Woolthing

More spinning today.  I got the alpaca yarn done.  Phew.

I’m very happy with it.  And now I need to think of what I want to knit with it.

This is what I finished today.

This is all of it together.

Three days of spinning  totals about 13 ounces, 1440 yards.   I have lots more of this fleece.

Wendy sent me a picture of Prada so you can see how it all started.  Imagine my surprise to realize that Prada is actually a girl.  Here she is.  She’s pretty cool.  I hope I did her fleece justice.

Slide Show

Yesterday was challenge day for the bike riders and for spinners.  I chose to set myself a number of challenges at the same time.  I wanted to spin 100% alpaca.  I wanted to spin lace weight.  I wanted to spin a mile and I wanted to bring out the best in an alpaca fleece I had gotten a couple of months ago.

I had gotten a couple of alpaca fleeces from Wendy at Dream Weaver Alpacas.  And I fell for Prada’s fleece.  Prada is an alpaca that would have gotten culled out of the herd by most breeders.   His fleece was multicoloured and that makes it a pain for anyone who sends fleece out to be processed.  I wanted to use the unusual to make something exceptional.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of Prada but here is picture of the fleece as it is drying in the sun.

He had a bit of brown, a bunch of grey and a lot of black.

I separated each of the colours out and carded them into different batts.

I split each of the batts in half so that when I plied them together I would retain the colour shifts.  8:00 a.m.,I got my wheel set on it’s fastest ratio (33:1) and  I started to spin.  By the time I’d gotten through the first bit of my three batts I knew that I wasn’t going to get it all spun in one day.

I discovered that I needed to put quite a bit of twist in the singles.  I got the first bit done by 12:30 and the second half of the first three batts done by 4:00.  I treadled fast and got some music with a good strong beat to help me keep my feet moving.  Well, I thought I’d get it plied in short order and then spin up another bobbin full.  Not so fast.

The alpaca needed even more twist in the plies to stay together.   Alpaca is smooth like hair.  Wool has little barbs on it that help it hold together.  If I didn’t put a lot of twist in, it started to drift apart.  Well,  that was why I was doing this wasn’t it? so that I could learn how to spin alpaca.  I went on a plying marathon and that is where the real challenge began.  I find plying to be … well … boring.  Faster music, faster treadling, I mean my orifice,

(minds out of the gutter) was getting hot.  I wanted to quit.  I didn’t need this.  I could finish it tomorrow.  Why was I doing this?  I was doing this to proof that I could.  I finished plying it around 7:30.  I skeined it off so that I could measure it.  665yds.  Yes, I’m counting the plying this time so I did make a mile of spinning.  2 bobbin of singles at 665 and the plying makes over 1900yds of spinning in one day.  Oh and the best part.  I like the yarn and I like more every time I look at it.  It isn’t all flash and sparkle.  It’s soft but solid and strong.  It has presence.

I meet all my challenges.  So what did I learn.   I can spin fast if I have to, but I’m glad I don’t have to.

Today I continued spinning on the rest of the alpaca that I had carded.  I spun at my own pace, which is still pretty quick but I enjoyed it a lot more.  Do you suppose we all have a beat that we are happiest moving to?  A cadence that is all our own.  It might explain those different tastes in music.

Slide Show

My youngest daughter was here for a few days and is continuing on her journeys with her husband.  She’ll be back in a couple of weeks but the apartment seems very empty and quiet right now.

It will take me a couple of  days to regain my equilibrium again.   Meanwhile I continue to spin.   I finished spinning a brown corriedale fleece and have turned it into several skeins of lovely dark brown three ply yarn.  Now I’m working on some BFL top that I dyed in berry colours.  Unfortunately, I can’t show you photos.  My main computer is very, very sick.  Most of my photos are on that computer.  They’re backed up; I’m just not up for the brain power involved in figuring out how to get them on this post today.  I’ll get on that for tomorrow.

Today my hubbie and I went to Vancouver Island to get two things.  One of those things was some alpaca fleece.  We were so lucky.  I called to say we were running a bit late and Wendy ( the alpaca raiser) told me breathlessly that they had just had a baby, known as a cria, born just a few moments ago.

When we got there we were called to the back of their house to see their alpaca and this is what greeted us.

Less than a half hour old and not even standing yet.  How cute is that.  Her momma nuzzled her and she tried a couple of times.  Fell over once and then needed a bit of rest.

We went to look at some of the rest of the herd.

I like alpaca.  They are pretty and they’re soft and they’re smart.  If I had the land that’s the fibre critter I’d want to raise.  I now have the fleece from a couple of these guys.

When we got back to the cria she had taken her first wobbly steps.  With some of the other girls and her mother watching over her.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the rest of our day.

Slide Show

I finished another batch of yarn.  It’s a single this time and when it took it off the skeiner it was a bit twisty which is exactly what you’d expect.

I especially like this colour combo and may have to use it again somewhere.

So I gave the skeins a good soak in very hot water, a rinse and a bit of abuse.  They straightened out nicely.  I am very happy with this yarn.

I do have a problem though.  I have no idea what to do with it.  Should I knit it?  Should I weave it?  It would be like a Noro yarn with long runs of colour but without any true repeats.  Anyone out there have some suggestions?

Slide Show

I like my tools.  I have spinning wheels, carders, looms and all the gak that goes with it.  I prefer if they are made by craftsmen and with real wood and I’m always on the look out for something old or beautiful or both.  But, it’s not always about the tools.

Certainly, people have spun yarn and woven clothing long before there were wheels or perfectly balanced spindles or carders or … need I go on.

A few days ago I got this fleece in the mail.

Its a fleece from a Finn sheep.  Fairly rare as sheep go.  I gave it a good wash in the bathtub with very hot water and some cleaner.  (I cleaned the tub after.)  And here it is drying on the rack.  Nothing too high tech yet.

Doesn’t look that different, although, it is no longer greasy and dirty and it smells a lot better.  It was dry today and I thought I’d take a very low tech approach to seeing what it will look like as yarn.

I took a couple of locks.

And I drafted them apart with my hands instead of carding.

And I took that little bit of fibre to one of my spindles and gave that a whirl.  (Not so easy to take a picture and spin at the same time.)

When all was done I had a nice bit of yarn.  And I think I like it.

Will I do the whole fleece this way?  Absolutely, not.  But, if I had to I could.  Tools help us to do our work more quickly but when all is said and done it’s about the craftsperson.

Slide Show

I have reopened my etsy store.  I had to decide if I wanted to keep it up but I enjoy making batts and I have so much fibre that soon I’ll be buried in it.  And once I got back into it I realized that I do enjoy it.  I had traded all my batts so I had to start over which is actually good.

This is what I’ve done in the last few days with way more working their way through my brain.

It looks like I might have a bit of spring on my mind.  I will admit that it has been a cold and grey winter and I need to see some fresh bright colours.

Of course I’ve also been affected by the colours I’ve seen outdoors as the flowers are in bloom.

I have no idea where that green came from.

So on my walk today I went to Queen’s Park where there is petting zoo.  It seems a good place for children but I feel a bit sorry for the animals there.  Yes, they get fed but being chased around all day by little ones would not be my idea of good time if I were a goat.

And have you ever noticed that we are able to focus on one thing while ignoring the other things around us.  For example I was so focused on getting a shot of this duck that I didn’t even realize that his buddy was mooning me.

So those ducks were behind a fence in the petting zoo and domesticated.

I think these ducks that are free to come and go and live in another park are far more attractive, as is the setting.

Slide Show

There are times when I dye a fleece, the whole fleece.  I did that a while ago with a border Leicester lamb fleece and this is what it looked like after I had put it in the dye pot,  poured various dyes over it, let it set and dry.

Now, when it turns out like this, and you love it just the way it is, what do you do with it other than look at it?  If you card it or comb it all those colours are going to blend together and get muddy.  The only thing I can think of to do with it is to spin it just as it is.

I tease it apart with my hands into a cloud, keeping the colour separated …

Form it into that drafting triangle and let it gather twist …

And then let it wind on the bobbin.

I try not to control it too much.  I don’t get a perfectly smooth yarn; for this I don’t want it.  I’ll be keeping this as a single and either weaving with it as a weft or knitting something, with a very simple pattern, that won’t take away from the beauty of the yarn.

I’m spinning this on my Ashford Country Spinner.  That bobbin will hold close to a kilogram (2.2 pounds) and when I’m done I’ll have almost 1.5 kilos, more than enough for a substantial project.

Slide Show

I’m not sure there is a plural for alpaca. I think it’s like moose. “See there’s a moose. No … no there are at least three moose.”

Anyway, I went to help a friend of mine shear her alpaca (see what I mean). I brought my camera and planned to take some shots but then I was in the thick of it and there wasn’t anytime. I wonder, sometimes, if it’s only the tourists who take pictures. And I sure didn’t want to be a tourist. It was hard, dusty, dirty work and I had the easy job. All I had to do was get the fleece sorted into three different categories as quickly as I could. There was the shearer; he worked much harder than I did and the guys picking up the alpaca and putting them down were definitely having some tylenol the next day. And then there was the person that was giving the vitamin shots, the deworming medication and clipping the toenails.

By the time the two days were over we had over a hundred naked alpaca. The first thing some of them did was roll in the dirt and you wonder if you should wash that fleece. I’m telling you that I sure am.

For some reason, I like epics.  Projects that is.  A few month ago I picked up a fleece.  It placed first in it’s category and I got it for a very reasonable amount of money.  It came from a sheep named Lucy Liu.

This is what it looked like before it was washed.  I washed it and I carded it.  And then I spun it.  It looks like this now.

It’s a three ply and I got very good at the long draw.  It’s soft and lovely with varying shades of grey and silver throughout it and just a touch of lanolin so I’ll remember where it came from and it will make my hands soft while I knit it.  There is a lot of it.

Pounds of it in fact.  A sweater for my tall husband and then maybe some sweaters for my grandchildren.  It really won’t take that long to knit as it’s a bulky yarn but it will have to wait till after Christmas because, yes, it’s started.  The Christmas knitting has started.

In the meantime I have another fleece I’ve started to spin.  It’s also an epic.

Slide Show