Making Stuff, Week 3: Spikes.

Posted: January 31st, 2010 | Author: Hellchick | Filed under: DIY, Making Stuff Series, Spinning | Comments Off

I got back into a groove this week now that things have quieted down in other areas of my schedule and I’ve started a couple of new projects and made progress on others. To start with, I dyed more of Benz’s white fleece red for the commissioned yarn I’m working on that will be plied with his black fleece. That has to dry fully before it’s carded and spun, which gave me a great chance to get some other things started.

Now that I’d finished the sage-green alpaca/Tencel yarn I needed a new project for my Lendrum. I’m not ready to spin the yarn for the Silverton Sweater yet — I want to card all of the batts I’m going to need first. This way I can see if there are any variations in the batts that would require me to do some mixing or breaking up in order to spin a consistent yarn. And since I’ve only washed, carded, and blended half the fiber I need for the project that meant I could start another one.

I poked through my fiber boxes and found two batches of fiber I’ve had for about four years: roughly a pound of super soft chocolate brown alpaca and one pound of natural, undyed Corriedale. I remembered that I wanted to spin the two together for a sweater but had never decided on just how. I thought that a 2-ply sportweight yarn that was made up of one alpaca single and one Corriedale single would be really nice, so I took that with me to Saturday’s spin-in and got one bobbin of each spun so far.

I’d never actually spun Corriedale before and it definitely felt very nice. It was easy to spin, and though it’s not as soft as Merino its hand will be tempered a bit by the softness of the alpaca it’ll be plied with. I’m letting these sit and set twist while I spin another two bobbins, one of each. Then I’ll ply those since that will use up the four bobbins I currently have for the Lendrum (not counting the plying bobbin).

I also wanted to start the sock yarn I’ve been meaning to get working on, although at this point those socks will probably end up getting finished in the middle of summer when I won’t be able to wear them but will be anxious to. Regardless, it’ll be a good summer knitting project so I wanted to get started on it.

I pulled out the rest of the fiber that I used for my “Beaded Tomato” yarn, and I realized I had to make a correction: it wasn’t Blue-Faced Leicester I was spinning but Falkland. I’d forgotten that they didn’t have any white BFL so I went with Falkland which seemed pretty comparable, and I’d simply forgotten what it was until I saw the label I stuck in there. Ha. Anyway, I knew I wanted to blend this with some of the white blending nylon I’d gotten as well as some of Benz’s black fleece — the Falkland would serve as a good, long-stapled wool base for the sock yarn, the alpaca would add warmth (and softness, although that’s not as important in socks), and the nylon would add some durability.

So earlier in the week I combed some of Benz’s fleece into combed top and set it aside until today. Then I set up the blending hackle that Matt’s dad made for me this summer.

Those are spikes. Very, very, very sharp spikes. For those that don’t know, a blending hackle is like a long over-sized comb: you “lash” fiber onto it in layers that’s usually been combed into top already (by sort of swinging it in arcs onto the tines of the hackle) and then you pull it off with a diz (another term I’ll get to in a moment). You can make a pretty ghetto blending hackle pretty easily by just taking a long piece of wood and attaching plastic hair picks or combs or similar things to it, and that’s initially what I was going to do. But then I talked to Matt’s dad over dinner.

Matt’s dad is retired and his main hobby, a very serious hobby, is gunsmithing. He can make and machine, it seems, anything, and to very, very exacting specifications. He’s constantly in need of projects, and if you’re a child of a parent who likes to make things you know that your house will become Their Project if you’re not careful. He helps us out a lot and I don’t like to abuse his willingness to make things, but when you need something and the person who can do it for you not only wants the work but can do it really well…

So when I said I needed a blending hackle I actually had merely planned to ask his advice on making one for myself. He wouldn’t hear of it, and when I told him what “real” blending hackles looked like and showed him my St. Blaise wool combs — which a blending hackle is related to — he said it wasn’t a problem at all and he could easily make it. He insisted on knowing exactly how big, how long, and how far apart the tines needed to be, which was funny because it doesn’t have to be exact at all but he’s a very exacting person so…yes, it needed to be exact. We figured out what measurements they should be and a week later he showed up with this beautiful and deadly-looking hackle.

It’s extremely sharp, which it needs to be to properly comb and separate the top as you blend it. I treat it with even more respect than I treat my very sharp wool combs because I can only imagine how embarrassing it would be to die by tripping onto a blending hackle.

So today I combined the Falkland with the blending nylon and the alpaca and prepared to take it off with a diz. A diz is a disc-like object with a hole in it used to pull fiber off of combs or hackles into top. The idea is that it helps weed out the short and weaker fibers, letting only the longer and stronger fibers come through the hole, perfectly aligned for worsted spinning. Because these long and strong fibers are aligned by pulling through the diz you get a fiber preparation that’s perfect for things like socks, gloves, or any other garment that needs to be somewhat hard-wearing. Dizs are a very ancient device — they’ve been found in archeological digs dating thousands of years back and frequently were made from shells, rocks, or bone.

You can easily make a diz out of most anything since it’s just a disc with a hole in it, and most spinners make them out of discarded milk jugs, which is exactly what I did last year when I got my wool combs. I had widened the hole in my homemade diz and found it to be too big so when I wanted to pull my roving off today I knew I needed to make another diz. As I was cutting one out of a plastic cup I suddenly remembered something: a few weeks ago when Matt and I were at his mom’s cabin we went for a walk along the river and he’d picked up a flat rock that had a perfectly-worn hole in it. We thought it was unique and took it home with us, setting it on the counter, not entirely sure what to do with it. That hole was the perfect size, and the rock was almost perfectly flat. I wondered if it would make a good diz.

It had a little iron oxide on the inside of the hole but I figured I’d test some fiber to see if any of it came off onto the fiber, and even if it did I was going to be dyeing the fiber anyway. So I decided to give it a try.

It’s perfect! None of the rust-like color came off at all onto the fiber, and the hole was absolutely the perfect size for my roving. And it’s even off-centered so perfectly so that I can hold the rock while I get the fiber through the hole. Thanks, nature! There’s something extra cool about finding exactly the same kind of tool for this job that a more primitive human thousands of years ago would have used, and having it be just right for the job.

While I didn’t measure exact amounts, the final fiber is roughly 60% Falkland, 20% alpaca, and 20% blending nylon.

The fiber is now in the oven dyeing as we speak. Since these are going to be socks for me I wanted to just experiment with color, so I kettle-dyed the resulting roving with turquoise and purple. Should be quite interesting. Next week: I should have some dry, dyed fiber to show off as well as some alpaca/Corriedale sweater yarn.

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