Category Archives: Spinning

June 6, 2013 · 4:49 pm

More socks!

More socks off the needles after a long period of being unfinished…

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Long ago I had the opportunity to buy part of a raw Suffolk fleece that had been discarded by another spinner.  I had been steadily reading my way through the Guild’s library, so I recognised this as a breed that was eminently suitable for sock spinning.  At the time, I only knit socks.  They were the whole reason I had learned to knit, and then to spin.

As it turned out, the Suffolk was a very short staple and none too clean fleece.  Never mind.  I gleefully acquired it and proceeded to use my beginning dyeing skills on it.  Four pairs of socks came of it.  One, pink dyed with hibiscus flowers, went to my Mum.  Another was dyed in eucalyptus leaves as fleece and spun up afterward.  I can’t remember who I gave that pair to.  I think they might have gone to tree lovers in the Blue Mountains.  I made my father a glorious pair that were purple and blue, blended rather beautifully after dyeing (and at that stage, their loveliness was an accident!)

These were made from Suffolk blended with tencel, which may have been ill advised–time and wear will tell.  The colour could have been better and the blend is uneven, but a three ply handspun yarn is a work of dedication and there was enough even for a pair of large feet, so I knit these.  They are going to a dear friend who lives nearby, who does indeed have large feet.  Last night he spoke about a pair I made him years back that he is still wearing hiking.  This pair may not last as long but I hope they will keep his toes warm at the very least!

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June 3, 2013 · 12:07 pm

Steeked!

Perhaps you remember this yarn, spun and chain plied from a beautiful blend by The Thylacine.

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I decided on a vest for my fairy godson, an appreciator of handmade items if ever there was one.  He is a not-so-small six year old person growing ever taller and thus, growing out of last winter’s woolies. I designed (I  do realise this is a very plain garment!) the vest based on measurements from one he already has that is a generous fit.  100% handspun alpaca for the band at the bottom, in seed stitch.  When I reached the place where I wanted the neck and armscyes to begin, I cast off a few stitches, then cast them on again on the next round (leaving a slot) to create a steek bridge.

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Here is the upper part a bit closer up.  I have decreased just the way I would have done knitting this garment by any other method, but kept knitting in the round, making sure those stripes are maintained with wonderful simplicity. Knitting in the round feels normal to me, since I took up knitting in order to knit socks.  I much prefer knitting in the round to knitting flat.

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Then came the day of truth, when I stitched through the knitting all the way from one end of the steek bridge to the other and cut, yes, CUT! the neckline and armholes prior to grafting the shoulders together and picking up the edgings.

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Wonderfully simple if you can hold your nerve.  I am so happy with the finished result, I’m on tenterhooks waiting for the intended wearer to return from holidays soon for the handover.  I sure hope he likes it.  I have yarn left over from 100g of fibre. Amazing!

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PS–yes, it fits!

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May 1, 2013 · 1:48 pm

Alpaca preparation

I’ve been having a lovely time spinning alpaca given to me by a generous friend.  She gave me samples of three different fleeces, white, black and what she rather fetchingly calls ‘champagne’.  I’ve been combing it and spinning it two ply and I’m very happy with the results.

I told my friend how lovely I thought the alpaca was, and she gave me more!  I have spun alpaca before, sometimes in quite a large quantity, but this has the longest staple I have ever seen, about 90 mm (these are the 90 mm matches I use to light to the dye pots–extra long.

I have to confess I have never washed alpaca, and it is always filthy, since alpacas roll and dust bathe.  My chooks dust bathe too, and watching them,  it’s no wonder that sand falls out of this fleece any time I move it! This fleece had so much dust in it that combing it was an outside activity that gave me hayfever.  I spun a lot of the white fleece rinsed and combed (that stopped the hayfever at least).  Then, I decided to brace myself and washed the rest of it.  And that led to dyeing the unspun fibre, as it turned out.  I have been working my dyepots hard experimenting toward red and…

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I am getting more interesting colours on silk thread (wrapped around the cards at left) than ever before.  My friends agree that the alpaca on the left, first through the dye bath, is red, then there is grey corriedale (second pass, same dye bath), more alpaca (third pass, still the same dyebath) and some still damp alpaca (fourth pass).  Three cheers for the potential to spin alpaca of many colours!

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April 12, 2013 · 5:01 pm

The spinning continues

Unfortunately, it has been a time of illness and low energy round here just lately.  Fortunately, spinning provides solace and the level of exercise I’ve been capable of undertaking.

Here, some delicious black baby alpaca I bought from SpunOut at Bendigo (three plied).  It is called Handspinners Dream and, mmmm.  It was! Luxury fibre with a price tag to match.

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I also finished some spinning intended as sock yarn–the purple yarn in the photo.  It is a true three ply yarn with high twist.  I spun it slowly since it has been on the wheel I take to the Guild only twice a month.  There have been many jokes about frog hair, and more than one person has asked me if I am really spinning, because the singles were so fine they couldn’t be seen from across the hall.  I will be so interested to see how this works out as  socks.  Despite all the joking, this is not too fine for sock knitting.  Since I have three pairs of socks on my needles at present and all three are still in the first sock stage, I may not find out for a while.  I have one still on the leg, one just past the heel and still on the gusset, and one almost at the toe.

Back to spinning though–and that is where my time has been spent lately–the purple sock yarn is from Ewe Give Me the Knits.  It’s her Superwash Merino/Bamboo/Nylon blend, especially for sock spinners.  Another lovely spinning experience.  I am warming up to spinning some of the fleece I’ve washed through summer after all this pre-prepared fibre.

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March 24, 2013 · 5:11 pm

After Bendigo

Last year I went to the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show with a friend.  We had a great time, and I spent plenty!  Just recently I decided to spin some of the prepared fibre I bought there.  This is grey merino/llama/silk dyed by the Thylacine in Evandale.  It was luscious to spin and inspired me to get back to dyeing over grey fleece. I chain-plied it to maintain distinct colours.

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I bought some Raxor batts: Corriedale x English Leicester and Blue-faced Leicester in ‘Before dawn’.  Clearly also from my grey period.  I core spun these over a crossbred grey wool core. The pink skein is chain plied merino/bamboo dyed ‘berry lush’ from Kathys Fibres.  All a delight to spin.

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March 8, 2013 · 9:55 am

Leftovers

I had a few leftovers from a spinning workshop I held recently.  I made sure workshop participants took away all the roving I’d dyed and braided and all the batts I’d made, so they could practice at home. And we made more batts as part of the workshop and that was fun too.  But there were little bits left from demonstrating techniques.  Sometimes leftovers are the best part of a meal, and I really enjoyed spinning up the pink and purple end of a piece of roving, and corespinning one gloriously red batt–merino, silk and green sparkly stuff.  And that meant I found the neglected bobbins of eucalyptus-dyed merino that I had blended with some commercially dyed merino/silk in golds and reds.  So those singles finally got plied.  It’s nice to be back at the wheel.  It’s been too hot for dyepots!

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February 26, 2013 · 10:31 am

Spinning

I loved running workshops over summer, but it has also been a treat to return to my spinning wheel.  This skein began as grey corriedale fleece.  I dyed it in the grease with Earth Palette dyes, carded, and pulled a roving directly from the drum carder through a diz.  I have seen this technique demonstrated on YouTube, but I was only prepared to try it after someone from my Guild (who is a fabulous spinner) showed a group of us how she does it.

I like the colour, and enjoyed the process of producing roving.  Being able to dye in the grease is one of the things that has me returning to Earth Palette dyes. It improves my pleasure in scouring, and makes me content with scouring small quantities.   Does my impatience show?

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One of the workshops I ran over summer was on ‘fancy yarns’–artyarns to the inhabitants of the internet–and it has been good to come back to spinning the kind of yarns I prefer to knit.  I love the challenge of artyarn spinning, and the results, but I am a plain spinner in my heart, apparently.  This is relaxing spinning for me and I’m enjoying relaxing a little.  The yellow/green/blue corriedale that I dyed at the same time has already become a beanie for a dear friend’s birthday, even though there will be no call for him to wear it for some months yet!

Dyeing over a grey base has pleased me so much that I want to return to trying it with eucalypts.  I guess I’d better get over myself about scouring…

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February 5, 2013 · 3:12 pm

Things I’ve done with with plant dyed yarns…

When I was preparing for the natural dyeing workshop I ran recently, I mordanted a lot of Bendigo Woollen Mills yarn as well as some handspun in small skeins–25g or less.  Having all those small skeins of different colours in alpaca and wool and mohair, activated my imagination. Eventually it led to this…

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These are madder-tipped, logwood-stemmed crocheted coral thingummies, inspired by Loani Prior’s ‘coral punk’.  When I say ‘inspired by’, let me confess.  I bought her beautifully designed and entertaining book Really Wild Tea Cosies with a Christmas book voucher I was given.  So I had the pattern.  But even though only one, basic, crochet stitch was involved, my crochet skills are decidedly remedial and I don’t happen to have a crochet instructor on tap.

I turned to Maggie Righetti’s book Crocheting in Plain English (I don’t have the new revised edition, needless to say).  Apparently sometimes I just can’t believe what I am reading… or perhaps I just don’t understand on the first eight passes.  I see students I teach with the same difficulties!  By the time I had finished this tea cosy and started on the next, I’d managed to figure out that I wasn’t doing what Loani Prior must have believed was involved in the one stitch involved in her cosy.  Luckily for me crocheting badly still produces a fabric of a sort.  I also figured out that for me, improvising a knit version of the pot cover itself was going to beat freeform crocheting one as the pattern suggests with my inadequate skill set.  So that’s what I did, and Loani Prior shouldn’t be held responsible for the outcome.  I like it anyway.

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It has highly entertained people who watched me crocheting coral at parties (as one does) as well as those who have seen the finished object, many of whom thought immediately of a sea anemone.

Let it be said that at present coral punk is not alone.  Here is the present plain Jane of the tea cosy selection at our place: yellow from silky oak leaves and orange from eucalyptus–with the felted blobs spun into the yarn.  Pattern improvised.  Luckily, tea pots are just not that fussy about how you clothe them.

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I’ve been branching out and using up some particularly strange art yarn spinning experiments.  This next one is commercially dyed mohair with silk curricula cocoons spun onto it.  Scratchy for a head, perfect for a teapot!  I was surprised how many people liked the look of the ‘hat’ emerging as I knit this at a picnic, riffing off Funhouse Fibers’ Fast and Fun Cozy.  Once again, that is to say, dispensing with the pattern when it became inconvenient.  I guess the hat admirers hadn’t felt the yarn yet.

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And for anyone who is wondering, I have continued to dye with the logwood exhaust from the dyeing workshop.  I ran out of yarn for a while and dyed two, 200g lengths of merino roving.  This morning I pulled out another 100g of superwash yarn.  I think it might be just about done, and I only wish I had kept a record of the weight of fibre that has been dyed with what was a small quantity of logwood in the beginning!  This weekend, the second in a series of two natural dyeing workshops. I’d better eat my crusts and get my beauty sleep in preparation.

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January 18, 2013 · 11:52 am

Finished objects completed in my holidays

There has been a lot of holiday crafting going on round here.  But this post marks return to my day job!

I made some Thai style fishing pants.  I bought a pair in 2000 as the new century began, and they have finally gone to the worms in our worm farms, the ultimate destination of natural fibres that are worn past the point of repair and reuse around here.  I traced a pattern from them and made this pair from a sarong found at the op shop.  I assume the originals were cut to maximise the use of fabric from a loom that is a standard-ish size in the region, because the sarong was the perfect amount of fabric, with almost no fabric left over to be wasted or used for other things.  Surely this is the goal of all hand weavers, as well as a decent goal for thrifty and green sewers.

I used french seams and then top-sewed them flat, so that I could use only cotton thread and ignore the polyester sucking overlocker.  When commercially sewn garments go to the worms, the overlocker thread is usually all that remains.  The worm farm offers an education in the biodegradability of garments, and I am increasingly aiming for biodegradable.  There is a cotton-polyester t shirt in one of them that has been there since my daughter left home and abandoned it.  Over 10 years ago.  Polyester will clearly survive the apocalypse, along with cockroaches.   Seriously, my everyday garments do not need to live as long as the Gobelin tapestries.

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I made a pair of radmila’s slippers from a new book, Knitting from the Center Out by Daniel Yuhas.  They are knit from handspun merino roving dyed with Eucalypts.  I have to say that I gave up making matching pairs a long time ago and now make siblings rather than twins… further proof lies in the next two images. OK, make that three!

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I took up knitting in order to be able to knit socks, and that is what led me to spinning and then dyeing.  Sock production has slowed down, but I finally finished a pair of Jaywalkers for a beloved friend. She is a lover of bright colours who has appreciated these as splendidly red while they were still in progress.  This yarn was dyed by a fabulous local dyer, Kathy Baschiera.

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Remember the post where I was wondering whether a sow’s ear could be turned into a silk purse (actually, whether I could turn the less exciting parts of a polwarth fleece and some low quality alpaca into slippers)?  Well, the answer is yes.  These are knit using Bev Galeskas’ Felted Clogs pattern and dyed with Landscapes dyes.  I hope Bev Galeskas has made millions from her pattern.  I sure have made tens upon tens of these, though most are a shade less hairy.  Clearly I spun in a fair amount of guard hair, and it won’t felt.  Just the same, the recipient of the red pair at the back was very enthusiastic as he turned 40, and the delightful women who will be receiving a parcel today or tomorrow with the front two pairs are great mend and make-do experts who have darned their previous pairs extensively… they live in a very cold place and will enjoy warm feet and hopefully overlook the odd stray guard hair!

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Ah, holidays.  I hope you’ve had some to enjoy.

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November 26, 2012 · 10:03 am

Works in progress

I’ve been puttering along on a number of different projects over the last few weeks… and lest this sounds unusual in some way, that is probably the way life goes most of the time around here!  I returned to cold dyeing roving after retrieving my last spectacular failure.  For good measure, I also dyed some local mohair locks.  I am planning toward a textured yarn spinning workshop and I’m determined to go as close as I can to a local supply of materials for the participants.

We’ve had Ikea here for long enough that the op shops of the city now turn up these fantastic wool drying apparatuses.  One came with a small supply of plastic animals.  This time, just when I thought I had found them all, a small plastic dalmatian dropped out.  Hopefully the child whose toys left home this way is not grieving and bereft!

This time, the merino braids turned out better than I had hoped.  Perhaps I am slowly acquiring a better sense of colour.  Those with a red base (at the bottom of the picture) were the ones I felt most tentative about, but I like them best of all.

The mohair is ready to have seed heads picked out of it and to become part of some textured batts for corespinning and other good times.  Meanwhile, I have been preparing for a natural dyeing workshop focusing on eucalypts.  Again, I need to provide materials, so I’ve been laying in what I need.  It’s the season for bark collection so I have been touring the neighbourhood with my trusty bike trailer and a chook feed sack, pulling over if I’m passing in the car, or wandering out with a bucket, whichever may be appropriate to the day and location of the tree.  In short, I am keeping the E Scoparia bark that is falling to the ground from being blown away, tidied up by others or crushed on the road.  I have almost 3 sacks full so far.  Seeing the bark shedding has allowed me to run test dye pots on a few trees I had been unsure of with more confidence.  I’ve found several more specimens in the local area.  Meantime, I have been mordanting fibres (wool with alum on the right) and continuing to convert my sow’s ear fibre into slipper-suitable yarn (left) as I knit up what has already been spun. I think that particular batch of unlovely spinning may finally be over.  Two pairs of slippers are knit, one to go.

I’ve been converting milk bottles into sample cards, writing up notes and assessing the state of the Guild’s dye room.  Today, I’ve got soybeans soaking ready to mordant cotton for the workshop.  It has me wanting to dye…

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