FF: Thistle

I know, I know, I was supposed to post the second half of my fiber sampler review. But I can't because...I'm not done with the samples. Of the 1.5 I had left to finish, I still have 1.5 left. And I'm afraid I'm terribly unmotivated to do those last samples because I've gotten distracted. By this:

Wild Raspberry Handpainted Targhee top, Woodland Woolworks

And this:

Maldives, 21 micron merino, Hello Yarn Fiber Club September fiber

And this:

Mollusc, Wensleydale, Hello Yarn Club August fiber (I have 12 oz of this!)

And this:

Thistle, 18 micron merino, Hello Yarn Fiber Club June fiber

It's been a tough few weeks for me, with Devil being home sick more often then not, and me having a paper to revise and resubmit that I had just gotten started on when she got sick. I've been pretty wound up with trying to get work done, and take care of her, plus the fact that I am so not cut out to be a stay-at-home mom. I have infinite admiration for those who do stay home with their kids, but I am too much of an introvert to be happy taking care of someone all day without a break. So with the sick kid, and then the sick husband and the sick me (how Boo did not pick up this bug with forever remain a mystery on par with the final resting place of Mr. Hoffa*), and then more sick kid, I haven't been getting enough down time, which means I haven't been doing any spinning and hardly any knitting.

And on Monday I realized that I truly needed to just sit down that night and do my own thing. So I pulled out the big pile of Thistle roving, split it in two long strips and predrafted it. I wound it up into a ball and grabbed the wheel to get started. Before I knew it, it was almost 11:00 pm, and I had this:

What's more, I had some semblance of my sanity back. Phew.

*Literally 10 seconds after I typed this sentence I got a call from IronDad, who had just left the daycare after his lunchtime Boo visit. I asked him how she was doing, and he said "Well, it's kind of up in the air as to whether or not she's getting sick." I'm glad someone up there has a fucking sense of humor. But at least I have some merino waiting for me at home...

FF: Tour de wool, Part I

Earlier this spring I decided that the easiest way to get a bunch of different fibers to spin would be to get a sampler pack. Off to Woodland Woolworks went my busy little typing fingers, and I ordered their Natural Colored Wool sampler pack: 0.5 oz of 16 different wools. Over the course of the last couple of months I've been spinning up these little samples, and I've pulled together some thoughts about them that may be of interest to other spinners out there. There are other reviews of these wools out there, but maybe I can contribute some further information.

All the fibers were spun under (more-or-less) the same conditions. I stripped each top in half lengthwise and spun from the end with a short-forward draw, smoothing the fibers as the twist entered (worsted spun). Samples were spun on a ST Lendrum folding wheel at 8:1 (I'm still a beginner!) and plied at 6:1 immediately after spinning the singles. Twist was set by submerging the skeins in very hot water, and skeins were agitated slightly as the water cooled. Finally, the skeins were dried hanging without weight. All of the samples were easy to draft and spin.

The samples in the pack broke down into softer and coarser wools. In this post I'll talk about the coarser wools, and save the softies for the second installment.

(left to right - Grey Swalesdale, Romney and Jacob Brown)

1) Grey Swalesdale - 4" staple, didn't make note of the crimp. This stuff was probably the coarsest of the samples, and even after washing only really feels suitable for heavy outerwear. The final sample ended up at 8 wpi, about 11 yds from 0.5 oz.

2) Romney sliver - 6" staple, some crimp. Had to keep my hands farther apart then with the Swalesdale, which took some getting used to, but aside from that this was easy to spin. It feels ok in the skein - a bit coarse, but much softer then the Swalesdale. It has a nice sheen to it as well. 8 wpi, about yds/0.5 oz.

3) Jacob Brown - 4-4.5" staple, crimpy. A beautiful dark brown color. This was the only sample that had any real amount of VM, and even that was minor and easy to pick out as I was spinning. The fiber felt sort of clumpy - it was harder to draft evenly, and ended up being much thicker. The final stats were 6 wpi, only 8 yds/0.5 oz.

(from left to right - Finnsheep, Grey Icelandic, Wensleydale and Corriedale Cross)

4) Finnsheep - >6" staple, no (low) crimp. This was particularly easy to draft, and I found myself doing quite a bit of backdrafting with this. Spun up quite similar to the Romney, and also had a bit of a sheen (maybe a function of the longer staple?). 8 wpi, 10 yds/0.5 oz.

5) Grey Icelandic - 6" staple, medium crimp. Slightly coarse fiber, slightly fuzzy when spun up. Good for sturdy outerwear. 8 wpi, 11 yds/0.5 oz.

6) Wensleydale Longwool - 7+ inch staple. Slightly coarse but spun up beautiful. Nice and smooth, it softened up after setting the twist and has a beautiful sheen to it. 8 wpi, 9+ yds/0.5 oz.

7) Corriedale Cross - 4" staple, medium crimp. Coarse as fiber, but felt much nicer in the skein. And such a pretty chocolate brown! 9 wpi, 12 yds/0.5 oz

That's it for this installment - next week the softer samples.

Granny's party

I'm mostly recovered from my expedition over the weekend with the girls to North Carolina*, but it's amazing how exhausting vacation can be! We left on Thursday, sneaking out of IAH between feeder bands from Tropical Storm Erin, and made it safely to Richmond, VA without an further mishap. Despite having to sit on the plane for an hour at the gate and then for almost three hours in the air, the kids were fabulous. Having a bulkhead seat helped tremendously, but it was still a long time to be stuck in one place, particularly for Devil.

We met Nana in Richmond, threw the kids (neither of whom slept on the plane) into the car, and headed south. They were both asleep inside of ten minutes, and we had a very peaceful trip down to the lake. Things were very calm until Friday morning, when my cousin arrived with her two kids (7 and 3) and then later in the day, my two aunts arrived with another cousin and 2 more kids in tow (4 and 10 months). Devil was so enthralled by all the excitement that she basically forgot to eat. The rest of the weekend was a blur of playing in the lake, going for rides in the big motorboat (which Devil very proudly got to drive), and the ingestion of copious amounts of junk food.

On Saturday night we had Granny's birthday party, and I gave her the Branching Out scarf I've been working on. I'm not much in to making scarves, they get real boring real fast, but something about this one was different. Maybe it was the lace pattern, or the excitement of working with yarn I spun myself, but I really enjoyed making this scarf. I was originally planning on keeping it for myself, but decided that Granny would love it. And she did. Although she made sure to tell me to take it back when she goes.

She loved the colors (which are perfect for her), and was very impressed by the fact that I'd not only knit it, but also spun the yarn. That's the kind of appreciation for handknitted gifts you like to see!

Here's a close up. More details about the yarn and it's origins are

here

, but it was approximately worsted weight (varied between 11-13 wpi in three different skeins). I started off with two skeins, one thinner then the other. I weighed both skeins and the thinner one was also half the weight of the other. I wanted to avoided pooling and abrupt changes in the color sequences as well as minimizing any variability in the gauge due to thicker versus thinner spinning, so I used both balls at the same time, working 4 rows from the heavy/thicker ball and 2 rows from the lighter/thinner ball. I carried the non-working yarn up along the side, catching it up in the middle of the 4 row stretches so it didn't dangle off the edge. This worked out pretty well, but when I ran out of the thicker ball of yarn, the scarf wasn't quite long enough, so I had to spin up some more. Thankfully I had some fiber left!

Some pattern details:

Pattern:

Branching Out

from Knitty.com

Needles: US size 8

Yarn: BFL top handdyed from the

Hello Yarn

Fiber Club, spun on a Golding spindle

Started: er...sometime in mid-July

Finished: ~August 10th or so

Gauge: Hunh? Who cares, it's lace...about 7 inches wide and on the short side for a scarf.

Trip back on Sunday was uneventful except for Boo showing disturbing signs of wanting to be _that_ baby. You know the one, who screams non-stop for the entire flight and will not be mollified. Thankfully we were right next to the engines at the very back of the plane, and she eventually conked out.

Note: I'll be on a brief hiatus for the next couple of weeks - we're heading off to the UK tomorrow for a wedding and some time out looking at fossils on the Jurassic Coast. But back after Labor Day, and I've got a review of a bunch of different types of spinning fibers in the works for you.

* except for the lovely case of pinkeye I've picked up from my oldest child, for which I spent two hours at the doctor's office this morning trying to get some antibiotics. Thanks Dev!

Finis!

I've got several finished items to show you today. First up is the final Lantern Moon skein.

It took me what felt like forever to ply this stuff up. At least four evenings of solid 2 hr plying sessions. But I'm pretty happy with the finished product - I like the colors alot more then I thought I would when I started off.

I ended up with 467 yds of fingering weight yarn (18 wpi)! That is such a change from the weight I was spinning before - I'm not sure how I managed to go from heavy worsted to fingering while skipping over the intervening weights, but I now understand why folks say it's harder to spin thick then thin. The biggest difference in what I did with this yarn (versus

Cricket

) was to prep all the top at once, predrafting each section and then winding up two big balls of fiber to spin. That meant that once I started spinning, I could just keep going without needed to stop and prep more fiber. The best part of the spinning was watching how the colors changed. This was also the worst part of the plying - I seperated the top by color repeats and was hoping to get them to line up in the finished yarn. Mmmm...not so much. But this stuff is still very pretty, and will make good Silly Socks* for Devil.

And here is another FO,

blocked and awaiting delivery to my grandmother for her birthday. I'll try and get a good shot of her modeling it this weekend. The blocking process was greatly assisted by a freshly washed Boo:

(It looks like she's smiling in this photo, but really she's starting to wail)

This is my first fiber-to-FO project, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. And the process of knitting with yarn I had made myself was really a special one. I also found the variability of the yarn worked well with the lace pattern and kept things interesting. I'm not going to put a moratorium on all mill-spun yarn for future projects, especially for something with a lot of stockinette, but I'm liking the handspun stuff alot.

Here's a final, unfortunately framed shot of the Lantern Moon for you. Probably no Fiber Friday this week since the girls and I will be in NC for Granny's birthday (cross your fingers for me for the plane ride tomorrow afternoon!), but I'll be back next week, hopefully with more stuff cleared off the needles. I'm getting some fall sweater startitis around here!

* Every Friday Devil's classroom does something different, for example wearing pajamas to school. Last week Friday was Silly Sock day. I found out about this on Wednesday at 5:15 pm, and spent more time then I care to admit trying to calculate how much sleep I would have to give up in order to knit her some Silly Socks by 7:00 am Friday morning. Needless to say, I came to my senses and ended up putting embroidery floss bows all over a pair of socks she already had. She was quite taken with the idea of silly socks, however, so there's another project to add to the list.

Fiber Friday - Lantern Festival

One of the great things about joining the Hello Yarn fiber club has been getting fiber in colors I would never have chosen. Of the three packages received so far, only one (June) has been colors that I would have picked for myself. When last months fiber, Lantern Festival, came out of the box, I set it on the table and looked at it for a moment. Iron Man came in and said “Woah! That is bright!” I was very dubious about how it was going to look, and at a complete loss as to how to spin it without getting more cat barf.

After some introspection and input from other folks in the group, I split the top by color repeats, and then split each repeat into pieces about a finger wide (8 per repeat). I predraft the strips and wound them into two balls, hoping that I’d get the same weight in each (and therefore, theoretically the same length of singles from each).

Each ball was spun in the correct color sequence (purple to green to red to orange to purple).

This is the first time I’ve spun on the wheel after splitting the fiber down in to more manageable pieces, and not surprisingly my singles are a lot thinner. They’re getting more even too. I spun up both big fluff balls over the weekend while the kids were napping and in the evenings after they’d gone to bed, and started plying on Tuesday. I’m still plying. It’s going to take a long time to ply all of this stuff, and my hopes of having the color repeats more or less line up have been sorely dashed. I guess I’m not yet consistent enough for that.

But it is coming out pretty – I’m always amazed to see how different the colors look in the final yarn as compared to the starting fiber. I have no idea what this will become yet, or what the final yarn weight will be, but I hope to finish it up over the weekend. And the next Yarn Club package should be here soon!