Spun up colourways: FRET CFP-YFP

Whenever I dye up a new colorway, I always want to spin up a sample of it, just to see how it looks and give customers some idea of what their final yarn might look like. Sadly, I'm not very good about sitting down and doing the sampling, so it doesn't always work out that way.

When I spin at home, I usually open up a bag and start right in with no sampling whatsoever. Sometimes I've got a project in mind for the final yarn, sometimes not. But I don't usually sample unless I'm trying to reproduce a particular commercial yarn (I've blogged about my sampling experience previously) for a project. 

One of the best things about Wool House was the opportunity to try out some of the new colorways and do some sampling. I was there for a couple of hours each time, so a perfect amount of time to play around with spinning styles and plying styles and whatnot. I managed to sample three different colorways - today's example is some glorious, truly brightly colored Romney.

FRET CFP-YFP on Romney

I started with some of this gorgeous stuff. When I dye up a lot of fiber, I do more then needed for a particular number of bags (i.e. 17+ ounces to end up with four 4 oz bags). When the fiber gets split up for packaging, I pull off the slightly matted ends and however much more I need to pull off to get 4 oz bundles. Those leftover bits are then free for me to play with however I like. This time around, I sampled.

The three sample skeins: a 2-ply, a chain ply, and a true 3-ply (i.e. not chain plied).

First up is the 2 ply (left picture). I had three chunks of fibre that were more or less the same size, with more or less the same colour distribution, so I took the first one and split it lengthwise three times, generating four pieces of top that were roughly the same length. I spun two pieces on one bobbin, two pieces on another bobbin and plied them together. I ended up with a bit more yardage on one bobbin, so I wound it off around my hand and Andean plied the rest of the singles, which is my typical solution to uneven single amounts. 

I'd spun up a bit of this Romney before, and enjoyed it, but I was really impressed by how soft and silky it spun up in the final yarn. Romney is a long wool, and can be a bit on the coarser side, but this top is truly luscious. The final 2 ply is soft, with a really lovely drape and not a lot of elasticity (as you would expect from the breed).

The next sample I spun was the chain ply (middle picture). I split the fibre the same way and spun them all end to end. Then I plied from that. I've found that, while I need to stop and start when chain plying on my Lendrum, I can just set the speed on the miniSpinner down a bit lower and do the chaining without having to stop entirely. This goes back to my initial observation that I wasn't getting enough twist insertion with the miniSpinner. In this case, not a bad thing!

The chain plying plays up on the colour blending in this colourway - there are distinct solid turquoise and yellow sections, but a lovely green mix at the interfaces that is just what I was hoping for with this colorway. Result!

Last, but not least, the true 3 ply (right picture). For this I split the fiber a bit differently so I could get a fractal three ply. I pulled the length of top I had into 3 pieces of equal length. The first I split into half lengthwise, the second into quarters lengthwise, and the last I left intact. The end result is a yarn that has one ply running from blue to yellow to blue, one ply that goes blue/yellow/blue/blue/yellow/blue, and one that goes blue/yellow/blue/blue/yellow/blue/blue/yellow/blue/blue/yellow/blue. So some stretches are all one color, some are 2 plies color A/1 ply color B, and some sections are 1 ply color A/2 plies color B. I find this a really good technique for blending the colors in a handdyed top to reduce the amount of striping that shows up in the finished piece (particularly for sweaters or other larger projects). 

Of course the real test of all this sampling is knitting the swatches. I have good intentions to do so, but I suspect I might need another Wool House to actually sit down and get them done!

The sock moratorium seems to be over

Remember how I said I was in a sock rut? Actually, it wasn't really a rut so much as a complete absence of any desire to knit socks whatsoever. A sock drought, if you will. Well...I'm happy to say that the drought seems to be over.

I have discovered that there are two solutions to lack of sock mojo: the first is to knit socks with handspun (I've got another batch of handspun yarn ready for the next pair already).

The second solution? Knit a glorious rainbow of mini-socks for samples.

There are sixteen mini-skeins there, and I've done 6 little, itty-bitty socks in the last two days. I. Cannot. Stop. With. Mini. Socks. I am totally enfatuated, so enfatuated that I'm having trouble doing anything else. Which is great for my sense of productivity and accomplishment (1 sock = about 45 min. Result!), but not so good for getting anything finished off that someone bigger then my dog might wear (i.e. the handspun socks are at the exact state seen in the above photo and have been for five days now).

The upside is that I should be done with the minis in a few more days and I will be required to get myself back to human-sized knitting projects. Like the sweater in progress, and the socks, and the hats, and the mittens, plus the deadline knitting that needs to be done...see you in a month or so!

Chain plied Turkey Day

In the week leading up to Wool House, I was working on finishing up some Turkey Day Cheviot, with the idea of knitting up some matching socks. I used to knit a lot of socks, but have been feeling rather uninspired of late, so I decided that starting up socks out of handspun might be a good solution.

Turkey Day on Cheviot

I had a 4 oz bundle of fibre, so I split it down the middle lengthwise as evenly as I could without a scale, and spun a fine single on the miniSpinner. Once the singles were done, I chain plied (also called Navajo plying) and ended up with two more-or-less matching skeins.

I really like chain plying to preserve colour runs, although many people don't recommend chain plied yarns for socks. Because of the yarn structure (basically a long series of loops, kind of like crochet), there's an assumption that it won't wear as well as a true 3-ply. I have not done the experiment to actually test that assumption (knit two socks, one chain plied and one 3-plied and compare how well they stand up to being worn and washed), but Cheviot is a pretty sturdy wool, so I'm hopeful they'll wear well.

I haven't measured the yardage yet on these. The two skeins seem to be (to my eye) pretty close grist-wise, so I'm optimistic that I'll end up with a pretty good match. Worst case scenario, I'll end up with a pair of socks that start off matching in the feet and run astray somewhere on the leg - I can live with that!

I'm really looking forward to seeing how those blue and grey bits knit up against the warmer colours. And I'm also really looking forward to not having to think about knitting wool socks because my feet are so cold - I'm ready for winter to be over already!

Wool House

Today, I finally got a chance to take a good wander through Wool House and to take a cubic boatload of photographs. Seriously, I took more then 100 photos in an hour, which is exponentially beyond my normal photo taking MO. In the interests of not having this post be 40 pages long, I'll share a selection, but all the rest are in a Flickr set here.

First off was a shot of the sheep flag flying proudly over Somerset House as I walked over Waterloo Bridge. Yesterday was the first day of spring, which in London this year apparently means that the second day of spring should be sleeting and windy. Lovely! It did mean that the flag was flying straight out, so I guess that's one positive outcome.

On reaching Fountain Court, I was greeted by some colorful sheep,


and a personalized entry way.

The foyer contained a huge brown bear (crocheted), and a bunch of awesome sheep fleece hats, some complete with horns.


On the right side of the foyer, a long hallway led to seven separate installations of interior design, including a bedroom,

drawing room,

study,

snug (aka den),

a nursery,

a psychedelic party room Austin Powers would have loved (my description),

and a "natural" room.



I loved the old fiber-prep implements scattered around the display.




The other wing was all about wool in fabric and clothing (as well as the room where we did our spinning demo and they had classes). There were several rooms looking at wool art in the form of tapestry weaving and felt making.




I love how these pieces by Claudy Jongstra incorporated felt and intact locks - they were just stunning!


Then there were the Saville Row suits and high fashion, including a wool bike jersey!



The left hallway had a glorious rainbow colored carpet,

and ended in an archway made of yarn strung on frames.

I ended up in the craft room, where Alli was (yet again) spinning, and manged a few shots of some of the displays there.



So there you have it - Wool House, a photo-essay. If you have a chance to drop by Somerset House before Sunday (when it closes), you should check it out. It doesn't have to take long to get through, and it is absolutely gorgeous and inspiring. And, on a day like today (when it's cold and rainy and generally miserable), being surrounded by wool seems like a really good thing.

Sidetracked

Hello! Long time, no blog! It's been a crazy week, I tell you, absolutely crazy.

Let's start off with last Friday - I spent the morning at Wool House. If you haven't heard of Wool House yet, please head over to the Campaign for Wool's website and take a look. In short: massive, glorious exhibition of wool in all it's various guises and forms, from on the hoof to on the wall, or the chair, or the back. I spent two mornings in the last week demonstrating spinning for the visitors to the exhibit, and on Friday I ended up in a video with Allison. So if you have any interest in hearing/seeing me in virtual person, take a look.

Spending two mornings spinning was a fantastic opportunity to get a whack load of sampling done for Porpoise Fur.

I'll share more details on those samples on the PF blog over the next week. And I have a grand post on Wool House planned, with pictures and details and lots of wool goodness for tomorrow. Today, I want to share the cutest face in the world:

Pattern: amigurumi walrus by Aeron Aanstoos
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Top (long since discontinued), 160 yds/4 oz skein in brown, about a third of a skein.
Hook: US G/4.0 mm
Start/finish: 19 Feb - 20 March 2013.
Comments/mods: first off, I'm totally embarrassed that it took me a month (a month!!!) to finish this thing. In real time, I could have been done in a week and a half, which is how long the crocheting took me. Then I faffed about not putting it together for another week, then I pretended that I didn't need to get embroidery floss to do the eyes, etc, etc, etc. Finally last night, while the girls were doing their homework, I took the 4 min to finish the eyes, and this morning I wrapped it up and it's waiting by the front door to go to the post office. #craftyauntiefail


The pattern was absolutely fantastic - clear instructions, lots of pictures to illustrate the assembly, and very easy to follow. This designer has a bunch of other absolutely adorable toy patterns (yes Sarah, including a narwhal!), and I will definitely be doing more of her designs. If nothing else, I need a porpoise...