Fiber: 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.
Wanna see what came in the mail for me on Friday?
Of course you do.
That, my friends, is, without a doubt, 2 pounds of fiber ecstacy. Two pounds of moorit CVM roving from Black Pines Sheep in Colorado. The weather may still be grey, but this fiber really isn't! It's a lovely soft fawn color, is wonderfuly soft and springy, and has almost no VM in it anywhere. It is destined to be a sweater for yours truly someday. I got more than I probably need for a sweater so that I could experiment and "sample" it to find out what I want it to be. I think I'd like the final yarn to end up somewhere between DK and worsted weight. The two or three ply part is something I am going to have to try and see on. I've been told that three-ply yarns are very nice for textured stitches and cables. And I've been thinking I'd like to design another cardigan for myself that has a simple cable pattern but a finer weight than I made Sigil.
Doesn't it look like you could just jump in and float forever? That's probably what I'll be doing soon. Julie and I are planning on spending tomorrow afternoon spinning and there will definitely be a little CVM on my agenda.
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!
