Fiber Fool

Firstly, let me apologize for my lateness in posting today and announcing the contest winner. Unless you watch weather headlines on The Weather Channel you probably missed it, but there was some serious flash flooding in Fort Collins last night. Our house is not situated well for such things and we actually evacuated for a few hours. It was for naught, thank goodness, but water was creeping up our driveway and the drainage ditch that drains the entire neighborhood was filling quickly. Seeing as how I had a rather traumatic experience with flooding ten years ago, last night was even more stressful. We’re fine and our property is fine. We got 2.5 inches in about 1 hour, another inch in another 45 minutes to an hour and all told, 4.5 inches. We’re at risk for the next several days as all this excess moisture will just feed back into more thunderstorm development in the afternoon/evenings. Can we say a rather eventful week?!?!?

Now onto the good stuff! The first 3.1 oz of lace weight 2-ply handspun is finally finished. It has been washed/set and dried and skeined. I like the final product a lot. The soy silk gave it a nice hand that I do feel will be fantastic for a shawl. This first skein is a little neppy and inconsistent, but I think that will work well for the design idea that is starting to formulate itself in my mind. The next one should be improved as I think my batts have improved (more on the next week).

Fiber: Brown Sheep seconds, solar dyed by me, blended with natural soy silk on Cathy’s drum carder
Weight: 3.1 oz
Drafting Method: Supported Long Draw (Woolen)
Wheel: Majacraft Suzie Pro
Ratio Singles/Plying: 12:1 (both)
Yardage: 648 yds (niddy noddy measure), 537.33 yds (McMorran balance) => ~593 yds (averaged)
Ply: 2-ply (Abby’s method)
WPI/Yarn Classification: ~25 WPI/Fingering)
TPI: ~8 TPI

So, it was very interesting the discrepancy between the niddy noddy measure and the McMorran balance measure - more than 100 yds difference! I realize neither method provides an exact measure. The McMorran in my mind is the least accurate because it relies upon one’s yarn being very consistent. To top it off, you take the sample from one of the ends so you don’t end up making 1 skein into 2. I don’t know about you, but my ends are often not what the middle is. Especially if one takes from the last bit plied which is then from the first bit spun in the singles. It usually takes me several yards to settle in on the proper grist.

I’m flattered that so many of you were expecting upwards of 600 and 700 yards from 3 ounces of fiber! I know Cathy calls my singles frog hair, but wow! I decided to use the average between the two measures which was 593 yds. The closest without going over was Suzanne! Suzanne, since you already have Two Thumbs up, pick two of my patterns you would like and send me an e-mail (fiberfool AT gmail). All the crazy drama of this week has gone to my head so I used the random number generator to pick one more winner. Shannon, you are the second winner. The same goes for you, choose two of my patterns and send me an e-mail.

Have a good weekend everyone!

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!

Like others I did some “training” for Tour de Fleece. Despite sore feet, last Friday I finished my first bobbin of singles for my Solar Dyed Spun Stitches Shawl (no, still no shawl pattern chosen). Yesterday I was antsy. I’m having issues beside my feet and am rather miserable at the moment so I finally decided I was going to spin anyway - bruised feet and cracked fingertip be damned!

To get the second bobbin of singles going I needed to prep another one of the batts that I had made. I recalled getting asked about my technique of preparing the batts so I took photos as I did it last night. I hope you find it useful.

Batts are rectangular pieces of drum carded fiber. They are the width of the carder and the length of the circumference of the drum. There are many different ways to spin from the batts, including rolling it into a tight cylinder and spinning from the end of that. In this case I wanted to turn my batt into something resembling roving. We’ll call the finished product “roving.”

The first step is to orient the batt in the portrait form, that is with the longest side vertical and the shorter side horizontal. Starting in the upper right corner begin to tear a strip of the batt away from the main piece. Be sure to choose a width that is measurably thicker than what you’ll need in your drafting zone to achieve the weight yarn you need. Here it was 2-3 fingers wide and I’m spinning lace weight singles. Continue to the tear until you are near the bottom edge of the batt. Stop when you are roughly the same distance from the bottom of the batt as your strip is thick.

Move over the same thickness as the first strip and start a new tear in the batt, moving upwards and once again stopping before the end of the batt. Continue making these zig-zag rips in the batt until you have formed on long strip of fiber.

From the tearing the strip of fiber will be a bit rough around the edges. There will also be those obvious turns in the strip of fiber as well. If you made your strips sufficiently thick you can now pre-draft the strip of fiber to clean it up and make it more resemble roving. In the photo on the right I made two passes of predrafting. Look how much longer, and nicer looking it is!

The pile of pre-drafted roving is much more than I can get through in one spinning session so I roll it up into a nice ball of roving. I introduce a bit of twist as I form the ball to help hold the fiber together and give it a bit more stability. Below you can see the fiber in its three states - the original batt, the spun singles and a ball of “roving.”

The photos with step-by-step notes can also be seen in my Flickr Set.

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!