 lbs of moorit Romeldale/CVM roving coming my way as I type? (I'm thinking I'm going to challenge myself to design both the yarn and a sweater for myself). Myrtle was very easy to work with from the fiber-buying perspective. She also didn't mind all my questions about the CVM sheep and I felt very good doing business with her. She's going to be at MS&W and I'm definitely going to try to find her and say hello in person... and not just because I think I want a fleece from a certain chocolate colored sheep...
You know, I never had any idea that a spinning wheel would be such a dangerous investment.
Saturday was a big day. Such a big day, in fact, that there's too much to talk about in one post. Julie and I headed out to Marengo, Illinois to the Fold for a day of dyeing with indigo and general fibery goodness (my car tried to thwart that effort by blowing a tire just after Julie and I met up in Schaumberg, but thanks to a helpful insurance agent, a punctual tow-truck driver and the fact that Julie had a car, too, we were able to get to our ultimate destination and were only an hour or so late). Because I don't have my finished fiber photos ready yet (there's still a bit of soaking and drying that has to occur), instead of starting with the indigo dyeing, I'll start with the goodies that came home with me. Because no trip out to the Fold would be complete without some purchasing of goodies.
My big purchase was this:
After one trip out to Julie's house without my wheel in a protective covering, I decided that a good bag would be a good investment. As it turns out, these bags are good for both protecting the wheel and making the wheel easier to carry around, since the bag has a nice shoulder strap. The Lendrum DT isn't that heavy -- just about 13 lbs (not much heaver than some desktop replacement notebooks on the market right now!), but it is awkwardly shaped for carrying when you have a few other bags to attend to. This bag is made of a sturdy denim material and has a thick vinyl bottom.
Terry commented in my last post that I needed to "flash" any new Socks that Rock that came home with me. So here goes:
The Crazy Lace Agate and Fire on the Mountain are for me for later when I get back to brightening up my sock collection. When I asked for brighter sock yarn suggestions Liz and Lindsey both mentioned Fire on the Mountain. This yarn is incredibly vibrant and just a rainbow of color. I am in love with the beautiful contrasts of gold, red, blue and grey in the Crazy Lace Agate. The Beryl skein is so that I can finish up John's Dragon Scale socks. And the Sock Candy is so that I can have a pair of Dragon Scale socks of my own someday. They aren't quite orange, but they are as close as I could find in this yarn.
Believe it or not, the STR was not the highlight of the trip. I have fallen in love with a new motor-driven device.
If I remember correctly, the label on this old beauty is "Patrick Green". Drum carders were never something that excited me until Saturday. I enjoy spinning, but I still really hadn't gotten to the point where I thought I would want to prepare my own fiber. A while back, though, Liz kindly sent Julie and I some small samples of some very nice washed fleeces so that we could try out some nice fibers. Julie and I are fiber prepping newbies, and we weren't quite sure how to get our little treasure trove into something that we could spin. So I emailed Toni and asked her if she new of anyone who would prepare roving from small batches of fiber. Toni invited us to bring our fiber when we came to the dyeing class and we could try out her electric drum carder.
Now I understand why people get obsessed about drum carders. It was almost magical to feed that uncarded fiber into the machine and to have fluffy bats come off the big drum. Julie and I were mezmerized by this process! And after working with it for just a short time, it was easy to imagine all the fiber and color blending possibilities it could bring into my life. I think I'm going to have to start being a very good girl now, so that I can ask Santa for one of these lovely machines for Christmas...
Julie and I split the fiber in half and each of us got a nice fluffy batt of grey Coopworth and brown CVM to take home with us. There are still more samples to try in the box Liz sent us, but these two were the only two we could finish in an hour. Once I get finished spinning the first bobbin of itty bitty Cormo/silk thread that CVM is going on my wheel!
While we were working on carding our wool, we got a very special treat: the Fiddlin' Fool from Two Sock Knitters came in looking for a spinning spinning (Julie and I worked hard to be good enablers, and he now also has a Lendrum DT) and before he left he brought out his fiddle and treated all of us in the store to a lovely lilting tune. Talk about a wonderful ending to a great day!
It's time to turn this:
Into this:
This is about the finest I have ever spun anything. The single is so threadlike that I'm having a hard time believing that I am spinning it and it's not breaking apart, as I don't feel I'm putting an insane amount of twist into it. I think the strength comes from the longer and stronger silk fibers in this Cormo/silk blend. It's a bit hard for me to gauge how even my spinning is when it's this fine. I think I'll have a much better idea after it's plied. Even at two-ply, it's going to be a fine weight yarn -- the final product will definitely be a candidate for a lace project.. But getting to plying is going to take a while. Spinning this fine takes a lot more time and attention than any of my previous yarns have -- when I draft, I draw out just a litle bit at a time -- less than an inch -- so my drafting hand is getting a workout. But the result, so far is good, it still feels soft and just a bit squishy to the touch on the bobbin. So it may be fine, but I haven't turned it into cormo and silk twine, which, I think, is a good thing.
With the beginning of May fast approaching, it occurred to me that it might be good to finish spinning some of the fiber that I had bought the May before. I actually have quite a bit of it still in un-spun form. Since I just finished spinning the un-dyed Corriedale that my mom and dad gave me for my birthday, I thought it would be a good time to finish spinning the cochineal dyed Corriedale that I bought from Handspun by Stefania, which was the first stuff I tried out right after I purchased my first drop spindles. Cochineal is a lovely natural dye that can create deep pinkish-red colors. The roving I picked appealed to me because it was a three color roving: a deep red-pink, an intermediate red-pink and a very pale pink, in vertical stripes (i.e. striped in the same direction the fiber is drafted). I spun some of it on my drop spindle, but after I met with better success spinning my Cormo/silk blend and some Blue Faced Leicester, I put the cochineal-dyed Corriedale away. I liked spinning fiber I didn't have to fight with so much.
After spinning the un-dyed Corriedale, I felt that I must not have given the cochineal dyed Corriedale a fair shake. So I pulled it back out and decided to see how it would spin up on my wheel. I like spinning it much better with the wheel, but It still felt much harsher to my fingers than the undyed Corriedale did. I believe that Claudia commented, when I first broguth this up) that there can be a lot of sheep-to-sheep variation when it comes to the texture and feel of Corriedale. Liz also mentioned that sometimes the chemicals and the handling that are used in the dyeing process can change the "hand" of the fiber. So I was curious what would happen after I finished plying and gave the yarn a little beauty bath in some warm water and Eucalan.
The bath had a positive impact on the yarn. It definitely is a lot springier feeling after it's soak. But it doesn't really come close to the undyed Corriedal for sheer cushiness. It reminds me more of the Blue Faced Leicester that I have spun than it does the natural Corriedale.
I didn't really spin this quite as well as I did the natural Corriedale. There's a great deal of variation in the diameter of the yarn. It probably ranges between sock weight and DK, though it averages close to a sport weight, I think. The close up shows that my spinning was a bit uneven. Some of this was because I found it difficult to consistently draft this roving. But I did learn something from spinning this fiber: it's very important to put enough twist into a single. This seems obvious, but it's very possible to put in enough twist so that the single will draw onto the bobbin, but not enough twist so that it will not pull apart when plying or when starting to spin again after joining new fiber. And when spinning fine singles, it's a pretty fine line between a nice soft single and something with the hand of garden twine.
What's next up on my wheel? I'm thinking it's time for something a little softer on my fingers. Maybe that blue/green Cormo/silk that I thought I was going to spin up on my drop spindle? Hmmm.....
I've been doing a little happy dance ever since I got my 4 ounces of natural Corriedale spun and plied. I really enjoyed spinning this fiber and there's always something exciting about finishing a project, even when it's a small project. After plying my yarn, I always like to give it a bath to help set the twist and to release any the fiber's been holding onto. I wish I had thought to take a before picture, but to be honest, I didn't think that this yarn really was that dirty. But one dunk into some hot water and Eucalan and it became clear that the fiber wasn't as clean as I thought. The water got rather grey and the wool brightened up noticeably. To help get my yarn along the path to drying, I like to roll it in a cotton towel (it always seems like cotton loves to suck water away from wool). After the first bath, I had some pretty dirty looking marks on the white towel so I dunked it back into a second Eucalan bath and got a second sink full of dirty water. This time, however, it didn't get the towel dirty, so I figured that it had had enough bathing for one day.
It's impossible to capture in a photo, but this yarn not only got cleaner, it got sproingier and softer. I love picking it up and squeezing it -- all 570 or so yards of it! (I haven't done a wpi calculation yet, but it looks to be somewhere between sport and DK weight). It's resiliant and I just can't get over how springy and bouncy it is. Of course, I had to make John pet and squeeze the yarn, too. This yarn is almost soft enough to wear against the skin, so much so that John thought it might be made up into a scarf.
I didn't think it was possible for me to be so in love with basic natural colored wool, but I am. So far, this is probably the best thing I have spun. Corriedale sheep get a big gold star in my book.
No post of this kind would be complete (at least not on my blog) without a closeup. Just like feeling the yarn, this picture makes me happy. This yarn is clearly handspun, but still has a very nice, even quality to it. More happy dancing on my part.
Now it's just a matter of figuring out what it should become. Should it go with me to my Indigo dyeing class at the Fold? Should it become the foundation for my sheepy sampler blanket and remain in it's natural form? I just don't know. Maybe I'll just keep it on my desk to touch and squeeze whenever I'm not feeling so happy. I've said it a bunch of times, but I do love to spin. And you know, that big ol' plying head for my Lendrum just rocks my world!
