Making Stuff, Week 4: Keeping Records

Posted: February 7th, 2010 | Author: Hellchick | Filed under: DIY, Making Stuff Series, Spinning | 4 Comments »

This week I continued with my socks-from-the-ground-up project, taking the fiber that I blended on my hackles last week and spinning it up this weekend after it was dry from dyeing. Now that I’m finished with that I can go back to my commissioned project since the dyed wool for that is now dry and ready to card, but let’s show off some sock yarn, shall we?

If you recall from last week I had a total of six ounces that I’d blended on the hackle and I’ve been wondering if that was going to create enough yarn for a pair of socks. The final yarn’s resulting yardage is 320 yards, so I think I’ve got just enough for a good pair.

I really, truly love the way dyed wool looks on the bobbin, so I snapped this photo before I plyed it.

This yarn is probably my most engineered yarn to date, and I’m pretty proud of that fact since — at least so far, since I haven’t knit with it yet — I feel like I’ve gotten exactly the yarn I set out to make. I think it’s going to make fantastic socks with all the properties I sought in engineering it. Here’s a breakdown of all the steps I’ve taken to get the right yarn for the project:

The fiber

I knew that I wanted a yarn that was going to make a good pair of socks for me and my perpetually cold feet. That meant that I was going to need warmth — hence alpaca, which is three times warmer than wool. I was going to need durability since they’d be socks — that meant a wool like Falkland with its long staple length and durable crimp would be called for, and blending it with some nylon would add some extra durability and elasticity. I bought the Falkland and nylon already commercially processed into top at The Weaving Works in Seattle, and the alpaca would come from my own boy Benz, whose black fiber I washed and hand-combed into top.

Once I knew what fibers I needed, I had to figure out…

The blend

A good sock yarn needs to have the right blend of fibers. Too much alpaca and they’d be incredibly warm but lack any elasticity or durability. Too much nylon and they’d feel odd and lack the durability and memory of the wool.

I wasn’t planning on meticulously weighing out the fibers before blending them, but I knew that I wanted a rough 60/20/20 blend of Falkland, alpaca, and nylon. I took out the blending hackle and lashed on the fiber in layers. I started with a thick layer of Falkland, then laid on a thin layer of nylon, then a thin layer of alpaca. I repeated that set and then finished with a final thick layer of Falkland. I pulled this sandwich of fibers off with the diz, removed the waste from the hackle and then re-blended it one more time by lashing it onto the hackle and pulling off again with the diz. This gave me about one ounce of well-blended fiber per “sandwich.” Now I had six ounces of fiber ready for the next step.

The dye job

The dyeing wasn’t exactly a critical piece of engineering in the construction of this yarn, but it’s still part of the fun of the whole process. Since these socks were going to be for me I was willing to just throw a couple of dye colors on there that I hadn’t yet used together just to see what I’d get, and I’m pretty happy with the results. I coiled each one-ounce ball of fiber into my roasting pan, stacking all six ounces in there at once. I soaked the fiber in vinegar and water and then used the sprinkle method to dye it with my Jacquard acid dyes. I used turquoise and purple, each in two alternating groups, sprinkling the dye onto the wet fiber and massaging it in. I knew this method would result in some uneven coloring, which is exactly what I wanted since I wanted a little variation to come out in the spinning.

Either I used way too much of the turquoise dye or blue-based dye simply doesn’t strike well, because I had a lot of turquoise dye color left in the bath and it took me forever to rinse it all out. I did read somewhere that blue dyes don’t strike well, but I also suspect that I used too much so I’ll try a sample next time with less of the dye powder. Regardless, I was really pleased with the resulting colors.

The spin

Part of making durable sock yarn is in the twist: the more twist a yarn has, generally the more durable it’s going to be (I say “generally” because it’s possible to break and weaken your fibers by overtwisting, but that’s a separate discussion). The reason for this is that twist allows less of the surface of the yarn to be exposed to wear, which will reduce abrasion and give the socks a longer lifetime. More twist adds energy to a yarn and an energetic yarn is typically a more durable one.

So given that, I switched out my regular flier for the fast flier so that I could really get a lot of twist in the yarn. I spun it on its highest ratio and spun it quite thin knowing that I was going to 3-ply it and wanted it to be a fairly low gauge. This fiber blend was so easy to spin. It just drafted like butter. I suspect that was because of the Falkland and its long staple length, a fiber I’d never spun before but will definitely be using again based on my experiences with this project. I spun about half of the singles earlier this week and the other half at today’s Spin-In, really pushing my six ounces onto my Lendrum bobbin. It just fit.

The ply

Like the twist, the ply is important for a good, durable sock yarn. Plying affects yarn similarly to twist in terms of surface exposure and abrasion: the more twist in the ply (or the more singles that are plied together), the less surface area will be exposed to abrasion and the more durable the yarn will be. This is a trade-off for softness; a twistier yarn will be much less soft than one with a much looser twist, but for socks it’s all about finding that sweet spot between a yarn that feels good against the skin and one that will be durable enough to be worth knitting and wearing in your shoes.

Since I had two colors in this yarn that were deliberately not blended before spinning I planned to chain-ply (otherwise known as Navajo-ply) this yarn against itself. This allows you to control how the colors blend together since you pull the single through a crochet-like loop of itself to make three layers of the single that will be plied together. What’s funny is that looking at this yarn I completely forget that there’s solid black alpaca blended in there. I honestly thought it would have been more noticeable but it blended so nicely that it didn’t seem to change the colors much at all, and if anything it kind of helps them pop a little bit.

Tomorrow I plan to wash and dry the yarn, and I really can’t wait to knit some socks from it and actually see just how well they wear. If the final analysis looks good I’ll definitely be making more of this blend of yarn because there’s just nothing nicer than wearing hand-knit socks, nevermind hand-knit and hand-spun.

The other project that I started this week had more to do with organization than with actual spinning itself: record keeping. I’ve been spinning for years but never kept any records because I frequently spun with no intention behind my yarn — I would spin for the enjoyment of spinning itself and then figure out what I’d do with the final product based on whatever I got. But now that I’m dyeing my fibers and creating yarns for specific projects I feel I need to keep records so I can accurately reproduce things I’ve made.

I’ve got a three-ring binder with a bunch of sheet protectors in it. I tape swatches and samples of yarn and fiber to a piece of paper on which I’ve written whatever details I need in order to reproduce it and slide them into the sheet protectors. I’ve also got a few trading card protector sheets in there to store small fiber samples from dyeing projects.

I’m already finding this a valuable resource as I spin fibers and have to remember things when I sit down to spin, like what ratio I was spinning them on before I switched out the flier for another project.

Next week will be dedicated to finishing the commissioned red/black alpaca yarn project, and I’ll also be able to show off some of the plied alpaca/Corriedale sweater yarn.

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