Spinning -- "Dave" (Columbia x Rambouillet)

I have finished the latest 4 oz. blob of roving.  This is a from a Columbia x Rambouillet sheep named Dave, from Promised Land Fibers.  I ended up with about 450 yards of 2-ply, yikes!  I'm definitely spinning thin this year, dunno why.  Photos never quite show the colors correctly; this is a fairly dark gray yarn.  The fiber has a few white and brown bits mixed in with the overall dark gray.  The roving is immaculately clean, no VM, though the staple length can be slightly variable at times.  It drafted easily, too.  It's not the best spinning job in the world, but it'll be perfectly functional for pretty much anything I want to do with it.  Maybe I'll knit it up 2-stranded into a hat or mittens or something.  Or pass it along to my weaving friend.

I'm not sure what I'll spin next.

My travel knitting projects are still being worked on.  So no new project completions (or starts) to report.

I might be selling a spinning wheel soon.  I'm trying to decide which ones to offer the potential buyer.  I'm glad -- these wheels should be used, and they are all going to be wheels I was delighted to save and restore, but which I don't personally use all that often myself these days.  If that made sense.  I really do need and want to sell several of the wheels I've rescued and accumulated.

August Project Report

It's been a busy month and not much has gotten done.  But I want to have at least one post for August, so here it is!

I started a new spinning project -- some pretty gray Columbia x Rambouillet roving from a sheep named Dave.  I'm about half done with the singles, and then got busy with all kinds of things.  It's still waiting for me to finish it and then get it plied.  Then I'll decide what to spin next.

I've been turning my soap and it's about ready to use whenever I want!  I'm excited.  The friend who taught me how to make the soap is very encouraging, so hopefully I will get to make more soap soon.

Knitting -- I'm doing charity hats again and my pink travel shawl is also making good progress.  I really want to finish my green handspun Appledore-ish gansey but I need the time to sit down, make a few decisions, and then keep going.  I have roughly 8-10 more hours of work on it, I think, maybe a bit less.

I'm thinking about doing more weaving, though I haven't decided what I would want to weave.

Ooh, something pretty amazing -- I gave a friend of mine some of my handspun wool, including some that had been natural-dyed.  (I mentioned it in a earlier post.)  My friend took that yarn and wove me a truly gorgeous wrap.  Wow.  I am incredibly touched by my friend's generosity as well as skill and artistic vision.  Obviously I need to hand out more of my handspun!  Seeing what other people do with it is pretty fabulous.

I taught that same friend to spin.  Dunno if I mentioned that already.  Another friend loaned this friend a wheel.  My friend is a natural -- drafting came easy and the yarn is already looking fantastic.  It is very gratifying to see another person take up the craft and to know that I have made some small contribution to my friend's success.

I don't have any current knitting project plans yet.  No doilies are itching to be cast on.  No sweaters nor planning the next travel knitting project.  I still ought to cast on for some socks, and there are some quick little hat patterns/ideas that appeal, and I haven't made mittens for a while and maybe should do a few of those, too.  But for now, Real Life is keeping me busy.  Also, I want to do more spinning if/when I do have more time.

Unlocking a new skill -- soap!

A friend recently ran a get-together that involved making soap.  Yes, from lye and oils and fats and stuff like that.  This friend has been a professional maker and seller of soap, so it felt like quite a privilege as well as a wonderful introduction into this ancient technology.

After pouring our saponified goo into molds, we let it sit for a few weeks, then cut it into smaller bars.  It's still quite soft!  Now it gets to sit for another month or two to finish curing.

When we first cut the bars, there was quite a cross-sectional color variation, from brown on the outside to greenish-cream in the middle.  Now, a few days later, the color variations are evening out to various shades of cream and brown.

The above bars (the square ones) have clay added.  I like the swirls, though we'll see how it looks after curing.

The round bars have various scents added.  The molded hexagonal bars and all of the bars with clay added are unscented.

I'm looking forward to future adventures in soap making!

More spinning -- Debouillet!

I have finished spinning a 4-ounce batch of Debouillet roving.  It seemed to be taking a long time.  I understand why now.  The 4 ounces of Debouillet (give or take a bit) yielded about 665-670 yards of 2-ply yarn.

The roving had some VM and a few neps and noils.  But it drafted beautifully.  It was relatively short-stapled though not excessively short, very fine and soft, and kind of sproingy/bouncy, a bit like merino though lacking its cottony texture and more like Rambouillet.  Well, duh -- the Debouillet breed of sheep was started with a Rambouillet-Merino cross.  (The Delaine Merino, to be precise, thus the name Debouillet.)

I've spun Debouillet before -- a bit of brown roving that gave me 365-ish yards of a somewhat shiny 2-ply from about 3 ounces of roving.

The white yarn I just spun is more matte than shiny, even though both rovings were from sheep of the same breed.

Dunno what I'll do with the yarn.

I'm not sure what I'll spin next, but hopefully the default yarn from that future batch won't be so fine!  (Default yarn meaning the yarn I naturally spin without having to think about it, which is a function of the roving and the wheel and my mood, but mostly the roving and its drafting friction and how that interacts with the wheel I'm using to spin it.)  I don't mind having fine yarn, but it takes longer to spin than thicker yarn.  And sometimes I want that quicker gratification.  I don't really want to engineer my yarn, either, since I spin for the sheer enjoyment of it rather than to create a specific yarn.  I like zoning out as I spin rather than counting treadles and continuously referring to a reference sample for thickness and all those other things needed to create a consciously designed yarn.

A bit of spinning -- Lopez Island Romney X

I finally spun the Romney-X roving I bought last autumn at Oregon Flock and Fiber.  I ended up with about 375 yards of 2-ply, so rather a bit thinner than the 250 yards of 2-ply I spun from the previous year's Romney-X roving.

It's pretty.  It drafted well.  It was fairly clean, very minimal VM that was easy to pick out.  It was an enjoyable spinning experience, which is pretty much all I ask for most of the time when I sit down at a wheel.  It's a nice medium heathery gray, in case the color in the photo isn't clear.

The vendor I got it from is Island Fibers, from Lopez Island in Washington.  The first time I bought from them, I think they said that this was milled by Skagit Wool.  They said it was from the local sheep, who had mostly Romney genetics with random other breeds in the gene pool.  Whatever it is, I like spinning it.  I have no idea if what I bought last fall is from the exact same bump as I had bought from the previous year, or if it's a new batch from a later clip.

Part of why I spun this is because I got inspired -- I went to Black Sheep Gathering with some friends last weekend.  It was fun.  It didn't seem to have as many people and animals and vendors as I had remembered, but it's always possible I'm getting it confused with Oregon Flock and Fiber since both are in the same location and are similar in a lot of ways.  Or it's just completely random and the day/time I went are not as busy as other days/times.

As always, it was great to see the critters and explore the vendors' offerings, and as always, it's great to run into friends and acquaintances while I'm there.

This time I bought some horned dorset roving, about 4 oz.  I asked the vendor, and they said it's somewhat resistant to felting, which is what I'd heard is a breed characteristic.  So maybe I'll make socks from this.  Or something else that I don't necessarily want to felt easily.  I've spun roving from crossbred merino-dorset, but not purebred dorset.  It should be interesting.

I brought some handspun over to a friend who weaves.  It'll be their first time weaving with handspun.  I look forward to the results.  If it works out, I'll bring over more.  I love using my handspun, but I don't mind if some of it gets used by other people.  Also, maybe it'll inspire me to weave some of my handspun in addition to knitting with it.

There's not much to report on the knitting side of things.  My slowly growing projects are slowly growing and I haven't started (or finished) anything new.  I've been doing a lot of tablet weaving and braiding and what-not, but I don't really write about those things in this blog.

Hmm, what shall I spin next?  Or knit, for that matter?  Though I really do want to finish the sweater I started last year, so the recipient can wear it later this year.  For spinning, I have a bunch of 4 oz batches of roving bought at various fiber festivals as well as some larger batches.  Hmmm.

Musings about Spinning Wheels -- a reproduction wheel from the former USSR

This wheel showed up on craigslist, within a reasonable driving distance and in my price range.  So I got it.

The seller had bought the wheel used many years previously.  She was upgrading to a more modern wheel from a currently active manufacturer and no longer wanted or need this one.  She knew nothing more about the wheel beyond "it works".  I don't remember if there was a driveband on it or not, but since most of the time I end up needing to replace the driveband anyway, that didn't bother me.

I had no idea what the wheel was, so I asked around.

Someone on Ravelry found its twin:  "See SPIN-OFF Magazine Winter 1991 Edition, Page 79, “Spinning Wheel Treasures From Europe Part 1- Horizontal Wheels” by Sharon Hudgins. The wheel is identified as a Russian (Soviet Union at that time) made wheel she purchased in 1984 in Prague, Czechoslovakia."

A few other people soon posted on Ravelry, showing photos of wheels that were very similar.  The author who wrote the Spin-Off article had purchased her wheel in a state-run crafts store that was meant to show off traditional craftsmanship from Russia, I believe.  And given that some other people have similar wheels, there were apparently a lot of them for sale throughout the former USSR and Eastern Bloc countries.

Fun!  So apparently the US isn't the only country that was having a fad for reproduction spinning wheels in the 1970s and 1980s.

This is a very silly wheel but I adore it.  What's silly about it?

It came with four bobbins.  But only one of them works with the wheel.  The other three are too big.  My guess is that a previous owner had some extra bobbins made but the dimensions weren't quite right.  Metric vs US?  Differences in shrink/swell of American vs Czech/USSR wood?  A bit of mis-measurement and/or lack of precision when they were commissioned?  No idea!

The bobbin comes off by unscrewing the metal shaft from the flyer.  I don't think I've ever seen that kind of thing in any other spinning wheel, not that I've seen a lot of spinning wheels.  However, now that I know the other bobbins won't fit, I don't bother changing it out.  I just unwind the spun yarn onto a storage bobbin and go from there, like I do with other wheels that have just one bobbin and/or that have bobbins which are a pain to change out.

The orifice hook is a handmade thing that was undoubtedly added after.  Since most older wheels don't have orifice hooks at all, this isn't a problem.  There's a pretty handmade clay bead that serves as the handle.

The treadle is a narrow board, narrower than many people's feet.  It works perfectly well, though.

The distaff is a different wood from the rest of the wheel.  And as with my other reproduction wheel, it's not that stable and thus not that useful.  I don't use it.

The wheel isn't particularly fast -- I think it's around 1:10 or so -- but there's something about it that keeps me coming back to spin on it for just a little bit longer.

I have no idea if this was made to be a spinning wheel or just a decorative piece.  There are a lot of wheels from that era that were made to be decorative.  Some aren't able to spin.  But some, especially those that were copied from extant pieces, actually do spin, often quite reasonably well.  This one falls into the functional category, whether accidentally or on purpose.

I don't use it often, but it's always a lot of fun whenever I do use it.

Fun with natural dyes

The colors on my pics and on the screen aren't quite right (not rich enough), but it still conveys a lot.

This is my share of the dyed goods from a natural dyeing session I did with some friends last weekend.

My skeins are wool, roughly 100g each, roughly fingering weight.  My friends had their own skeins along with some pieces of fabric in wool and in linen.  It totaled up to I don't know how many pounds/kilograms of stuff.

The wool was mordanted a few weeks ago with alum and cream of tartar.  We weren't hugely consistent in our mordanting technique, as I wrote about in a recent post.  But as you can see, everything took the dye quite well.  The linen, since it wasn't mordanted, was destined for the indigo pots.

The yellow is from marigolds.  One of the group grew marigolds last summer and froze a bunch of flowers.  The dye was extracted with a long simmer and the petals strained out.

We weren't too careful in our dyeing technique.  Mostly, people wetted the yarn/fabric, dropped it in the pot, stirred it a bit, then after a little while took it out, wrung out excess dye, and hung it up to dry.  Then someone else would put something in the pot, etc.

Much later, after we got our stuff home, everything was rinsed.

Anyway, the first yellow that came out of the marigolds was a rich color -- sort of a bronze-y mustard-y russet-y yellow.

Mine is more of a lemon/banana yellow.  Later things dyed were even lighter yellows.  We didn't do any ammonia/water afterdips (or any post-mordanting, or anything at all, really) to modify colors.

The oranges are madder.  We meant to add calcium but forgot, so ended up with more orange than red, though one of my skeins (which was in the dyebath longer) has some areas that are more red.

The blues are all indigo, though the lightest one (next to the orange madder skeins) was dyed light yellow before it had a quick dip in the indigo.

I was trying for an indigo gradient, both with repeated dips (for darker colors), and quicker dips, and dips at various portions of the afternoon, in hopes that lighter colors would happen as the indigo got exhausted.  Well, it never really got exhausted, apparently!  We used indigo extract and will take that into account for our next dye day.  Ditto for the madder pot, which also used extract rather than us prepping whole roots, and which was still giving excellent color all the way through the day.

I wonder if part of why the indigo hit so quickly and well was due to the skeins being mordanted?  Dunno if that makes a difference for indigo.

We will probably get together again for more dye days, both natural and synthetic dyes.  We're also considering a weed walk, where we go after invasive/noxious weeds and plentiful non-noxious weeds to acquire materials for our dyepots.  We'd still use indigo and madder extracts, but we should be able to get a range of yellows and browns and russets/olives etc. from the local flora.  We'll see.

Rinsing off was rather messy.  I still have indigo on my fingernails since I wasn't wearing gloves when I rinsed them.  I did wear them during the dyeing.

I'm not sure what I'll do with my dyed yarn.  Tablet weaving, maybe?  Or other weaving?  Give them away to friends?  Dunno.  One of them (not pictured above) already went home with one of the other dyers, since that person has some Ideas of Things To Try..

Anyway, much fun was had.  It's been a long time since I've done much natural dyeing.  It's always more fun to do dyeing with friends.