Spinning Lately

Last June, my mom and I took a spinning class at our state's sheep and wool festival.  The topic was color in hand-dyed rovings/tops, and we learned three ways to manage overwhelming or clashing color in hand-dyed braids.  The first (on the left in the photo above) is involves tearing the braid into small pieces to create a gradient.  The second is stained-glass - spinning the colored singles together with a solid neutral singles.  The third was fractal-spinning.  Then, I had a fair amount of leftover colored singles from the stained-glass sample, so I chain-plied that to get the fourth skein in the picture.  My stained glass and chain-plied samples have too much plying twist, so at some point before I use them I'll have to run them back through the wheel to remove some of it. 

This enormous skein is spun from Hello Yarn roving that I brought home from Yarn School in October 2012.  It took me over a year to spin!  I don't remember what my final yardage was, but I'm pretty sure it's over 800 yards, and it's laceweight.  My plan is to knit it into a large square shawl, maybe something like this, or this, or this.  I'll use it to wrap around my head in winter instead of wearing a hat.

Then, I spun up two alpaca skeins to go together.  The white one is un-dyed alpaca that I bought on vacation in Vermont several years ago, and the purple is a sparkly alpaca-merino blend that was given to me as a Christmas gift a few years ago.  They're fingering weight, and I've forgotten the yardage on them, but I'm hoping to knit something with colorwork.  I think the purple skein has a bit too much plying twist, so I'll need to remove some of that before I can use it.

Tour de Fleece Finish!

Here is what I accomplished during the Tour de Fleece, which ended on Sunday.  I finished spinning the singles, plied, and washed my green gradient shetland.  I ended up with about 468 yards total, including both skeins (the larger, darker skein is about 357 yds and the smaller, lighter on is about 110 yds).  I think it's approximately sport weight, but I haven't checked.

The third skein was 2 ounces of Wensleydale wool, which I bought on vacation in Vermont six years ago from the Wool Shed at Frostbite Falls Farm.  I spun it sort-of long draw and plied it into a 2-ply.  I'm not wild about the finished yarn.  I don't love how the colors work together, although I do think it's better in person than in the photo.  It's not that soft, and there's not that much of it.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with it.  The skein is about 64 yards.

On the bobbin is almost half of my Hello Yarn Portuguese merino in the colorway "Furry Paws" from Yarn School in October 2012.  The plan is to spin two equal bobbins of singles and then ply them to end up with lace-weight two-ply finished yarn.  This might be my ongoing spinning project for quite a while!

All in all, I consider my Tour de Fleece to be a success.  I spun just about every day - the Tour has two rest days, so even though I missed two days I made them up by spinning on the official rest days.  I feel like I got a good rhythm going with my spinning, and I really do enjoy spinning.  I'm going to leave my wheel in my living room and keep spinning at least once a week - my plan is that Tuesdays Are For Spinning.

Swift!

Last week l used my swift for the first time.

 It was a Christmas gift, but all of the knitting I've done so far this year has been yarn that came pre-wound. The swift is wonderful! It was quick and easy! There were no tangles, and no-one had tired arms from holding up the skein!

Christmas Yarn

I got some lovely yarn and fiber for Christmas!  I was given a very generous gift card to a really awesome yarn shop in Robert's home town, and I bought the light brown organic sock yarn and the gradient dyed lace yarn, and I still have some money left on the card!  I found the little knitted gnome kit in my stocking.  The purple yarn is a lovely super super soft alpaca that is local to a family member, and the fiber is a sparkly alpaca blend local to another family member.  I'm so excited to knit and spin this lovely bounty!

First up is a Multnomah shawl with the gradient-dyed lace yarn.

Coffee-dyed yarn

I visited my mom last weekend, and on Sunday morning before I flew home we dyed some of her handspun yarn with coffee!  We used the book Harvesting Color as a reference (it doesn't have specific instructions for coffee, so we used the master dye bath recipe).

We mordanted by simmering with alum for an hour the on Sunday morning, then rinsed the yarn with hot water and simmered it in very, very strong coffee for 90 minutes.  Then I had to go to the airport, so we turned the heat off and let the yarn cool in the dye bath until Sunday evening, when my mom rinsed, thwacked, and hung the yarn to dry.

It is a lovely golden brown color - but not what we expected.  I think we both expected a darker, less golden, more "dirt" brown color.  But in any case, it is beautiful, and we had fun!