Woolthing

Today is the last day of the Tour de Fleece.   I met my goal of spinning every day, spinning only from stash and spinning a mile in a day.

Yesterday I went to a spin in and spun with several other people.  This was my point of view.  We got a nice shady spot.  There were people selling things but I was very good.  I didn’t buy any new fibre although I was sorely tempted.  The book totally doesn’t count.

Some of the fibre did give me some ideas for my next dyeing session.

I started working on my last yarn for the tour, a superwash merino that I’d carded up earlier.

I finished it today.  It’s a three ply, spun with long draw.  I love spinning long draw but my left shoulder was complaining by the end.  Here’s what the yarn looks like.

It’s a lovely soft blue with a hint of green.  Three ply, 6oz., 460yds.

Now, I had a lot of time to spin and spin I did.  I got a lot of yarn made.

So here’s the rundown.

Mostly green 2 ply Romney:  1.16 kg, 485 m.

Brown 3 ply Corriedale: 740 g, 1190 m.

Berry colour 3 ply Blueface Leicester: 765 g, 1280 m.

Prada colour 2 ply Alpaca: 370 g, 1315 m.

Light blue 3 ply Superwash Merino: 170 g, 420 m.

Total of 3.2 kg (7+ pounds)  and 4690 meters finished yarn.

So I busted through a lot of fibre which is great but now I have added all this yarn to my yarn stash.  My only consolation is that yarn takes up a lot less room.

Now I need to get back to doing a bit of weaving.  My looms are naked and they are calling to me.

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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.

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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.

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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 I spent a couple of hours at “Fair in the Square” spinning in public.  It’s always fun because people are generally fascinated with the spinning wheel.   I spun and chatted while spinning for almost an hour and got about an ounce of fine yarn on my bobbin.  It was then the circus performers finished and one of the races finished and I ended up with a few children watching me.

It was then that one brave lad asked if he could try it.  And what could I do but let him.  I let him treadle for a while and then he gave it a shot.  His first yarn was better than my first yarn and I let him know it.

After that I had a row of children from under two years old to ten years old wanting to give it a try.  It was great fun.  Some of them just treadled while I drafted the yarn and few got to try a bit of drafting.  They all went away with the yarn they had made.  It was hard getting away as if there was a child who wanted to try I felt I had to let them.  But eventually there were no more children standing in line and I beat a hasty retreat.  My family was waiting for me.

Who knows, maybe one or more of those children will become a spinner.

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I’ve gotten the loft organized enough that I can actually work there.  I will always have to move stuff when I change course.  If I’m sewing my carders need to be put down and the sewing machines need to be brought out but until we have a bigger place that is just the way it is going to be.  What else do you expect with two looms hogging all the space.  Ellie, the countermarche loom is back up and ready for a warp.  Mac, the Macomber jack loom, has some new treadles and a new beater bar but will have to be folded up for a little while.  The couch has been uncovered.

Here is one side of the loft.  The floor is visible and there is a path to the door.

The stash is organized so that I can see what I have and start using it up.  Yup, it’s ridiculous.

There is a spot for George, my antique CPW, and he is easy to move so that the couch can become a bed.

I do have a bit more organizing to do to clear my desk tops but everything is there.

Yay, there is room for my sweet daughter and her darling husband.  Now I have some spinning to do

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Today being a beautiful day I took my coarse carder outside to do some carding.   As I was working away I noticed a helicopter going around in a search pattern and I wondered what I might look like from a bird’s eye view.  I had a rack with alpaca on it drying beside me …

And I was working with a strange contraption that only fiberistas would recognize.  For all I know I could look like I was involved in some illegal activities.  No one has come to my door yet so it must be all right.  I’m trying to prepare all my fibre for the tour de fleece.  So I was carding up some Romney that I’ve had for a while.  I’d dyed it and made some yarn out of it and then lost interest.  Well, since I’m working from my stash and I want to finish up some projects it seemed the perfect thing.  Here’s what it looked like before carding.

And here it is on the carder.

This is a hand crank carder so it’s a bit of work turning the handle and impossible to take a picture of as you have to hold the fibre with one hand and crank with the other.  That’s an at rest photo.

Here’s what it looks like after it comes off the carder.

That’s about 100 gms.  I’m going to spin it up very thick and then two ply it to make a big yarn.  I made some a while ago and it looks like this.

The colours are a bit richer than the photo.  Thats around 800 gms and 3-4 wraps per inch.  I originally thought I’d weave a rug with it but I might crochet it to give a warm bouncy rug.  So far I’ve got 9 batts and I think I’ll get another 3 or 4 but it will spin up fast, just a couple of days of work.

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About a year ago I was working on a TV series and we were doing a back alley scene.  In amongst the rubbish for the set dressing was a very old, very weathered spinning wheel with a lot of water damage.  It was truly beyond any possible repair, (or I would have done it) and it was one of the saddest things I’ve seen.  I didn’t take pictures, because I don’t do horror.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped into one of the antique stores a couple of blocks from my home and I saw this guy.  The wheel was on backwards and it’s treadle was wonky and I showed the owner of the shop how it should be.

Then I went to Ontario for a week.  When I got back it was still there.  It was still on the table with a misspelled sign telling people not to play with it.  I wanted to play with it.  I asked if I could try it out.  So I put a drive band on it and gave it a whirl.  It worked, it spun.

I asked on Ravelry if anyone had seen one before or if they knew anything about it and someone sent me to this link.  So it’s probably more than 100 years old and it’s a flat rim Canadian Production wheel and it works.  Yes, it needs a couple of little bits and some tender loving care. I walked away from it yesterday but today I couldn’t stand it anymore and I went and got it and took it home.  I will love it and pet it and spin on it and I’ll call it … George.

I’m holding the wheel in the slot with a pencil but all it needs is the proper sized dowel.

And he definitely needs a good cleaning and oiling but I have been spinning on him and he hasn’t thrown the band at all.  I was worried about that with the flat rim.  No, he won’t replace my Marie,  but he is a fine fellow and an extraordinary find.  I’ll be cleaning him up in the next little while and finding a place for him in my herd of wheels.  It’s getting a bit embarrassing.

George  likes to spin fine and he’s fast.  That’s a penny and that’s the cobweb yarn that I spun with George.  George will never be left to rot in an alley somewhere.

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I finally got the work on the table loom finished.  It turned out fairly well.

I just washed it and it needs to dry and have some ends clipped off and evened off.

Over all I’m pleased with it.  I don’t think there are any errors in it but it would be hard to see.  If I had to do it again I would have chosen a different pattern as the floats on what I’m calling the wrong side are very long and though they give a lot of texture they will also catch very easily.  So much so that I may have to line this in order to use it as a shawl.

I like the right side, although once again I went too subtle.  I used some handspun yarn that you really can’t see very well.  On the other hand, it is that kind of subtle that I like.

Okay, so today is a whole month since I said I would post everyday and I did it.  It wasn’t that hard and in some ways made me look at my life and ask myself if I’d done anything significant or interesting that day.  It’s important for my readers but even more important for me.  It forced me to think about my day to day life and made me open my eyes to some of the other things around me.

I will be visiting my parents for the next week and entering the land of dial up internet, so if I don’t post for a few days don’t worry I will be back.

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All I had to do was take out my swift.  Put some yarn around it and wind it up with my ball winder.  I had 6 skeins to do.  Should take twenty minutes tops.   And the first one went just fine.

The second one, not so much.  Something went terribly wrong and it seemed that the more I tried to fix it the worst it got.  I spend almost an hour on one skein of yarn trying to patiently untangle it.  I finally got it done and then hoped that the next balls would be easier to wind.   I started and sighed with relieve, no tangles and then the top of my ball winder decided to fling itself across the room.  I found it under the table.

It was an easy fix but man.  I was starting to feel a bit jinxed.  The fourth skein was uneventful.   But the fifth one threatened to become the same kind of mess that it had taken me an hour to clean up.  I took a breath and slowly worked it around the swift and gradually got it.  And finally the last skein gave me no trouble at all.

That’s life though.  You take one wrong turn and before you know it you’re sitting at Porky’s Corners asking directions to Toronto.  In the end, if we take a step back and think it through, it’ll eventually turn out all right.

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