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.

Like the other blend I’m pretty sure this is actually closer to a 50/25/25 blend — the first pass on the hackle really weeded out a ton of shorter BFL fibers. I saved that stuff as it will be perfectly fine for carding, but I think it did probably change my final ratio. Like the last sock fiber batch I’m planning on dyeing this as well. I posted a call for color suggestions to the Glorious Grazers fans on Facebook and so far I’m liking the very first suggestion from one Erica Palmer to dye it a royal purple and red combo.

Although I’ve been using Benz’s fleece for a lot of sock fiber lately I’d hate for you to think that his fleece is only good for socks. It’s definitely a higher quality than that. All three of my boys have really great, soft fleece, but I’ve been using Benz’s for socks lately because (a) I’m on a sock yarn kick; (b) I’ve used all of Cinnamon’s from his 2009 shearing; and (c) I tend to save Silverton’s — he has the best quality fleece of the three, in my opinion, and the most beautiful natural color — for finer products.

Moving on to the next blend…remember the dye experiments from last week? I thought those might look good carded up, and I wanted to blend in some fleece from one of my boys for added softness. On hindsight I should have used Benz’s since black would have been the perfect color addition here, but oddly I chose Silverton’s. I think because I wanted the gray to desaturate the green in the batts somewhat. What I got was a really interesting woodland, forest-like batt.

A Merino/alpaca batt. I'm calling it 'Alpacas in the Mist.'

My first reaction when I took them off the carder was, “well, that’s…uh, interesting.” It didn’t immediately fill me with joy like the Blood Orange batts did. But then I started spinning them and my outlook has changed completely — I haven’t taken a picture of the yarn on the bobbin yet but I really love how the orange and tan blends and mixes randomly with the greens. And yes, Silverton’s gray did neutralize the greens somewhat. I’m spinning it to be a 2-ply worsted weight yarn and I should end up with a reasonable yardage. It’ll probably go in the Etsy shop as I’ve been wanting to add more yarns that actually have some of my boys’ fleece in them and only a couple of those are in the shop currently (I’ve sold quite a few to coworkers, of all people).

In the dyeing segment of this week’s work we have a small amount of Merino that I dyed a simple blue. My plan is to blend this in a 50/50 blend with Silverton’s fleece, card it, spin it, and then ply it with a silver thread. I really think that’ll look stunning. I saw some traces of purple in there; I’m not sure if that’s left over from my last dye batch and I just didn’t clean out the pot well or what, but it should just add nicely to the final color.

A few ounces of Merino, dyed a simple blue with a little purple left over in there.

In the finished yarn category there’s the milk fiber that I finally finished and plied. My thoughts on this were a resounding “meh.” As I said before, it was pleasant enough to spin, at least most of the time — I occasionally found that it drafted a bit like pure soy silk in that you have spots that were super easy to draft and spots where it just didn’t want to slide at all (this is why I always blend soy silk). But it just doesn’t seem to offer anything new to me as a fiber except a lot of baggage since the processing is supposedly pretty chemically intensive. But at least when I look at it now in the spinning supply shops I don’t have to feel it and wonder. Spinning this was like trying on that dress you really love on the rack but are pretty sure you won’t like on you, and then actually being relieved that you were right, it looks terrible on you, and you no longer have to wonder or spend money on something you aren’t going to like. You just know.

Milk fiber yarn, spun fingering weight 2-ply.

The dye job — not mine — was certainly pretty, and if you’re wondering where it came from it’s a sample from the Moonlight & Laughter Etsy shop — she has some really pretty rovings so be sure and check her out.

And finally, in the Featured Yarn category, it’s one of my first attempts at a yarn that is completely out of my comfort zone, an art yarn that really tests my skills, all ten years of them.

Now, don’t laugh.

Okay, you aren’t going to laugh, right? Because you promised.

Green Apple Martini & Keep 'Em Comin'.

It’s called “Green Apple Martini & Keep ‘Em Comin’”, and I haven’t decided what I think about it. On the one hand, it’s definitely quite different from the yarns I usually spin. On the other hand, I’m not sure it’s what I had envisioned when I planned this yarn, and that’s really the ultimate test, isn’t it? The mohair is far chunkier that I thought it would be, and there’s simply too much of it, I think. The BFL green base is fine, but even plied with the thread it’s got too much of a…well, plied look.

I know that sounds silly, but I think ultimately what I really want is a low-twist single, roughly worsted weight, one that is fairly even and consistent in thickness except for occasional gradual and minimal changes in that thickness, and with small mohair cherry locks worked in somehow very sparingly. But how to work in those mohair locks without plying the yarn in order to hold them? Maybe what I really need to do is card some mohair and marl it into the yarn in spots. I’m not sure. So I’m considering this a test version of my idea, and so in some respects even if I’m not wild about it it was a success: I learned something about what I really wanted and how to execute on the yarn I’m seeing in my head, and I have some better ideas on how to do that for a 2.0 version. This version is currently hanging on my fiber rack on the wall so I can see it and mull it over visually for a while. Maybe I’ll come to a different opinion about it the more I look at it.

I’m putting in a lot of hours right now at work so my spinning time is reduced for at least a few weeks, but I should still have something to show for next week. And of course, between now and then you should check out all the other fiber arts posts at Fiber Arts Friday on WonderWhyGal’s awesome blog!

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!

And speaking of experimentation, I snapped a quick picture of the raw materials for my next art yarn project.

Yummy!

I’m not going to tell you what I’m doing with it yet, but it’s going to be called “Green Apple Martini & Keep ‘em Comin’.” That’s more BFL that I dyed last week as well as some mohair locks I dyed a cherry red that’s even more beautiful and perfect a shade than I imagined it would be.

And there’s more experimentation! This weekend I embarked on some more dye experiments. The goal: to get a sage green. I thought this would be easy…I was wrong.

Having been reading Color in Spinning by Deb Menz and with Matt to advise me in how color as it relates to mixing paint works, I sat down to figure out how to achieve a sage green with the Jacquard acid dyes I have. To me, sage green is a gray green or silvery green, so going from what I’ve learned about paints, dyes, and color theory it seemed that I should take a green and add some red, the color opposite from it, in order to bring it closer to gray. I decided to try this with a couple of greens but keeping the red constant, and going with a roughly 80/20 blend of green to red. The fiber I used was commercially prepared Merino in one-ounce groups.

My dye experiments with some unexpected results.

So, there’s some pretty unexpected results there. Let’s break it down.

First I went with Emerald. I mixed the dyes in the pot and the water looked exactly the right shade: a gray green. So I let that in the dye bath and as I watched over time, I noticed that, fairly quickly, the water became bright blue and the roving turned green. That seemed odd; it was as if the blue molecules that formed from the red addition just simply didn’t absorb. I left it in the dye bath the right amount of time but it just didn’t want to absorb that blue, and the result was picture number one.

I moved on to Chartreuse with Fire Red. Chartreuse has a yellow base and I was pretty sure I was going to get something orange because of that, but for the sake of science I pressed on anyway. And I think the results are actually kind of cool even if it’s not what I wanted — that result is picture number two. Picture number three was Brilliant Kelly Green, another yellow-base green dye, with Fire Red. Interesting tan shade and something I may want to use down the line.

What you see in picture number four, though, was the most unexpected result. After talking to Matt about my results from the Emerald and Fire Red he suggested I try brown instead of red, so I pulled out my Chestnut dye, which is kind of a burgundy brown. When I first mixed that with Emerald the dye bath seemed to be just the right color again and it looked promising. But once again, as I watched, blue dye formed and didn’t seem to be absorbing into the roving. But what’s really weird is that when I pulled the roving out, it looked highly variegated, as if I’d painted the roving with two different colors, not mixed two dyes evenly in the dye bath. I have no idea why this happened. The green that did form is, for the most part, almost the sage green I’m going for but not quite (and it’s still a lovely shade of green in its own right), and the roving is mottled with chestnut. It’s as if the colors separated again once I mixed them, but some of the chestnut did seem to contribute to the green. I’m really surprised that happened and I’m not sure how to prevent that from happening again.

I’m still somewhat confused about the results in pictures 1 and 2. I’m trying to get some answers on the dye list I’m on, and they’re all surprised that I chose to add red, but I’m certain that’s what I read in Menz’s book. They’re suggesting adding yellow instead to the Emerald, so I may give that a try and see what I get, even though I can’t see how that’s going to add gray to the Emerald. But that’s why we experiment, eh?

And one last thing that’s fiber-related: I’ve started a Facebook page for The Glorious Grazers, the name of our little farm and yarn business. So if you’re on Facebook please make yourself a fan!

Well, I managed to get this written before I head off to work today so I can still make it into Fiber Arts Friday! Check out all the other great things people are doing with fiber, and I’ll see you again next week when I hope to have my green apple martini in hand.

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.

Regardless, he wouldn’t be able to make one without having one to examine, and so I figured that since we didn’t even know if he would want to make one or could, I would go ahead and get it and I’d have a drum carder and he’d have one to look at.

When Matt’s dad came over he had no idea what I was doing, so I explained what the drum carder was and he was utterly fascinated. I mentioned that it was a half-sized model and that, while it did the job, there were a few things I probably would want to be different if I ever got a different carder. He said he’d love to make one and that it really wouldn’t be that difficult as long I could get the carding cloth, which I knew I could get. In fact, I decided it would be useful to get a carding cloth with a TPI (tines per inch) that was higher than the one on the Louet so I’d have some versatility in carders. I went with a 90 TPI, slightly more than the Louet’s 72 but not as high as my Schacht hand carders, which are 112. (The higher the TPI, the finer the fiber the cloth is meant to card.)

In case you’re interested, I got the carding cloth from the fine people at Howard Brush. They were very informative, quick to respond, and give great customer service, which was a contrast with the place I’d originally tried to order the cloth from, Woodland Woolworks. I’m not even going to provide a link to them — I ordered the cloth back in November and was told it was backordered for at least three weeks, which was fine, but after five weeks when I contacted them I was told, “a week to ten days,” and when we finally started getting into mid-February I had heard that at least two or three times. Not only that, they accidentally sent me a “your order has shipped” email…for someone else’s order! I thought it was my carding cloth and got all excited, but when it failed to arrive and I contacted them to find out where it was, they said they must have accidentally sent me the wrong order email. And how long would my carding cloth take to come in? You guessed it: a week to ten days.

Matt’s dad was getting really impatient — he had most of the drum carder put together and only needed the carding cloth to begin the final phase. So I contacted Howard Brush and they told me that not only did they have what I wanted in stock but that they could ship it out the next day, and that’s what they did. The only difference was that I had to order it in foot-long increments as opposed to the inch-increments from Woodland Woolworks, so I had to get four feet of it even though I only needed thirty-eight inches. It turned out to still be cheaper to order more of it from Howard Brush than it was to get it — if I was ever going to — from Woodland Woolworks. So please, buy from Howard Brush and support them if you plan to order anything like what they sell.

Anyway, Once the cloth came in he brought the finished drums over in a makeshift holder that allowed us to measure how far apart they needed to be — that was really the only thing he wasn’t sure about. The Louet’s teeth mesh, something I really didn’t like (though some do), so I asked people on Spin-List if they could tell me how far apart the teeth were on their drum carders. Someone replied that the test is being able to just slide an index card between them — perfect! We could replicate that, and so we did. He took it home and a few days later…voila! He brought over the finished product, and I was absolutely floored with how beautiful it is. It’s not just a drum carder, it’s a thing of beauty. Even just in aesthetics it beats anything out there, in my opinion.

The drum carder, taken while still clean of fleece.

He machined every part, including the handle, which turns butter-smooth.

He even machined these clamps for it. The CLAMPS, people!

What a nice handle he made for it for carrying, too!

And yes, he machined the gears, too. They're sandblasted aluminum.

I’m just stunned at how beautiful this thing is. And it’s surprisingly lightweight — he took some weight out by making the drums hollow (without making them too delicate to card with) and added a great handle in the perfect place. For some reason the Louet has a weird leather loop only big enough to hook a finger or two in, and it’s heavy enough that it’s awkward and painful to carry that way so I’m not sure why they even bothered with that.

Of course, the real test is this: how does it card? Naturally I ran to my fiber room and grabbed some of Silverton’s fleece for the final test. Let me tell you, this thing makes a beautiful batt. It turned like butter, didn’t tear at my fleece like the Louet can do if a heavy lock manages to sneak in there or the carder gets a little too full. (Louet’s literature on the Junior model insists that it can make the same three ounce batts that full-sized models make, but I cannot put more than one ounce of fiber on there or the fiber tears and I get neps.)

I haven’t had a chance this week to sit down and do any carding beyond the initial test, but I can’t wait to get to it on Sunday when I plan to card some Silverton locks for my Silverton Sweater project and the dry fleece I finished washing this week from Benz for the last of the commissioned yarn project. I couldn’t wait to share my enthusiasm, though, and sent a picture of the carder along to Spin-List, which prompted several spinners to ask how much Matt’s dad would charge to make some more. Sadly this is a one-time thing; at 75 he isn’t interested in going into business and prefers to work on his own projects. Occasionally he just likes trying something new and my spinning equipment caught his eye, and I think he just wanted to see if he could do it for the exercise.

The carder stole the show this week as Most Awesome Thing Made In The World Ever, but Matt also whipped something up for me: a fiber rack for my fiber room. I had noticed we had a couple of old and slightly beat-up wooden coat racks in the toolshed; Matt said he wanted to put one up in the utility room to hang his fishing gear from, and the other one he hung this week in the barn stall we don’t use so we can keep the pasture-cleaning shovel, dustpan, and other tools we use within the pasture nearby. Although I want to put some nice wooden shelving up at some point in the fiber room I had liked the idea of hanging one of these coat racks, or something like them, in the room to hang skeins that need washing, roving I’ve dyed that I want to keep within eyesight for project ideas, and more. I like having my fiber out and accessible so I can see what I have rather than keeping it tucked away in plastic bins in the closet, which is where it is now. If it’s out and I can see it, I have far more ideas for fiber combinations, colorways I’d like to create, and basically I just get inspired by the fibers I see when I go in and spin. It helps me to remember what exactly I have.

So Matt reproduced the coat rack for me from some dowels he got and some wood we had in the barn. It’s perfect, and I love seeing some of my finished yarns and rovings hanging from it.

My new fiber rack!

And yes, there’s been some actual fiber work this week. I tackled another dye project this week — nothing so scientific as single dye color tests (I’ll get back to those soon enough) but just something fun. I took eight ounces of some superwash Blue-Faced Leicester and dyed them in burgundy, gold, and chestnut.

Superwash BFL in burgundy, gold, and chestnut.

Judging from the color chart I had assumed the chestnut, which you can barely see in this pic, would come out far more brown than it did. Instead it looks more like a burgundy that’s been drabbed with a lot of gray. It’s not bad, it’s just that there’s not enough contrast, at least visibly in the roving, to really see it between the gold and burgundy.

Spinning Term: “Superwash”
Most sheep wool will felt (become a tangled mat of fabric) when exposed to heat and agitation — for instance, when you throw that nice hand-wash-only cashmere sweater into the hot washing machine and it comes out as a tiny, matted replica of its former self. Superwash wool is wool that’s been treated by a process that renders it incapable of felting, thus allowing products made with it to be machine washed safely.

Regardless of the less than inspiring chestnut colors, I actually think the chestnut is going to be a bit more noticeable once it’s spun and I’m happy with it. I’m spinning this into superfine singles that I’ll then ply into a 3-ply sock yarn — not chain-plied as is typical, but a standard 3-ply. I kind of want to see the colors interplay that way. And I’m deliberately trying to spin it finer than the Falkland/alpaca/nylon blend I recently created and have been knitting with. While I love that yarn so far the resulting gauge is just a touch thicker than I had intended or liked.

And finally, remember the “Blood Orange” batts I showed off last week? I took all six ounces of them to this past weekend’s Eastside Spin-In (I would have worked on the commissioned yarn but I still had more fleece to wash and dry) and managed to get them all spun into a nice, roughly-worsted-weight single. I plied it with gold embroidery thread and I really, really love the result. I ended up with two skeins of roughly 155 yards each, which is just perfect. This will go up in my Etsy shop once they’re washed and dried. I’m not sure what to call it yet.

The Blood Orange batts turned into yarn.

I have even more to show off, but I’m going to save it for next week — I dyed some BFL and some mohair locks for an art yarn I got a flash of inspiration for earlier this week. I’ll be calling it, “Green Apple Martini and Keep ‘Em Comin’.” I’d show you how I dyed the fibers in preparation for it but I don’t want to spoil the surprise as I plan to spin that one this week and show it off next time. I also got the beginnings of another art yarn idea that I jotted down and plan to call, “You and Your Filthy Sea Shanties.” I’m not even going to describe that one, I just want you to think about what that yarn could look like until it’s made.

Until next week, check out all the other Fiber Arts Friday posts over at WonderWhyGal’s blog!

But in between all of that I did manage to do some more dyeing experiments, sticking mostly with the red family so I could see some consistent changes. I didn’t take individual pictures this week of all the individual batches after they were dyed, but I did take pieces of each fiber and mark them for my records. First I dyed the last of my Falkland wool, about an ounce, with a 2:1 ratio of Burgundy to Scarlet, and then I dyed one ounce of Merino wool with the opposite ratio, 1:2 of Burgundy to Scarlet. The shades turned out really pretty and distinct enough to notice. Finally, I dyed another couple of ounces of Merino with a roughly 2:1 ratio of Fire Red to Salmon, something I was just interested in seeing the results of since Salmon is so orangey-pink. That turned out to be a very pretty dark, dusty pinkish-red.

I stuck with the red this week because I figured this way, after seeing all of the dyeing results and keeping samples for my records, I could card them together into a blended batt along with the bright orangey salmon Falkland I had leftover from my beaded yarn experiment. Looking at all the colors together before carding, I had this image that they might look like the colors of a blood orange when put together.

A Merino/Falkland batt. I'm calling the colorway 'Blood Orange'.

Sure enough, that’s almost exactly how it came out. I didn’t carefully weight out the percentages but rather wanted to experiment as I carded it together, but I’m sure it’s roughly 50/50 Merino and Falkland. I blended it in roughly organized layers: The Scarlet/Salmon mix first, then some Salmon Falkland, then some Fire Red/Scarlet Merino, then some Scarlet/Burgundy Merino, then some Salmon Falkland, then some Burgundy/Scarlet Merino, followed by more Salmon Falkland. I left the batts at one blending pass to retain the color banding. I ended up with just over six ounces.

Spinning Term: “Batts”
Batts are flat rectangles of fiber that have usually been prepared with a drum carder — a machine with two barrels of teeth that “card”, or align, the fibers together. Batts are different from top in that the fibers do not have to be all the same length, and drum-carded batts will produce more blended batches of color when created with dyed fibers. Because they are fluffy rectangles of variously-aligned fibers instead of long strips of perfectly-aligned fibers (as in top), batts, when spun, typically produce a woolen yarn, one that is lofty, airy, and warm.

The yarn I plan to make from this will be a roughly worsted weight yarn, spun semi-thick-and-thin, and then plied with some kind of glittery, dark thread. I still have to determine how I want to spin the batts — I don’t want them to blend too well so I don’t want to pull them into roving (which would only serve to help the fibers blend even more), so I’m thinking of simply pulling off hunks and spinning from the long side to get a definite woolen result. We’ll see how that goes. I really can’t wait to spin these and I’m hoping I’ll be able to begin them this weekend at the Issaquah Spin-In.

Don’t forget, check out more Fiber Arts Friday posts!

Are you talkin' to me? Are YOU talkin' to ME?

Because these are the first farm animals we’ve ever owned I’ll admit that we were really skittish and shy about how to handle them at first. Don and Jody of Jo’s Fleece Fields have helped us a lot with that, but really it just comes down to working with them more and more, which is why we’re trying to make sure we get some deliberate handling in about one a month even if they don’t need a toenail trim. Even though we’re not a farm in the big sense and our boys don’t have to be handled except when they get sheared and they get their toenails trimmed, what if — as unlikely as it is — we had to move them in an emergency and we were still uncomfortable with halters? And of course we want to be fully comfortable for all of this when shearing day comes up in early June. In order to do this, we are making a concerted effort to step up to the plate as Barn Bosses.

Alpacas are wily, perceptive, curious, intensely personable, and very smart. All experienced alpaca owners have told us that working with alpacas requires you to establish firmly with them that you are the boss of them, otherwise you’re just never going to be able to get them to go where you need them to go because they will be able to read your tentativeness and manage to escape your every attempt to corral or halter them.

Benz and Silverton have both been pretty easy. Benz takes a halter with no effort and Silverton is very calm once we’ve actually got him and he can see the halter going on — he only seems to start fussing if I take too long. “Good Lord, woman, it’s like you’ve never done this before,” I swear is what he’s thinking. Cinnamon is our drama queen, though, and the last couple of times we’ve done it have been with great effort and lots of bucking. While all three of our boys have very distinct and colorful personalities, Cinnamon’s is by far the most vibrant and spirited. If you want him to stand still so you can trim his toenails, he’ll slip like a snake out of your grasp. But when you want him to be ten feet away from you so you can sweep the barn floor or trim the blackberries, he’s literally on top of your feet. It’s what makes him so funny, though, and extra fun to interact with.

The first two times — a few months ago and a month or so back — I put his halter on he was almost unbearable. In fact, the first time I did it I didn’t even get the halter on, we had to just give up he was bucking so hard. The second time we managed to get it on but he kept thrashing his head around even after we let him go (just holding on to the lead) that it was clear we’d done something wrong and the halter was bothering him too intensely to keep on, so I took it off.

This time we were determined not to let him think he could just get his way. Matt caught him up in a good, solid hold and after a moment or two of bucking and a firm re-establishment that he was not squirming out this time, we got his halter on. Unlike last time I felt like I’d actually done the job right the first time: the halter was snug everywhere it needed to be and when Matt let him go he didn’t buck or squirm. He still whined and hummed, but he stood there. I wanted to walk him around the barn for a bit before we did his toenails just to establish a little calm first. Every few moments he would pull at the lead trying to get away from me, but I held it firmly just as I’d read in The Camelid Companion and told him, too bad, you’re not the boss this time. I led him a little bit around the inside of the barn, occasionally having to firmly hold the lead against his pulling but for the most part successfully establishing with him that he was going to have to do what I wanted him to do for a change.

Matt immediately noticed a difference, commenting that Cinnamon seemed calmer even as he was still anxious, and that I looked like the definitive boss between the two of us. Anytime Cinnamon pulled I stood my ground, told him to stand, and refused to let him wriggle away. Even I noticed a change — he was still wily and obstinate, but he seemed to understand that this time he was getting haltered and getting his toenails trimmed (oh, the humanity of it!) whether he wanted to or not. We still had to firmly hold him even with the halter to do that, but that’s normal anyway.

We got all four feet of all three boys successfully taken care of, and we body scored them as well, something I want to do at least once a month throughout a full year so I can note the changes happening under the fleece. Last time we body scored them we were surprised to see that Benz was actually the skinniest despite visibly looking like the largest — this time Cinnamon was the skinniest. Benz’s hip bones were feel-able but not sharply bony; Silverton’s I could barely feel at all. Cinnamon’s hip bones felt somewhat prominent under his fleece to the point where I’m wondering if he’s a little on the underweight side but I’m still learning what’s considered underweight for an alpaca, so any of you alpaca owners reading this, please feel free to comment on that.

So we’re pretty proud of ourselves today and our first real, firm establishment of who the Barn Boss is. The more we do this the more comfortable we’ll be. Shearing Day, here we come!

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.

I’m not heartbroken at the result; I’ve had this fiber in my stash for a long time and really this project was just to free up some room for a couple of fibers I hemmed and hawed about what to do with. I may keep it, I may try and sell it on Etsy. I’m sure this yarn is good for someone for some kind of project, I’m just not sure that someone is me. I do plan to knit a swatch with it, though, before I decide that. Who knows? Maybe the swatch will win me over. I’m so used to really loving every yarn I make that I feel kind of bummed that I have this skein I’m not wild about.

But to make up for it I embarked on a blending project this week with my own alpaca fiber from my boy Silverton, whose fleece is so silky and fine you want to just roll in a big pile of it. Every time I handle his fleece I want to run out into the pasture and give him a big, warm, silky, soft hug. Unfortunately he’d hate that, so I’m relegated to hugging his fiber instead.

A few weeks ago at the Eastside spin-in one of the ladies was spinning up an 80/20 blend of black alpaca and white silk. It looked lovely but she was having problems spinning it, she said. It just wasn’t drafting right and she really wasn’t loving it. While I thought the fiber looked pretty as she was spinning it it really didn’t jump out at me at the time as something hugely special, and I mostly forgot about it until this past week. This time, she brought in the finished yarn and the hat she’d finished knitting from it. The yarn was absolutely gorgeous — it was incredibly soft and the white silk gave it a black, charcoal sheen that almost reminded me of graphite. And did I mention soft? It was soft. I was in love with it.

So in love with it that I decided to make a blend of my own that would, I hope, be pretty close, but done with my own alpaca’s fiber. I could have used Benz’s black fleece but I thought a white silk combined with the super softness of Silverton’s fleece would be a terrific combination.

80% Silverton's fleece (combed top) blended with 20% white cultivated silk.

Fortunately for me I had bought a couple of ounces of silk the last time I was at The Weaving Works knowing that I wanted to do some blending with it soon. I had some top that I had hand-combed myself this summer from this year’s shearing but it hadn’t been washed yet — normally you really wouldn’t comb fleece until you’ve washed it but I had been impatient this summer after getting my boys and their 2009 fleeces and my new wool combs, and Silverton’s fleece is hardly dirty at all, it seems, when you open up the bag.

Spinning Term: “Top”
“Top” is a preparation of fiber in which the longest, strongest, and best-quality fibers have been processed and aligned into one long strip to spin from. It’s called “top” because it’s the top quality fibers from the fleece, and you get top from taking the locks from the fleece and combing them with special combs, either by hand or, as they do commercially, with machinery. When you’ve used the combs the locks have been opened up and the longest, strongest, and best fibers remain on the combs while the shorter bits and little “second cuts” from the fleece get left behind. You can now pull these good fibers off with a diz, just like I showed in Week 3. What you get from this is “combed top” or just “top.”

So I took the combed top and washed it Monday night, and by Wednesday night it was dry enough to blend. I used my blending hackle and, this time, actually measured out the fiber percentages rather than just eyeballing it. By the end of the night I had 2.5 ounces of beautiful alpaca/silk roving, and I’ve still got another 1.5 ounces or so of alpaca top to blend with. I’m not sure what I’m going to spin it into yet; part of me wants a nice 3-ply rounded yarn to make a hat with like my fellow spinner did, but part of me wants to spin it laceweight to make something finer with. I really don’t have any alpaca hats, so I’ll probably go with the former.

And finally, this week I started what will be a longer term project that will help me learn more about the part of this skillset that I’m least familiar with: fiber dyeing. I only started seriously dyeing my own fiber this summer; before that I’d done a little Kool-Aid dyeing of some cheap fibers just to experiment, but nothing that I had really planned out ahead of time. Since I want to be able to control what colors I get and begin experimenting with my own color blends, I thought it was time to put my new fiber records to use and start recording some proper experiments.

Over the last few months I’ve been reading Deb Menz’s Color in Spinning, something recommended to me to get me started in how to blend colors for spinning. And wow, what a book. This is such a great resource and I wish I’d picked this up years ago. Menz really breaks down color theory for spinners and what it means when it comes to blending fibers and how to control every aspect of the process.

What’s really funny about dipping my toes into dye (har har) is that it’s kind of silly how newbie I feel about it. For years now I’ve been a web/game UI designer, so it isn’t like I’m not familiar with color theory. Although I’m not a formally-trained designer and definitely not an artist, I certainly have had to learn a bit about color theory to do my job over the years. But there’s something I learned when I started dyeing actual fibers as opposed to combining colors on a monitor: did you know that colors in the real world don’t add up to white? That sound you heard was a facepalm.

I mean, it’s pretty obvious they don’t. But when you’ve worked only in web-based colors and never even have to think about printed or painted colors it can be easy to forget how color works in the real world. So when I first started combining colors I got a few mixes that felt totally out of the blue (ha!), just things I wasn’t expecting to see. Matt saw me scratching my head about this. Matt, I should say, got his degree in graphic design, is an artist, and is the grandson of a well-known Pacific Northwest painter. So he knows a little bit about color. “Well,” he said, “colors multiply. Remember?”

Ohhhhh yeah. Dur.

I decided that a fun beginning project to test out how different percentages of color contribute to a final blend would be to take two colors I thought might combine nicely and dye some fiber with them in two parts of one color mixed with one part of the other color, and then flip it. So last night I dyed up my remaining, undyed one ounce of Falkland from the sock fiber I recently made. I chose two colors: Burgundy and scarlet. Sure, they’re not that far apart on the color wheel but that’s kind of why I chose them — this way I could see if the color difference would be subtle or noticeable. I used two parts burgundy dye to one part scarlet.

One ounce of Falkland dyed with two parts burgundy and one part scarlet.

I really love the resulting color. It has a touch more red in it than when I used straight burgundy to dye some alpaca fiber this summer. And tonight I dyed some Merino wool with two parts scarlet and one part burgundy — that’s drying as I type. And I do notice the color difference; the former is more wine-colored while the latter is more blood-red, and since I’ve used straight scarlet as a color I do see that adding burgundy can make a noticeable difference in the final shade. I added a tuft of the Falkland to my fiber record, slipping in a note card of the dye blend, and when the Merino is dry I’ll do the same and snap a picture. Next week I’ll put them side by side for comparison.

Upcoming projects this week will be to finish the commissioned yarn now that all the fibers are carded and ready to spin, and that will be my main priority. I’ll also continue with my dye experiments, possibly trying out some green/blue mixes.

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.

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.

My new Fiber Record.

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.

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?

Check out other Fiber Arts Friday posts!

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).

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.

Fiber on the blending hackle. SPIKES!

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.

My new diz, handmade by Mother Nature.

Pulling roving through the diz.

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.

Falkland/alpaca/nylon ready to be dyed. It's a cellphone shot, hence the poor quality.

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.

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.

It’s amazing the range of ages and types of people who walk up with furrowed brows and ask what exactly we’re doing: kids, the elderly, busy moms, men in their 40s…it doesn’t matter. Everyone is curious. All of them — with the exception of children, maybe — seem to have a vague idea that we’re making yarn but it’s as if, when they see us, they struggle to recall some ancient ancestral memory of spindles and animal fiber from tens of thousands of years ago to help address the fact that they feel like they know what they’re seeing but can’t quite put all the pieces together for a finished answer. It isn’t so much that they don’t know what we’re doing but that they can’t believe people would actually do this. I mean, you can go down and buy yarn, for God’s sake.

By far the most fun questions come from children, and today a boy who seemed to be about nine or ten stuck by my side like glue, with his attention undivided, for at least twenty minutes. He was completely entranced by the wheel. He marched up and started off with, “what are you making?” When I explained he hopped from question to question without hesitation like leaping from rock to rock in a pond. What does the yarn come from? If it comes from animals, how do I get it off of them? Once it’s off of them, how do I get it to look like what I was holding in my hand? (Because he was smart enough to know that animals aren’t nearly that clean, obviously.) And once the questions about the actual material were exhausted he moved on to the wheel itself. How do I get it to rotate? Why was the thing on my wheel that was spinning fast spinning more slowly than the lady next to me? So if the difference in the speed is because of things like the size of the circle on the spinning thing, why would you use different sized circles? (This kid was sharp.)

At a certain point he ran out of questions. His sister had sidled up at some point but was a little more shy about asking things. There was no sign of their parents, I just assumed they were somewhere in the coffee shop. He felt the fiber I was spinning and commented on how soft it was. I asked him if he’d like to see a picture of the alpacas I had and his eyes opened wide and he nodded with a smile, so I pulled up the picture on my cellphone. “You have all the colors!” He said. “Except for brown,” he added.

When he ran out of questions he simply watched. He stood there, right at my elbow, simply watching me and the rest of the ladies there making yarn, absorbing how things worked. Occasionally he would ask another technical question about the wheel but for the most part he was silent and he just watched. It was a lovely zen moment that made me appreciate today’s kids even though I tend to rail on, a little absurdly sometimes, about how too many of them don’t get enough time away from the TV and video games these days.

Which is completely ironic since I actually make video games for a living. I participate in the very thing that tends to get blamed for all the ills of society these days, including the attention span this kid was supposed to be lacking (though for the record, like most game developers I believe all things should be in moderation). And that made the moment even sweeter because it was as if we were both taking time out to appreciate something a little simpler, and he was completely absorbed in something that pre-dated all the technological ADD-inducing advancements that are constantly competing for his diminishing attention span, something thousands of years old but that seemed utterly new to him. And suddenly made it feel new to me again.

So thanks, kid, for the fun afternoon, whoever you were.