FF: Preppy longwool

When I was a kid, we used to go skiing at my Dad's family's place in Maine. And for a stretch there (maybe from ages 8-12), everytime we went up, I would read The Official Preppy Handbook. You know, just to keep in touch with my WASP roots and berate myself for the things I was doing wrong. I specifically remember the whole section on the Official Colors of the Preppy - pink and green.

The last few weeks have found me on a complete tear through some fiber. I finished up four separate spinning projects last month, a fact which boggles my mind. I think the fact that Ironman was on a business trip made a big difference, because I could sit and spin to my heart's content after the girls were in bed.

This is my second batch of stuff spun from fiber that I dyed at Yarn School, and my first experience with a longwool.

You can see from this picture that the beginning materials were somewhat retina-searing. This is 8 oz (4 oz spun, 4 oz top) of Masham wool which I dyed with Emerald, Chartreuse and Fuschia Jacquard dyes. I had never heard of Masham before, but it's one half Wensleydale (I have 12 oz in my stash - what will I do with it?) and has a pretty good staple length. I wasn't really sure how to spin it, so I went semi-worsted, longdraw-ish from the fold, and then chain plied to maintain some striping.

This picture gives a sense of the fibers. It was pretty nice to spin, although some places seemed a bit sticky. I attribute that to operator error in the dyeing process.

The colors muted themselves quite a bit in the finished yarn (thank Allah)! I ended up with 120 yds* of self-striping 3-ply, 10-11 wpi (about light worsted weight). It should be plenty for a lined hat or some mittens - since the yarn isn't terribly soft (a characteristic of most longwools), it would behove the recipient to maybe use it for some outerwear.

And if I get worried that maybe it's too subdued, I can just look at these pictures. Yikes!

* Total I-am-an-idiot-and-thank-Diety-my-day-to-day-existence-does-not-depend-on-my-ability-to-do-arithmetic moment: while calculating yardage for this skein I realized that I have been off by a factor of two in figuring my handspun yardage for who knows how long. Because you know, X loops in the skein times the # of inches divided by 72 does not equal yards. Thank god for calculators. And sweetheart, stop laughing at me.

Fiber Friday: The first Porpoise-dyed from Yarn School

It is still Friday, right? I'm really falling behind here - this yarn has been spun up and done for almost two months, but I'm only getting around to blogging about it now. Pathetic!

Superwash merino, handdyed by yours truly, with Jacquard acid dyes in black, brown, brilliant blue and pumpkin orange I believe.
Spun/plied at 10:1 on ST Lendrum
Stats: ~185 yds, 14 wpi, 4 oz. This is some seriously dense yarn. I was planning on giving this to someone for a Christmas present, but I'm not sure how big her feet are - this is not going to be enough for a pair of socks. Sigh. Which means the other 4 oz I was going to save for myself will have to be spun up for her as well. Too bad...I guess I can always dye more.

I was really surprised by how this yarn turned out. Given the large white stretches in the top, I was expecting it to be a lot lighter.

It's a lot more uniform in color then I thought it would be. The 2-ply barberpole, in this instance, had similar enough tonal values that the whole skein ended up somewhere in the middle of the range instead of going from one extreme to the other.

This is only the second superwash fiber I've worked with - the first was superwash Corriedale, and I'm a lot happier with this one. I think I overspun the singles for the Corrie - the finished yarn felt somewhat wirey - but this merino basically spun itself. Literally. I sat in front of the wheel and just let the fiber run out into the single with hardly any effort. The 4 oz took two nights to spin (+/- 3 hrs), which is fast for me. Plying was another evening. So if I have to give up the other four ounces, at least I know it won't take forever to get through*!

* As soon as my new tension knob arrives - there was a small Lendrum-child collision this morning apparently (I think I was in the shower) that did not end up well for the Lendrum. Very sad, but given the amount of Christmas knitting left to be done, probably just as well.

Fiber friday: Worsted vs. semi-worsted

So last week I showed you the yarn I spun up at Yarn School. One of the things that we discussed was the difference between woolen and worsted spinning, both in terms of fiber prep (which seems to be most important) and spinning technique (which is where you get the "semi"). Woolen yarn is only produced when you start with a carded fiber prep, worsted yarn comes from combed prep. Since most of the commercially available fibers come in top form (even if they are referred to as roving), 99.9% of the spinning I've done has been worsted or semi-worsted. Until I went to Kansas.

The purple and black mini-skeins were spun from hand carded rolags. The brown single was spun from a batt. The major difference between these two preps is that hand carded rolags force you to spin a woolen yarn with the fibers more or less traveling in a circle around the circumference of the single, rather then longitudinal along the single. Batts can also be spun with circumferential fibers or longitudinal. Both preps give you a yarn that is fuzzy because the ends of the fibers are free to stick out rather then being smoothed into the single and caught by the twist. You can see the fuzzies in the above picture.

This is an example of worsted spinning. The fiber prep was combed top, which I spun with a short forward draw, smoothing and compressing the single as the twist entered. The fibers in this yarn run parallel to the axis of the single, so the ends are trapped and the yarn is smooth. This is a good way to get a very strong, durable, hard wearing yarn, which was perfect for this stuff, which became my first pair of knee-socks.

On the right is the yarn I spun at Yarn School - this is a semi-worsted yarn. The prep was combed top, but I pulled off chunks and spun them long-draw from the fold, thereby jumbling the fiber orientation. On the left is the yarn I spun up from my H^4 swap fiber: spun with short forward draw, worsted yarn. Nice and smooth, no fuzzies. I'm calling it Cotton Candy for the colors, and I think Devil has designs on it for something.

Cotton Candy stats:
Domestic wool combed top from Poppy Flower Fibers, 4 oz
Spun/plied 10:1
Spun worsted style, 2 ply, ~12 wpi, 183 yds/4 oz.

One other point about worsted vs. semi-worsted. Worsted style spinning got me 183 yds from 4 oz. Semi-worsted at a similar wpi got me 83 yds/1.1 oz. So the semi-worsted spinning gets you more yardage since the yarn is less dense due to trapped air. So now I'm on the hunt for some commercial roving to buy so I can get going on some sweater yarn!

Hey, it's Friday, here's some fiber

The lovely Corriedale fiber provided in our goodie bags at Yarn School, dyed by Adrian, colorway "Hooray Sheep"

I wanted to try a fluffier yarn then I usually spin, so I spun the singles from the fold with long draw at 10:1 on my Lendrum. The big skein at the top (3.1 oz, 272 yds, 11-12 wpi) was plied on the Lendrum at 10:1 with a fair bit of twist. The smaller skein (1.1 oz, 83 yds, 14 wpi) was plied on a DT folding Fricke that was sitting all alone in the gym, and happened to have a Woolee Winder on it. I have no idea what the ratio was for plying that one, but the tension was stronger then on my Lendrum, so it ended up having quite a bit less twist. When I held up both skeins, the Lendrum one was overplied, but not dramatically so, and the Fricke skein was balanced.

Finished them with a soak in hot water and hung to dry. It's very interesting to me to see how much of a difference the plying made in the wpi. Same singles, same number of plies, both are pretty soft, but the lower-twist skein has more squish to it, while the high-twist skein is more elastic. Next week I'll post about the differences between spinning from the fold long draw and spinning worsted short draw (which is what I subjected my HHHH fiber to after I got back).

I've definitely got my spinning mojo back - two nights this week got me through 3.8 oz of this

Superwash merino

which is destined to become some 2-ply sock yarn for a Christmas present.

Yarn School

Where to begin? Oh, ok, maybe with this...

Or this,

Or this.

Suffice to say, I had a good time. Friday was dyeing and fiber prep. I've got more photos here if you need more details on what I dyed, but Friday morning was a whirlwind. I did 3 lbs of fiber in 3 hours. Of course, it makes a huge difference when you have a Dye Fairy around to mix up the dye and do all the rinsing for you. Clearly I'll have to train my kids to work a salad spinner and put them to work.

Then we headed to Alpacas in Wildcat Hollow for lunch. I almost took this guy home with me,

but settled for some unwashed locks and processed roving instead.

Friday afternoon, I was introduced to hand carding and drum carding, and got to try real woolen spinning. Whee! I made some mini-skeins from hand carded rolags, and then spun up a batt that I made on the drum carder.

Definitely fuzzier and loftier then my usual spin.

I spent most of my time spinning up the 4 oz that Adrian stuck in our goodie bags into this:

Some incredible Corriedale, dyed with brown, burgundy, chartreuse and orange. Sounds horrible in print, but the top was incredibly beautiful. Unfortunately I threw it on the wheel too quickly to get a picture of it, but there may be some over at the Yarn School Flickr group.

Saturday was the big spinning day. We had demonstrations on different drafting techniques, plying, spinning novelty yarns. Nikol and Jennifer also talked about raw fleece and how to pick a good one, and got one corner of the gym very sheepy smelling with piles of fiber all over the floor. I was intrigued enough to get some hand cards to play with, but I figure I can hold off on a drum carder for a while yet. Between the goodie bag, the alpacas and the dye lab, I have enough fiber to last me for quite a while!

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the goats or bunnies (some pictures here) who came to visit on Saturday, but they were very cute and very soft, and thankfully I didn't have too much cash left by that time. Sunday morning I was up at 6:00 am to head back to the airport in Kansas City. I got back here, Ironman picked me up with the girls, and we dropped him off at the international terminal to go to Peru. It was a great trip, if exhausting, and I'm so glad I got a chance to hang out with some other spinners and try some new techniques. If we're still in country next year, I might have to think about going back.