twistedloops

Yesterday, Linda had us over for Fber Fun Day.  What is Fiber Fun Day?

There was dyeing of fleece and fiber.

 

There was lots of spinning.

 

We had our own Fiber Bus full of fiber to try and buy.

 

For extra fun, there was drum carding.

 

I didn’t do any dyeing, but I did take an opportunity to play with the drum carder.  I carded some yellow and blue merino top that I dyed a month or so ago into this big fluffy batt.

I also purchased some fiber and carded up these watermelon colored batts. I used a nice rosey pink-red and a neon green. I also mixed in some sparkly firestar to give it some flash.

I decided to post about how I spun my fiber for the local spin-along that I mentioned in an earlier post.

First, I decided to divide each of the colors in half by weight so that I had two piles with equal color amounts.  In each pile was 0.5 ounces of the blue and screaming green, and 1 ounce of the tropics color.

I took one of the piles and decided to divided it further, and set the other aside. I visually divided the screaming green and blue into four equal sections.  I created eight equal sections of tropics.  Then, I combined the colors into four bundles, each consisting of 2 tropics, 1 screaming green, and 1 blue.

I then took the strips and twisted them into small balls of roving. I may just have to post a few photos of them because they were so fun to photograph.

I then repeated the steps with the second half of the roving, and ended up with eight bundles.

My plan for spinning was to use a short-forward draw.  I’ve developed my own natural backwards draw, and I still struggle with the short-forward draw (which seems to be the way that most people are taught to spin), so I wanted to challenge myself to spin all of it using that technique and see how it goes.  I wanted to spin four of the eight bundles onto each of two different bobbins and then ply them together.

For the actual spinning I held a bit of all colors of the roving in my hand at the same time and spun them.  Sometimes I drafted the colors separately, and sometimes I drafted them blended.  In the end, I was trying to create some gradual color changes in the final yarn.  This is what it looked like on the two bobbins.  At this point in the spinning, it felt stiff and wiry.

Once I plied it, it softened up a bit.  It wasn’t as wiry as it was as a single.  When plying, I made an effort to use a lower amount of twist in the ply then I usually do.  I definitely have less twist, but I think I like my high-twist plying that I usually make.  I love how the bobbin got a stout barrel shape with all of the yarn plied on it.

I found it interesting while plying that a lot of my screaming green areas seemed to meet up and be plyed together.  I’m not sure how this happened, because it happend much less frequently with the blue.

After soaking the yarn, it became even softer than it had been after plying.  There are even some fluffy parts.  In the end, it’s 140 yards of 10 WPI yarn.

I’m suprised by how much the green and blue are still prevalent in the final yarn, I was really thinking that they would have blended together more effectively.

You can see some areas of the yarn where there was some barberpole effect with the green and blue.

This yarn has so much halo and fuzziness. It almost made it hard to photograph.

I’ve learned a few things while spinning this.  This is the first time that I’ve actually spun roving; almost everything else I’ve spun has been commercial combed top.  It’s definitely different, and drafting seemed harder for me.  I had to slow down my wheel to the lowest ratio to try and spin.  My worsted, short-forward draw is not reliable at all.  I got a lumpy, somewhat inconsistent yarn.  I’ll definitely need to practice more in the future.

I’m anxious to see how this yarn knits up.

For a while now on Ravelry, I’ve been following the Ply by Night spinning group.  As a newer spinner, it’s really interesting to me to see what happens in it.  The idea is that everyone spins the same fiber, and then knits the same projects.  The group had their first spin-along in January, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to join.  But, after watching for a while, I’ve been kicking myself for not joining in.  It’s so interesting to see how different all of the yarns look.  I feel like I’ve learned so much about planning my spinning projects, not just sitting down with the fiber and spinning.

The next round of spinning is the March/April spin-along, and I decided not to miss out this round.  I jumped in and got the fiber.  This round, we’re using a custom dyed Blue Faced Leicester Top from Briar Rose Fibers.  I just got my four ounces yesterday.  It’s lovely, and so, so soft.  I can’t get over how much crimp still exists in the wool.

There is so much color variation close together, I’m not sure how to preserve some of the color differences when I spin.  I’ve been watching in the group, and bulky singles seem to do well at keeping the color defined.  I may try to separate the darker sections from the lighter sections and spin them separately.  I think I may watch a little longer before I jump in and spin this.

I liked the Ply by Night group so much, I invited the other local spinning Ravellers to join me in the group.  Some liked the idea so much that we’ve started our own local spin-along.  We’re using a few different fibers from Bellwether Wool Company, which is local to us.  We went over to the owner, Lois’s, house, visited the sheep, and picked our roving colors.  We decided that as newer spinners, we wanted some challenges both in spinning new to us fibers and in trying colors outside of our standard safe palette.  We opted for a total of four ounces.  It’s two ounces of the Tropics color in the center, which is a Border Leicester wool.  There is one ounce each of the Screaming Green and the Blue, both of which are Wensleydale.

I’m still planning what to do with this roving color combination.  I think that the green and blue will both be muted by the tropics if I blend more as I spin.  I’m just not sold on what to do yet.  There’s talk of a get together to try out the drum carders, so I may wait until after that to start spinning.

My big goal for this year is to learn to love my stash.  I decided that I need to work towards having only yarns in my stash that I like and will use.  Right now it’s really a jumble of things I love and “what on earth was I thinking” yarns.  Last year, I was pleased with the yarn purchases I made, because I did really love all of them.

I made my first step towards this goal recently with one of those “what was I thinking” yarns.  It was a yarn I got forever ago, when I was first learning to knit.  It’s a super bulky, 2.25 st/inch, loosely spun thick-and-thin single. Not a yarn that fits with the profile of what I usually knit.

In the spirt of my goal, I decided to try swatching with the yarn, to see how it knit up. While swatching, I noticed that was so loosely spun that the simple act of knitting removed twist to the point that it fell apart.  After swatching up a skein (it’s only 33 yards), I really didn’t like the finsihed fabric.  Since I didn’t love the yarn, and I wasn’t sure what I could get for it if I tried to destash it, I decided to try something crazy.

First, I ran it through the spinning wheel counterclockwise to remove all of the existing twist.  Then, I sat down with the result and spun it as if it were a thin roving.  I drafted and spun for several days.  When all of the singles were spun, I decided to ply it into a two-ply yarn.  Here is the finished result.

I’m so pleased with how it turned out.  I’m thinking about casting on with it soon for something like the Shetland Triangle shawl.

Yesterday, the Rose & Ram Knit Shop in Independence, OR held a New Year’s Day Knit/Spin-in for a few hours.   Since I didn’t have anything going on, I decided to head up there.  I forgot my camera, and didn’t remember to use the cell phone camera, so there are no photos to show.  However, it was a nice event, and about 30 women showed up to spend a few hours together.

I packed up to head out.  I decided to take my wheel to the event, but took some knitting along too, just in case.  In an overly optimistic bit of planning, I took a second bobbin along, so I could switch bobbins when the first got too full.  Needless to say, that second bobbin never got used.  I ended up spending all two hours there spinning, talking, and watching others spin.  At this point in my spinning, I learn a lot from just watching other spinners in person.

I was spinning some really pretty handpainted superwash merino roving from Lanas de Libelula.  It’s roving I won as a contestant in Black Sheep Bingo this summer, long before I learned to spin.  I’d almost traded it away for some sock yarn.  Now I’m glad I hung onto it.  In total, I had about four onces of the roving.  I spun a bit at the event, and then came home and spent the rest of the day spinning.  I managed to spin all four ounces in one day.

I was aiming for a finer yarn than the corriedale that I spun earlier, I was hoping to even make a fingering weight yarn.  I wasn’t sure I could do it, since the previous yarn I spun was more of a heavy worsted to bulky weight yarn.  However, the singles were spun up at approximately 30 wraps per inch.

I split the fiber over two bobbins so I could turn it into a two ply yarn.  After plying, I had about 266 yards of an 18 WPI yarn.  I then soaked it in a sink full of hot water for about 30 minutes.  When I returned to the sink, there had been some bleeding of color, and the water was a pinky-red color.  After soaking, I squeezed the water out of the yarn, rinsed it in a sink full of cold water, and then thwacked it on the counter a few times.  I hung it to dry and waited.  I was rewarded with a nice, 15 WPI yarn.

15 WPI is more of a sport/DK weight than fingering, but still a lot finer yarn than I was spinning with the corriedale.  I’m pleased with the way this yarn turned out.   With 266 yards, I think that there is enough to make something – maybe even some handspun socks!