Spinning: August 2006 Archives
In between bouts of sock knitting, I've been spinning my little heart out. The thing about spinning, is that I can spin for hours, be greatly satisified with the result, feel very peaceful an refreshed, and still not have much of a blog post. Or, maybe I should say, I could show you more progress if the same time had been devoted to a knitting project. But I feel like I have gotten to this place where I really want to make my own yarn. Finishing the Flower Basket Shawl with my own handspun was magickal. It was the point where I realized I could spin enough of something to make a garment, and that I could like that garment just as much as something that I knitted out of commercially prepared yarn.
It was also this point that I determined that just as I am more of a product than a process knitter, I am also more of a product rather than a process spinner. I love the spinning, but boy do I want that yarn. And I want enough yardage so that it opens the door to many project possibilities. Which is part of why I really like buying fiber from Teyani at Crown Mountain Farms. Not only are her hand dyed rovings beautiful colors, well prepared and a pleasure to spin, but they are also in put ups that give you enough to dream big with -- 8 ounces isn't a sweater, but it's plenty for a scarf. And at $14-$15 for that 8 ounces, it's easy to afford enough for a bigger project.
After spinning up the first half of the Hang On Sloopy, I started to get this jones for some lace-to-fingering weight stripey yarn that could be used in a shawl or scarf project. I also really wanted to spin up my Cotton Candy Corriedale pencil roving. So I decided that I would divide the 8 ounces in half and spin each half into a single, just letting the color happen as it happened. A very easy thing to do with pencil roving. All I had to do was break off a bit, pre-draft and spin fine. I used the 10:1 ratio on my wheel to create the singles. And, in case you're curious, my singles are about 32 WPI.
When last I showed you a bobbin of this stuff, it looked mostly pink and green. Now you can see that the yellow has come out in full force. The first half of the roving had a good deal more green in it, the second half more yellow. Which was all fine by me, given my desire to have stripes.
This roving also taught me something about dyeing. Teyani never put the green and red portions next to each other in the roving, they were always separated by an area of yellow. Yellow blends nicely with both colors, green and red together create a murky brown. I'll be filing this away into the dyeing notes section of my brain for use in the future.
The next step was to get it all plied up. That took me almost an entire afternoon and the assistance of a good many podcasts. I finally have a homemade tensioned lazy kate (a shoe box, three straight metal knitting needles and a yard or two of Woolese) that lets me get through the plying process with the WooLee Winder bobbins. It was like plying up Easter egg dyeing colors. I used the 7:1 drive ratio. In retrospect, I probably should have used the 9:1 but I liked the yarn I was getting, so I let it be. The final 2 ply yarn is somewhere between 18-20 WPI. Corriedale always seems to come with a lot of elasticity. Without any stretching, the yarn is more like 14-16 WPI.
Here's the whole bundle, hanked up after a warm bath and a rest. I let it hang dry with no weighting (other than the weight of the yarn itself) and no twisting resulted, so I think I found the balance point for the yarn. In the end, I ended up with about 770 yards (as measured by wraps around my 2 yard niddy noddy), which is pretty respectable from 8 ounces of starting fiber. And it's stripey as all-get-out. The final impression I get of this yarn is a very yellow and green one -- a similar impression to what I got from the starting roving. I was expecting the areas where the green and pink plyed together to be a bit brownish/greyish, but they report mostly green to my eyes. I'd love to hear any of the impressions you get. This picture was taken on a cloudy day and the colors are very true to life, if a little muted by the neutral lighting.
No picture of yarn would be complete for me without a closeup. Here you can see how the individual colors play together, as well as the texture of the yarn. You can see that I am still working on the process of getting a good and evenly plyed yarn. I feel like I get better and better with every batch I spin up. Spinning really is one of those things for which the "practice makes pefect mantra applies".
The final yarn is soft, probably against the skin soft (this is always hard for me to judge until I actually wear the garment against my skin, but the fact that this yarn is quite smooth improves the odds that my prediction will come true). But it has one problem... at least for me. I love it, but I cannot wear anything that has this much yellow. At least not near my face. So I don't think a scarf project (unless it is not for me) is going to be in the future for this yarn. I'm thinking maybe a pillow, or a spring table runner with a very simple lace pattern that won't get lost in all the stripes. A table runner a la Clapotis also crossed my mind. Any other suggestions? It definitely won't become socks. I would die a thousand little deaths if some of my handspun was accidentally felted in the washing machine.
One thing I love about spinning is learning about color. You might think that what you see is what you get when you consider spinning a roving up into a single. In fact, I find it to be very unpredictable. I am constantly being pleasantly surprised by the change that fiber undergoes when it moves from fuzzy to linear form. And my Cotton Candy Corriedale Pencil Roving from Crown Mountain is no exception.
Take a good look at this picture. What colors stand out most to you? (I took the picture in natural light and did not adjust the color in any way). What I see is yellow. The yellow just jumps out at me. And then the green pipes up and says hello. The pinks and reds make up the final flourish, but I see them as something of a subtle accent. Which was exactly what I wanted when I bought this roving -- I wanted to get some springy yellows and greens into my life.
When I look at this single, I see something completely different than what I see in the roving. I see pink and green here, with some underlying peachy-pink tones and greens that have some yellowy undertones. It's as if the yellow just blended itself in and has faded into the background. Not at all what I expected from such a dominantly warm color. Also, the single is much less intensely colored than the roving. This transformation is also one that always surprises me, because in my head I feel that if I am condensing the fibers into a single, I should also condense the color. But, clearly, that is not what happens.
Even though the singles are unexpected, they are not unwanted. I really want to turn this pencil roving into a nice light-weight two ply yarn that was suitable for doing a little lace work with.... I thought this yarn might make a nice shawl. But then I got to thinking that all that yellow near my face would be a bad thing. When I look at this single, I think there still might be a chance that I could get away with wearing it.
But you never know. Plying is yet another transformation. And it too almost never turns out like I expect it to when I am working with variagated rovings.
