Fiber Friday: Wool, meet Literature. Literature, meet Wool.

Because I don't have enough to do already, and because I love Craftlit and pretty much everything Heather Ordover does, a few weeks ago I succumbed to the inevitable and joined the knitalong for Jane's Ubiquitous Shawl, being run concurrently with Heather's presentation on Craftlit of "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte.

Determined not to make this easy on myself, I posted the following in the knitalong thread:

 

posted 17 days ago (Tuesday, October 30)

Ok, I’m in. But, since I can’t do things the easy way, I started spinning for my shawl last night. 2 of 8 oz done, for a two ply. Don’t know how many yards that will be, so there may be further panicked spinning when I run out of yarn!
 

So. I had pawed through the HYFC stash, pulled out some gorgeous Shetland, and started spinning it up for a DK-weight 2-ply because....well...I think I just got carried away by the idea of it? Maybe it was wool fumes - I don't know.

8 oz of this gorgeous fiber,

became 560 yds of this yarn.

A lovely, squooshy, DK-to-worsted weight yarn that is very rapidly becoming Jane's Ubiquitous Shawl.

Sadly, 560 yds is less then half the yardage I need, and I don't have any more fiber in this colorway! I thought about dyeing something else for the border and edging, but then tossed that idea out in favor of trading with my fellow Hello Yarn Fiber Club groupies on Rav. Thanks to their generosity, there are 3 more bags of fiber headed my way, so I should have plenty to finish this off.

I'm thinking if I have leftovers, I might make myself a matchy-matchy hat using the first lace chart. Doesn't this look like it could be a hat? Hmmmm...

Apparently the KAL bug is still ruling my every waking moment because I also seem to have signed up for a glove knitalong. W. T. F?

Jackpot!

On Wednesday, I spent most of the morning waiting for the dishwasher repair man - the extremely helpful time slot they gave me was 7:00 am - 3:00 pm. Once he arrived, deduced the fact that the motor on the dishwasher is broken, and managed to rebook an appointment to fix it for a week and a half from now (making it three weeks I will have been washing dishes by hand - grrrr....), I had pretty much written off the rest of the day as a complete loss.

Royal Mail to the rescue! (And belive me, those are not words that I every thought I'd say!) Not 5 minutes after he left, the doorbell rang - there were two big squooshy packages for me.

Package number 1:

What's inside?

Some undyed fiber from The Wool Gathering: 100 grams of lovely, soft, white Suffolk.

And a kilo of Romney - I have been searching for UK-sourced Romney for months, and am so thrilled to have finally found some! I love the bags the fiber is packed in too: I think I will be ordering from them again, maybe some of their British alpaca...

Package number 2: I must first preface this by saying that I always miss Adrian's updates. But on two occasions now, I've gotten lucky and happened to be over at her site when there were Fiber Club extras on sale. A couple weeks ago I fell off the metaphorical wagon in a major way, and ended up with this arriving at my door.

The September fiber club, Critter on Falkland (yum!),

And another 1.5 lb of fiber: 3 bags of Splendid Romney and 3 bags of Silt Portuguese Merino.



Swoon-tastic. Now my dilemma is how to combine them. I was originally going to spin up the Splendid by itself and knit myself another Romney sweater, but looking at the two of them together makes me think that maybe they want to make little yarn babies?


The other possibility is pairing Silt with my two bags of Minerals Shetland (and who knows what else might jump into the mix? There's a lot of Hello Yarn-dyed fiber in my attic....) and knitting a swoopy wrappy cardigan type thing. Or a Larch like Caro's. Or a Spoked Cardigan like Rose's. So many sweaters, so little time...guess I'd better start spinning!

Sadly, sweater-lot spinning will have to wait until after this weekend, because by the time this posts, I will be happily ensconced BY MYSELF on a train on my way to West Wales for Plug-and-Play Pembrokeshire, round deux. Expect much yarn/swatch/knitters-being-wacky evidence next week. Cheers!

A few thoughts on the Hansen miniSpinner

So I have been the proud owner of a Hansen miniSpinner for just over two weeks now. In that time, I've done my best to put the beast through some of it's paces. Here's the result:

I've done four different fiber types: BFL, Wensleydale, a mixed wool sample that came with the miniSpinner, and Targhee. The final yarns are 2- and 3-plied (no chain plying yet - the thought gives me hives!). My feelings about the miniSpinner are overall positive, but the learning curve is a bit slower then I was expecting.

First off, I'm finding it hard to adjust to a constant rate of twist insertion, to be honest. I think that, on the Lendrum, I unconsciously adjust my treadling speed as needed to get the single/plying twist that "feels right". With the constant speed of the miniSpinner, I'm finding that I'm undertwisting my singles (although that's gotten a lot better) and definitely underplying! Fresh off the Lendrum I get skeins that twist anywhere from 0.5-2 times when hanging free, and they usually end up balanced after finishing. Now I'm getting skeins that are balanced straight off the bobbin, and underspun after finishing. This is something that I'm sure will get better with time as I adjust to the  miniSpinner.

The other thing I was expecting was that the miniSpinner was going to dramatically improve my rate of production. Ummm...not so much: I'm definitely faster on the Lendrum then on the miniSpinner. Again, this is something I think will change as I get used to it, and get a better feel for where I should set the speed for spinning and/or plying, but it's not happening as quickly as I was imagining. So I guess I can't be all production spinning quite yet!

Low down on the yarns - Round 1: I had some tail ends of Leaf Peepers BFL lying around, so I spun them on the mS and compared the resulting 2-ply with the 2-ply leftovers from the first batch. Lendrum-spun:


mS-spun:


I think you can see the difference in the two, right? They were both spun worsted-style, from combed top, and finished the same way. The mS-yarn is both overspun and looser and fluffier then the Lendrum-yarn. And much less even - you can see that my drafting is not a smooth on the mS as the Lendrum (i.e. overspun sections next to poofy, underspun bits).


Round 2: This is some Salamander Wensleydale that I've spun up as a gift. Again, much more underplied (and underspun) then my usual, but with a long staple length like Wensleydale, this makes for a lovely, soft, drapey yarn, so this one is a win.

Round 3: there was a teensy puff of lovely greyish pinkish fiber included with the miniSpinner, so I spun that up next. I didn't think too much about what to do with it, just threw it at the wheel (spinner?) and waited to see what came out.

Again, lower twist singles, lower twist plying makes for squishy poofy yarn. Nice, but not my usual default spin by a long shot!

Round 4:

3-ply Golgi Targhee - this is one of the colorway experiments I did before starting up Porpoise Fur, and it's been languishing in the stash ever since. I thought it might make a nice neutral cowl for a Christmas present, so I decided to spin up my default single (~30 wpi) and see if I could get a bulky 3-ply.

This varies from bulky to worsted - the Targhee poof factor has not failed me! And since I'm getting less twist in there, I don't have many of the overtwisted bits that I ended up with the last time I spun Targhee. Still not the most even drafting you've ever seen, but it should be ok when knitted up. I'll have to see if I can get this cast on ASAP.

The verdict is still out on the WooLee Winder - I like not having to stop and change hooks, but it alters the take-up in a way that I'm still getting used to, and I'm not sure I really like... But all in all, the miniSpinner is a big win. If you'll excuse me, I'll go off and finish up Round 5: Southdown!

Incoming!!!!!!!!!!!

I have been spending far too much time tracking a particular parcel on it's way to me from some lovely folks in Washington state. After a few days of forgetting to check, I just noticed this.

So. Freaking. Excited. And preparing to spin ALL THE THINGS! (And believe me, these days, that's a lot of things. Like, somewhere around 20+ lbs worth of fiber hiding in my house.) (Of course, some of that I'm supposed to be selling, not hoarding for myself...)

Oy...my poor hands. Y'all should start buying stock in Nurofen/Advil, if I have anything to say about it.

Undyed fiber report

There's been so much application of dye to fiber around here of late, that it's something of a relief to have some naturally colored fiber to play with. I've been plugging away on the Gotland (halfway to the required yardage, with another full bobbin and starting another one tonight), but I decided I needed a break, and I'm spun up the Hebridean fleece for the colorwork.

This stuff started out looking like this:


There were some intact locks.

The staple length was about 3-4 inches, and the fiber had some really nice crimp!

I had 68 grams of raw fleece, and after washing I had about 60 gr left.

I carded that up, after tossing out the bits that were too matted or scurfy to be worth messing with. This box full of rolags,

Ended up as approximately 70 yds of lovely 2-ply yarn.

This was really nice to spin - it drafted pretty well (better then the Gotland for sure!) - and the resulting yarn has a nice bounce, although it's not the softest in the world. Sadly, 70 yds is only about half of the required yardage! I do have a couple of other lots of black/brown fiber (Black Welsh Moutain, some Jacob), so the plan is to use the Hebridean for the colorwork on the arms of the sweater, and spin up probably the Black Welsh for the hem and yoke. We'll see how it goes.