Tag: Club Page 1 of 3

Lest you think I’ve completely gone over to the dark side. There has been activities other than weaving around here.

Tactile Fiber Arts April Club

Fiber: 50/50 Angora/Merino
Weight: 2 oz
Singles: 60-68 wpi
2-Ply: 36 wpi, pre-fulled; 28 wpi, fulled
Yardage: 438 yards, pre-fulled; 426 yards, fulled.

Singles spun on Reeves Frame Wheel. Plied on Schacht Matchless.

I firmly plied this yarn so that the bunny fur will stay put instead of shedding on my clothes, once knitted.  Then I fulled it by shocking the yarn in alternate hot/cold soapy baths, and generally bashed the yarn around with a water bottle in the hot soapy bath. After pressing out the water in a towel, I thwacked it several times while rotating the skein to ensure that the entire skein has received “the treatment.”

“Thwacking.” Someone asked what this is in one of the Ravelry discussion groups.  You take the wet skein on one hand and swing it from the back of your head against a sharp edge (the edge of a table or your kitchen counter).  This does a couple of things.

1. It loosens up any felting of strands that you may have done in the hot/cold, bashing around process.
2. It fluffs up the short fibers and helps it bloom.  The yarn now has a lovely halo, which it didn’t have when it first came off of the spinning wheel.
3. It helps even out your twist by shifting it a bit.

(Or, I’m a Loser.)

Since I don’t have anything worthwhile to show you for the Tour de Fleece, I’m going to show you something else that I finished instead…

Yarn Specs:

Source: Abby‘s Batt Club, October, 2007
Fiber: First Frost: 33% Extra Fine Merino/33% Baby Alpaca/33% Silk/1% Firestar Nylon
Plies: 2
Yardage: 22 wpi (after wet finishing)
Weight: 3.5 oz.

Tour de Fleece

Yes, as I said earlier. I’m a Loser, with a capital “L”. The combination of a busy life and fiber that I’m not all that thrilled about, makes for a lousy combination in terms of progress. Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with the fiber nor the prep from Spinderella. I just don’t enjoy spinning it because I’m not fond of spinning worsted weight yarn. And it has a little too much glitz for my taste.

Wait a minute, you say.  The October Batts have glitz too, but you love it, right?  Yeah. But it’s the amount of glitz.  And the glitz in the October Batts are much finer than the one used in Spinderella’s thrums, so the effect is more subtle.

Normally, what keeps me spinning a particular fiber are the daydreams of what I can make out of it. But the combination of the texture and the glitz, I knew that there isn’t anything that I want to make out of the resulting yarn. Since I’m not enthusiastic about the end game, the journey isn’t all that thrilling either.

What did I get done? So far, 2 bumps out of the 8 are spun onto 3 bobbins. I plied 2+ of the bobbins for a whopping 278 yards of worsted weight 2-ply yarn.

Instead of spinning for Tour de Fleece, I found the time to finish plying some leftover Chasing Rainbows merino/silk singles (58 yds, plied from center pulled ball), and the above lace weight yarn.

This is not to say that joining the Tour was a waste of time. It did get me moving again on this roving. 2 out of 8 batts completed. I will continue to work on these until they are done. But there may be other spinning in between.