Making Stuff, Week 9: More Blending

I was about to write that I didn’t feel nearly as productive this week and thus wasn’t going to have much to talk about, but then I gathered up the pictures for this week’s entry. I guess when you have six different pictures you must have accomplished something, right?

This week was mostly about blending. A few weeks ago you’ll recall that I blended up and dyed a roughly 60/20/20 blend of Falkland wool, alpaca from Benz, and nylon for socks. (You know, I actually suspect it’s closer to a 50/25/25 blend…I lost a lot of shorter Falkland fibers on the first pass and that probably changed the ratio.) As a refresher, here are those socks in progress — I’ve only got the rest of the leg to knit on the second sock and then they’re done.

The Falkland/alpaca socks, mostly finished.

I absolutely love how these socks feel and knit so far. The gauge is a little big but it’s live-with-able, and they’ll make perfectly fine socks regardless. But I wanted to make a similar blend for socks and spin and knit a pair for comparison, one made with Blue-Faced Leicester instead of Falkland since BFL is so popular for socks. So that’s what I did this past weekend.

BFL, alpaca, and nylon ready for the dye pot.

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Making Stuff, Week 8: Crazy Dye

It’s a shorter entry this week (and given my propensity toward huge, tome-like posts, I’m sure you’re glad for that) as I only have a little to show off. I finished the sock yarn that I began from last week’s dyed roving, and that was really an enjoyable spin.

Burgundy Gold sock yarn, 100% BFL.

It’s just 100% superwash Blue-Faced Leicester, no fancy blends this time. I should have taken the picture with a coin for scale because finally I spun a true sock-weight gauge — it’s nice and small, perfect for about a size 2 or 3 needle. It’s 3-ply but I chose not to chain ply it; I really wanted to just see the colors interplay the way they did for a change of pace, and I really like the result. I still have a few ounces left, and now that I’ve gotten my hands used to spinning such a fine gauge singles for this weight of 3-ply yarn I’m going to blend the remaining BFL with alpaca from Benz and some nylon, just like I did with my Falkland sock blend, and then knit that into socks to compare with the Falkland ones, which I’m almost finished knitting. I’ll be able to compare wear and feel then and see what I prefer as the end result more. I love experimentation!

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Making Stuff, Week 7: My New Drum Carder

So many things to write about this week! And the first one isn’t something I’ve made but something Matt’s dad made…my new custom-made drum carder! I’m so excited! But before I get too ahead of myself, let me just remind you that I’m posting this for WonderWhyGal’s Fiber Arts Friday extravaganza, so don’t forget to check out what other cool stuff people are doing.

I’ve said before that Matt’s dad loves making things. He’s seventy-five and retired, and he’s been machining and making things pretty much his whole life, and the stuff he makes is very good. He loves new projects and if he’s not already working on something for himself he’s looking around Matt’s house for things to make or improve. And a few months ago when he came to visit I was in the middle of drum carding some of my alpaca’s fleece into batts on my Louet Junior drum carder.

I bought the carder used at a pretty good price. I had saved up my pennies to get a drum carder but after researching I knew there was just no way I was going to get one of the really nice full-sized popular models for any price I could afford right now, and hand-carding all of my alpaca just simply wasn’t going to cut it. Even used, nice carders like Strauch or Pat Green go for several hundred dollars, and motorized carders can sell for, at minimum, $1000. After researching and then looking in my wallet and then researching and looking one more time in my wallet hoping that the bills had just magically multiplied like bunnies while I wasn’t looking — only to realize in dismay that they hadn’t — I settled on the Louet Junior, a half-sized model that seemed to get a fairly equal smattering of great reviews and “meh” reviews. Given that, like most spinning equipment, drum carders always seem to have good resale value and tend to go fast as soon as they’re put up for sale, I figured that at worst I could resell it if I wasn’t happy with it and save up for a different model.

When I showed Matt what I wanted to get he said, “you know, my dad could probably make one of those.” I admit that I wasn’t really sure — it seemed like drum carders had specific, precise measurements. And then I realized that we were talking about a man who can machine things within 1/1000 of an inch.

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Making Stuff, Week 5: Alpaca/Silk, Dyeing, and Non-Optimal Results.

I thought this week I’d actually try and time my weekly Making Stuff post to coincide with Fiber Arts Friday at lovely WonderWhyGal’s blog, so be sure and check out lots of other great posts from people making awesome stuff.

I started off this week with an attempt to free up some bobbins — my Lendrum is new and I haven’t had a chance to go out and buy more bobbins for it yet — by plying the Corriedale/alpaca yarn (not from my own alpacas but a commercially processed one I bought a long time ago) I’d started while the wool from the commissioned project was still drying after the dye bath.

Corriedale (natural white) and alpaca (natural brown) yarn, 2-ply. Made about 400 yards and I've still got plenty to spin.

I love the feel of this yarn, but as I look at it I’m not sure I love the end result as a yarn that I’d use myself, and I had originally thought I’d knit a sweater from it. I don’t know what it is about yarns made with one strand in one color and another strand in another color: I fall in love with them in my head or on the shelf at the knit shop, but when I bring them home and knit that awesome sweater I plan to make with them, the result just isn’t me when I put it on. I can’t figure out why. Sweaters made out of anything but a yarn no bigger than sport-weight that is mostly solid color just don’t look right on me, and these two-toned yarns I insist on making tend to look very bulky on me.

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Making Stuff, Week 4: Keeping Records

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?

Turquoise and Purple sock yarn, with a little bit of my boy Benz in there.

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.

A bobbin full of beautiful wool. I love the way dyed wool looks on a bobbin.

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Fiber Arts Friday: Milk Fiber

I wanted to do a new post for Fiber Arts Friday, hosted by Wonder Why Gal and her alpaca farm, instead of recycling one of my other weekly blog posts about making stuff. So today’s short entry is about something I forgot to add to my blog post last week: milk fiber.

A cellphone picture of some milk fiber that I'm working on.

I got this as a sample from an Etsy buyer who had forgotten to ship my order and threw this in as thanks. The colorway is really quite beautiful with its mix of chocolate, rose, and tans. I’ve never spun milk fiber before and was intrigued; I’d seen it in fiber shops before and it seemed very soft and pretty, but how would it spin?

It spins about as easily as any other fiber; it drafts very nicely and seems to want to be spun quite fine, so I’m spinning it on my very small Golding spindle. Occasionally I lose control of the draft but for the most part it’s a very enjoyable small spinning project. I plan to ply it 2-ply to maximize the yardage I’ll get and I’m hoping I get enough to at least make something small with it.

Here’s the thing, though: I’m not sure I’d ever go out and actually buy milk fiber. From what I can find out in my research online — which is very little — milk fiber is processed similarly to soy silk in that it comes from extruding the proteins (only in this case milk instead of the discarded waste of soy processing) into a spinnable fiber. I can’t seem to verify this, but some spinners say that this requires some harsh chemicals to achieve, and I like to avoid buying and spinning fibers that require lots of chemical processing — I mean, with wool and alpaca fiber, for instance, you feed the animals, they give you natural fertilizer for the garden and wool for your clothes that simply requires some soap and hot water. What could be easier? (Yes, I know soap is a chemical, but you have to draw your line somewhere.)

And that’s the other thing: what does milk fiber offer that other fibers don’t? I can’t seem to sort that out. It feels about as soft as soy silk, but I can get that softness from, well, soy silk or even good old-fashioned silk. It doesn’t seem to offer me a property that no other fiber can give me, and seems to require harsher processing to achieve — wool gives you warmth and memory, alpaca gives you even more warmth but with softness, silk gives you strength with softness…the list goes on. I can’t seem to figure out what it’s supposed to do better than fibers with a similar hand, like soy silk. This fiber kind of reminds me of Ingeo, a corn-based fiber that appeared on the spinning market a few years ago but I’ve not seen since.

So while this fiber is certainly pretty and I appreciate the seller throwing it in as a sample, I don’t know that I’ll be buying it anywhere and will be sticking to fibers that I know offer some property that I need or desire in my spinning. How about you, spinners? What are your thoughts on milk fibers, or any of the other new fibers that seem to be exploding onto the market?

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Making Stuff, Week 3: Spikes.

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.

One alpaca bobbin and one Corriedale bobbin.

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).

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The Trance of the Wheel

There are people who thrive on showing their unique-snowflake-ness to the world through the flashy display of their fringe hobbies. There is a kind of hobby-exhibitionism that these kinds of people revel in, a “look how strange I am, doing these strange things! Isn’t that strange? I’m so gosh-darned unique!” attitude that tends to get under my skin. It’s something I’m hypersensitive about because one of my hobbies — belly dance — requires a certain amount of willing exhibitionism, of diva and performer, to even fully engage with it on even the most basic level. And I am not one of those people.

Though not as much as belly dance, spinning falls into that category of odd hobby that people tend to find a little hippie, a little fringy, and a little weird. Because of that I’ve always been a little shy about spinning in public until I fell in with the Eastside Spinners Guild, a group of spinners that meets every Saturday, alternating between Starbucks here in Issaquah and Fortunato’s Wine Bar in Woodinville. Most people bring their spinning wheels and a few people bring regular drop spindles. I really wanted to join in even though I’ve always been a little self-conscious of spinning yarn in a public place (although I carry a spindle with wool in purse, I usually won’t do it in public — it’s generally reserved for lunch-time spinning in a secluded corner at work). I finally did join in a few weeks ago and have enjoyed the get-togethers I’ve been able to attend, and having so many other people to spin with I feel less like a weirdo doing some crazy hippie thing.

But what’s really strange is that I tend to attract all the people who want ask us what we’re doing. I have no idea why. There are usually at least ten people there and on days like today, twenty. All of them are equally capable of answering questions and all of them are just as friendly. But for some reason, they tend to pick me. And contrary to what I would have thought I thoroughly enjoy this.

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Making Stuff: Week 2

I’ve decided that since I do a lot more than spinning it would be a much better use of a weekly blog post on making stuff to, you know, make it about all the stuff. I knit, I spin, and I’ve even developed a little dabbling interest in making jewelry over the last year, so why limit it to spinning? So this week we’re just going to consider last week’s post a test run and continue the weekly theme under the title of “Making Stuff.”

I haven’t had as much time this week as I normally do because we’ve been really pushing hard on a deadline at work. (A little side note: did you know that the game I’m working on has been announced? If you haven’t already, check out Monday Night Combat at Uber Entertainment. We’re all pretty excited.) But I did manage to squeeze in a half hour or two here and there this week, and most of that was spent getting to know my new Lendrum.

Oh, my Lendrum! I’m so excited! Last week I bought my first-ever new-for-me spinning wheel, a Lendrum double treadle with all the accessories — plying head, fast flier, lazy kate, the works. For almost ten years I used a borrowed Louet S10 that dated from the 1970s. It was a great wheel, but really only great in the sense that I was ignorant of how other wheels felt and having learned to spin on this one (after graduating from a drop spindle) it was what I was used to. That doesn’t mean I look back on it as a bad wheel, quite the opposite. But it had its quirks — including a vicious knock that happened every rotation, something I tried for years to get rid of but could never find and fix the actual source — and began to feel limiting once I’d been spinning for several years, and I frequently looked in envy at the newer, more modern wheels that other spinners I knew were using.

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This Week in Spinning: Week 1

Taking a cue from my friend Jamie’s most excellent blog (highly recommended reading) I decided to start a weekly blogging project based on my yarn spinning. I don’t need to do it for motivational purposes — I’m pretty productive when it comes to spinning — but I thought it would be a great way to mark my own progress both creatively and in skill level. And it’s just kind of fun.

This weekend was actually pretty awful. For the first time in a while I had a weekend without any prior commitments, and I was going to spend early Saturday with the Eastside Spinner’s Guild and then head to work the rest of the day, and most of Sunday, so that I could bust through some work I need to get done for an upcoming deadline. But I woke up Saturday with an odd sense of motion sickness; I had some vague nausea and every time I moved my head it seemed to make it worse. As the morning went on it only got worse, and all I could do was lay down — any time I sat up I felt nauseous, and if I stood up my heart rate immediately skyrocketed and I felt like I was either going to faint or worse (you know, that nausea thing). I couldn’t read, I couldn’t spin, I couldn’t knit. I was trapped on the couch doing absolutely nothing, which is about the worst state to be in for me. I was horribly sick all night and didn’t begin to feel better until about three o’clock this morning. I decided to pass on going anywhere today since I was still pretty oogey-feeling when I got up and didn’t feel remotely normal until about five o’clock.

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