Fiber Fool

Firstly, thanks for indulging my absence last week. It took me until Wednesday to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I liked it, but that is about all I’ll say on the blog, e-mail if you really want to discuss it in detail) because I was trying to be good and still get my gardening and work tasks completed. By that point I had kind of enjoyed my hiatus from the blog. We were also originally going to be on vacation for a week starting last Wednesday so I decided it was okay to just take a brief vacation from the blog.

It ended up being a very good thing to do. Last week was almost unbearably hot so I didn’t accomplish much in the way of fibery stuff other than to think about it. But I even felt that my brain was par-boiled and I couldn’t think straight anymore. There was no way I was going to cook either. Not even grilling because the grill is on the west side of the house. This week is looking to be improved. Still hot, but not in the upper 90’s with lows barely below 70 so I should be in a bit better place.

Anyway, I seem to have won Deb’s contest to celebrate her 1000th post. I can’t tell you how excited I am to knit with someone else’s handspun!!!! But since I won a contest it seems I should hold one so I can pay the kindness forward. I haven’t decided upon the prize yet. I was thinking perhaps two of my patterns, but I might sweeten the pot a tad too. You just never know :-) Just asking for comments isn’t enough though. I have to make you work a little :-)

I finally finished up my first skein of lace weight for my Spun Stitches shawl last week. I used Abby’s plying technique and that is a fantastic method. I did end up with some inconsistencies, but overall I’m thrilled with the final product. It is in a warm bath as I type.

For the contest I’m asking you to guess the total yardage for this skein. It weighs 3.1 oz. The bobbin is the standard Majacraft “4 oz” plastic bobbin. The niddy noddy here is in the 1.5 yd configuration. The WPI of the unwashed yarn was ~25 WPI. My yardage total will be based on the niddy noddy unless I get assistance in getting a measure from a McMorran Balance (I don’t own one so I’ll need to borrow one or get someone to measure it with one). The winner will be the one closest to the actual measure without going over!

Well, my signing up for Tour de Fleece was awful optimistic given that the later part of July is often the worst as far as heat goes. Not that we’ll hit August and everything will be magically better, but come August usually we actually start cooling off decently at night again. As it has been we’ve been starting the day off with the house only cooled down to 74 degrees. That is plenty comfortable, but it means we climb over 80 by mid afternoon. My brain is cooking! Seriously, I can’t put three words together anymore. I’m not sure if it is directly correlated to the heat or if it is a matter of the lack of sleep due to the heat but it is driving me nuts!

Despite the heat I did finally finish up the second bobbin of lace singles for Spun Stitches. Once they set I’ll be plying them. It also means I need to get moving on making the slightly darker version of batts here too! I need to come up with a method that allows me to card while sitting though as my feet definitely can’t handle standing on the garage floor for the hours it took me to make the first three batts.

A Harry Potter update - the book arrived on Saturday, but at 8:30pm!!! And, there are 4 pages of it that are nearly unreadable!!! DH was very close to done when we absolutely needed to go to bed last night, but we took SIL3 out to dinner for her birthday and she lent us her copy as well so I’ll be doing a bunch of reading today, though perhaps some of it will be at a coffeeshop or something in hopes of getting my brain back.

And because we know it is busy garden time and there is something new everytime you check on it…

We have watermelon! I swear I counted four the other night, but once I went out to take photos I only found two. But isn’t it twee??? It’s so tiny, but you can tell it is watermelon! :-) We also thought we saw some set midget melons, but I couldn’t find those either, but you can tell the plants are going nuts with new growth and blooms! The watermelon vines I swear double overnight, LOL!

On that note, it’s time to do the morning garden chores and then hit Harry Potter!

I think I have learned a valuable lesson. Keep the wheel within easy reach. I had moved it down to the basement soon after replacing the shaft as it was starting to get a bit warm upstairs and I enjoy spinning while watching TV. However, it has gotten hot enough now that I try to stay out of the basement until just before bed so I don’t heat it up down there and we can retreat there before bed to cool off. With the wheel sitting down there and my trying to stay out of the basement it just was gathering dust.

On Friday I *finally* finished up the first 2 ounces of the merino that Margene gave me for my birthday which is the tulips colorway from Wooly Wonka. I’m quite happy with the singles, but I was having one heck of a time keeping that twist out of my drafting triangle. So much so that I was getting cramps in my forward hand after spinning for only about 15 minutes. I’ve decide to not fight with it right now and the other two ounces will wait for a bit.

After wrapping up that first bobbin of merino I finally got to put the lace flyer on. Kirsten finally wore me down and I have signed up for Spun Stitches. She got me with her comment about the solar dyed batts I made a while back being perfect for a shawl. That is what is on the wheel right now. I’m loving it. it just flows onto the bobbin nearly effortlessly. I do have some neps in the fiber, but they are pretty easy to pick out. I’ve got about an ounce on there so I’m just a bit over half done with the first batt.

I did turn the batt into roving first by splitting it vertically, but not all the way through and then turning the corner. Then I predrafted slightly and rolled it into a ball. It is working quite well and I think is giving me pretty even color blending as well. The plan at this stage is to ply two of the batts from the original three together and then ply the third with another batt I intend to make with the same base colors but with a bit of a dark green in it. Then I’ll do a skein of two of the darker batts as well. That way I can do a coordinated color progression on the shawl. I’ve only planned out as far as the yarn though. I have no ideas for patterns just yet.

Over the weekend we picked up an outdoor rug and put that on the patio underneath the patio set. We had found we were sinking a bit too much as the rock wasn’t settled yet. Having a rug out there has made it that much easier for me to spin outside though. I don’t have to take my own rug out in addition to the wheel and fiber. The largest portion of the patio is on the west side of the house so it stays nice and cool out there until about 11 - 11:30 am and I can look out over a lot of our garden area and watch birds and such as I spin. It is very nice! Speaking of that, I think my wheel is calling!

It was another jam packed weekend, filled with savory cheesecake, puppy chow, script writing (not me, DH), cheesemaking (not me, DH) and beer brewing (and again, not me, DH)… There was also some gardening, including weeding, feeding, and a titch more planting.

The highlight of my weekend? What is pictured above — fixing my wheel! Yes, I am back spinning on my own wheel. I did enjoy using the Schacht and I think it was very good for me to get to try a different set-up and wheel now that I’m a fairly comfortable spinner. But I do enjoy my wheel. It was fantastic to log some time with it once again here over the weekend. The Schacht will be returning home tomorrow and I’ll get to test drive Cathy’s new Sonata and perhaps her other wheels as well.

The other highlight of the weekend was the arrival of the new Spin-Off. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into the cover article on controlling the striping in dyed roving as well as Judith Mackenzie McCuin’s article on wet finishing yarns. Those not already initiated into the convenience of Andean plying, that is the Spinning Basics article (PDF) this issue! Yes, spinning things have become the highlight of my weekends. Shut-up!

Another good point of the weekend was chatting with my sister. She’s had a poor set of neighbors move in above her so she is preparing to move out and into my grandmother’s old house that she’ll be renting from our parents. It has been a blast hearing about the interior decoration process they have been undertaking in hopes of one day being able to stop calling it “grandma’s house.” There have been animated discussions of paint colors and the easy removal of paneling and wallpaper and playing with paint samples on the Internet so I can better visualize what they are doing. I can’t wait until I go home next, whenever that is, to see all the changes.

Well, off to water aerobics…

Fiber: Shetland Roving
Source: Snow
Weight: 0.5 oz
Drafting Method: Supported Long Draw (Woolen)
Wheel: Cathy’s Schacht Matchless Single Treadle in Double Drive Configuration
Ratio Singles/Plying: 11:1/7.5:1(? the smallest whorl on the “plying whorl?”)
Yardage: ~40 yds
WPI/Yarn Classification: 13 wpi/Sport
TPI: 3.5

I’ve been with the Schacht Matchless that Cathy so kindly lent me last weekend when my wheel became incapacitated (no, my wheel is not yet functioning) for a bit over a week now. I have learned a ton working with this wheel, but we had a bit of a sketchy start.

When I took possession of the wheel I was hoping my wheel wasn’t going to be out of commission too long so I didn’t want to dive into a project. I knew Cathy had some specific things she wanted my opinion on so I just grabbed about 2 oz of Shetland roving that I’ve had forever. Snow had kindly gathered together a bit of a fiber sampler when I first got my wheel (almost 2 years ago now). I just did a quick run of spinning and plying about a half ounce of roving. The above was the result.

Now, I must admit to laziness on this one. I did not prep a reference card or even take some of the fiber and let it twist back on itself. That means part of the underplying can likely be attributed to me. And, it wasn’t too drastically underplied. I had about a half turn to the right in the hank post-washing, but just laying it straight while drying took out that twist. Just handling it though I still feel it is underplied. So I admit to being partially at fault. But, I also found that as the plied yarn was fed onto the bobbin it lost some of the plying twist. I have noticed this to a certain extent on my Majacraft and asked another Majacraft owner if they noticed the same thing and they said yet. That said, it seems much more drastic on the Schacht.

Can anyone ring in on this phenomenon of loosing plying twist as the yarn is fed onto the bobbin? Have you noticed it? What kind of a wheel do you usually ply on? Double drive or scotch tension or bobbin lead?

I decided not to run this 40 yards back through to put more plying twist in it because I wanted it as an example, but it is easy to run it back through.

Fiber: Shetland Roving
Source: Snow
Weight: 1.6 oz
Drafting Method: Supported Long Draw (Woolen)
Wheel: Cathy’s Schacht Matchless Single Treadle in Double Drive Configuration
Ratio Singles/Plying: 15.5:1 for both
Yardage: ~120 yds
WPI/Yarn Classification: 16 wpi/Fingering
TPI: 6

I switched the fastest standard whorl and spun the remaining roving at 15.5:1 ratio. By this point I was doing very well spinning on the Schacht and I went through about an ounce at a fairly fine weight in just over an hour! I decided that on the Majacraft I rarely switch to a different ratio than I spun the singles at so I stayed at the same ratio when I plied. This time I did have a reference and I plied with a good .5 to 1 tpi higher than the sample (prior to letting the yarn feed onto the bobbin) to come out with a nicely balanced final yarn that matches the sample in tpi. That seems a rather drastic change. But I seemed to have made drastic moves along the learning curve for this wheel.

Either way, I’m quite happy with this skein of yarn. It is kind of itchy given the Shetland and woolen spinning. In fact, DH asked if it is always that itchy. I think perhaps there has been a bit too much spinning of merino around these parts. I’m pretty happy with the Schacht otherwise. I like the single treadle (which I had been afraid of when I was wheel shopping 2 years ago) except how it comes to rest at the bottom all of the time. The double drive is kind of nice as it automatically reduce the uptake when you are putting in less twist, though ultimately I think I prefer the greater control of the Scotch tension. I’m not sure why, but I feel as though I spin much faster on the Schacht. That is likely just an illusion since I spun a bit larger singles than I have been and I was spinning woolen rather than worsted. I think I’ll be trying some worsted on the Schacht next. Though spinning some other Shetland from the lock that Cathy gave me is tempting as well as I could maybe have enough yarn for a nice Shetland sampler of some variety. Stay tuned to see what I decide I guess…