It's been how long????

Wow. I knew it had been awhile since I'd posted but I had no idea it had been over a year. It's been a busy one, and not all good things, but I do have so much to share!

Spinning has taken over my life. Every day I spend time either processing  fiber or spinning on my wheel. The most exciting thing ever is that I'm starting to find local fleeces! Not just sheep but alpaca and llama as well. I cannot express how exciting that is to me.

These are yarns I made right from start to finish. I scoured the fleeces, combed/carded, spun and finished them. This gives me happy feet. Such a feeling of accomplishment to be able to do all these things.

Here's the best piece of equipment I've bought recently. $30 second hand. Score!!!! I use this for the heat needed to melt the lanolin off the fleece. I can set the temperature to avoid boiling which would felt the fleece.

Working outside is kind of necessary since Hubby doesn't want the house smelling like sheep. I don't mind so much.

 Once it's all washed, I lay it on sweater racks and let it dry in the sun. Then it can come inside for the rest of the processing. So my goal before the freeze starts is to get all roughly 40lbs of raw fleece washed and in the house. Yeah, I kinda went over board on the fleece buying. But now I have tonnes to work with! Woohoo!

So over the next couple weeks we'll explore my epic adventure working with raw fleece.

Tail Spin Part 2

Okay, so let's finish preparing the fiber. The locks are obviously long so by using that same fiber as my base, I can keep it fairly thin. But I need the fibers going more or less the save direction. That's what hand carders are for. Basically, they're brushes for fiber. Here's mine...

So, you just simply dump a bunch of fiber on one card and start carding.

Uncombed but picked fiber

Combed you can see how the fibers lay more or less parallel.

Take the fibers off the cards. Normally you would roll them from the long side for woolen spinning, but I want them to be more worsted which means they lie in the same direction so I'll roll from the short end.

And voila! Faux roving to use as my base for tailspinning. To the wheel Batman!

So spin a few yards of just plain yarn, then lay out your individual locks for easy access since you'll be using both hands quite a bit.

Start by splitting your fiber up the middle, going for roughly in half. Make sure you have over-twisted a bit to make the next steps easier.

Pick up a lock, bringing the tail forward over your finger and press it up between the fibers, holding the back section firmly in that hand. Now use your other hand to wrap that tail around the front section of the fiber...

...like this. I do this because it secures the tail better without having to over-spin your yarn. The goal here is a nicely balanced tail spun yarn.

Now, flip the lock up parallel to your yarn and let the twist flow into both sections, securing the tail and taking out the extra twist you put in before placing the lock.

You can see here that its not really tight even though I am holding it with some tension.

Repeat until you run out of locks or patience, whichever comes first. Just remember the goal is pretty AND balanced. I don't hang weights on any of my yarns, they stand on their own merits and I'm getting close to perfectly balanced yarn with this method.

 

 

 

 

Tail spin

It's not what you think. There's a method of spinning fancy yarn and I'm obsessed with learning the technique. It's called 'extreme tailspinning' and trust me...it's extreme.

You start with the locks from a long wooled sheep, take those individual locks and spin just the tail of the lock into the base yarn, letting the lock hang free. It's spectacular. It's also really hard. Because you're spinning just the cut end of the lock into the yarn, it tends to get way overspun, so much that when you unwind the yarn from the bobbin, it kinks up into a tangled mess. So my challenge has been to spin the yarn without over spinning.

After a few attempts with some undyed locks, I finally got my head around it and figured out my own method. It takes some serious prep work so let me walk you through it.

First, I purchased a pack of locks from the local farmer's market.

It's hard to see in this picture but they're dyed some lovely autumn colors, golds and reds with some purples and blues. Very pretty and silky.

So when washing and dying locks, they don't all hold their shape. There's a certain amount of handling required and you end up with blobs of fiber. So the first step is to separate the locks from the fiber that didn't hold it's shape. The jumbled fiber I pick open into individual fibers for combing to use as my base yarn.

Here's a couple of locks on my knee. You can see the curly end on the right. This will hang down from the yarn. The fluffed out end on the left will be spun into the yarn

Here's a basket of locks ready for spinning. You can see the colors better. The entire process takes patience but since my patience with fiber is unlimited that's no problem for me.

 

All the fuzzy bits I put in a bag for carding to be the base yarn.

So in case you're curious, I've already been about an hour just on fiber preparation. And I'm not ready for spinning yet!

Stay tuned for the next stages of the process...

 

My head is spinning!

Ever since my learn to spin kit arrived I've been obsessed.

Such a simple concept, but there is a trick to it. My first hand spun yarns are quite thick. I was scared to draft the fibers too thin.

And my twist was all over the place. Some places very tight, other places barely a twist at all. But this helped me learn exactly how much spin is required to keep the fibers in a yarn. Not much.

But I had so much fun learning. Finally I stopped being so scared and really drafted the fibers, playing with just how thin to draw the fibers to make a thin yarn that I could ply. Plying is when you take two strands of hand spun and spin them together to make a thicker yarn. But if your strands are thick to start with you end up with super super bulky yarn.

So I grabbed more fiber and concentrated on getting it as thin as I could. That yarn is hanging to dry right now.

My spin is still inconsistent but the thickness is much better. I'm excited to crochet this up when it's done drying. But in the meantime, I received a delivery...Kid Mohair Sliver. Sliver is animal fiber that has been cleaned, combed and carded and in this case dyed, all ready to be spun. I ordered fiber from my favorite company, Fleece Artist/Handmaiden Yarns. I just love their colors.

Look at those colors! Makes me do the happy dance.

Each hank is silky soft with such a beautiful sheen and halo. I had heard that because it's so silky it can be harder to spin but far be it from me to avoid things just because I'm new at it. I like jumping in with both feet. So I grabbed the blue and got to work.

This is the hank untwisted so you can see the color changes and I can start working with it. First I drafted off a chunk of fibers.

That's the leader on my drop spindle and the chunk of fiber. You'd be surprised how much fiber is in that little piece.

I didn't add any fiber. This is that one little piece drafted out to start spinning. And I personally didn't find the Kid Mohair any harder to work with than the regular wool. The hardest part is pre-drafting the fibers.

 

 

So away I went. I'm still building my stamina for drop spinning so I can't spin as long as I want to ( which is just about forever :) ) but I gave it a good go and here's my results for the evening.

The color in that shot is atrocious. This early pic shows the glowing blues much better, though it also shows how rough my hands are right now. This is not the fault of the fiber but of my nasty psoriasis. I find acrylic fibers aggravate my condition and I have been working with acrylics quite a bit lately.

So tonight I'll spin some more. I should soon have enough to ball. I may make a second strand and ply the two so that the subtle color changes in this yarn will really stand out. Or I might leave it a single ply and just keep spinning until I have enough to make myself a shawl. I'm so excited at the possibilities!

Is there something you do that makes you anticipate the future when you'll have time just to play?

Hello!!!!!

So I disappeared for a bit. Between battling the plague and spring rush at work I haven't had a minute to do anything but crochet. :) I did however find a minute to order a drop spindle spinning kit on Etsy.

 

It came with everything I need to try spinning yarn and I was so excited to get started! 

First thing I learned...you could use a third hand when starting. And don't let your cat help. But I persisted and made my first handspun by me yarn!!!!

 

Okay, not bad for a first attempt. Found out I don't have muscles where I should though. Who knew spinning could be a workout? Bonus!!!

So before my second attempt, I learned more about drafting your fibers BEFORE starting to spin so that they're the thickness you want. Duh. That made sense. I also learned don't take the tension off your spun yarn until after you've soaked it. The soaking sets the twist otherwise it just unravels.

So armed with new information...take two...

Here's the little ball of spun fiber. I love how it shines in the sun. Okay I think I'm getting this now so I go for a big batch since I've now figured out how to join fibers although not completely smoothly yet, at least I can do it. So I spin until my shoulder gives out, put it away for the next day, do the same thing again for four days and here's what I got...

 This is my handspun yarn on the spindle. Took it off and put it to soak for fifteen, then hung to dry. When I checked it this morning it still wasn't quite dry but here's a picture of what it looks like.

Next step will be to use the yarn in a project. This is just a single ply and I have every intention of making a fat ply of colored yarn wrapped with a skinny ply of the natural wool. But since I'm not an expert yet that could take awhile....

Having such a good time learning though. Did you ever take a notion to just LEARN something? Just for the fun of learning? Or am I the only learning geek out there? :)

The journey of discovery

So much of what I've learned started with a thought. So lately my thought has been spinning because of course I'm obsessed with yarn. So let's start with a basic Google search...

This seems like a good place to start.

www.instructables.com/id/spinning-yarn/

OMG! That is so awesome. Alright now I want to spin with a drop spindle. Let's see if I can make one at home. Hello Google...

This is perfect! It will allow me to try it out without buying a thing!

oneinchworld.com/blog/index.php/2011/12/how-to-make-a-drop-spindle/

Now I'm thinking of all the perle cotton thread I have that I can blend together to make thicker, multicolored thread. I'm so excited!

I have images of this dancing in my head:

www.copperandbirch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/drop-spindle.jpg

And now I see my favorite yarn company, Fleece Artist, has roving dyed in their colors! Oh I so know what I'm doing tonight. Time to make a drop spindle and learn how to use it.

See this is why I have such a hard time staying on task. My brain is always leaping to the next exciting thing. Do you ever have problems focusing because there's just SO MUCH you want to try?