Tag: Scarf Page 5 of 7

Scarf Progress

On 14 Apr, 2009

I’ve spun 40 g of singles (52 wpi) on on my drop spindle thus far. These were spun directly from the flicked locks, using the kitten brush. I spun it all from the tip, and will ply from the butt. This also meant that, when winding the singles off of the spindle, I needed to wind off twice so that the butt end is on the outside, ready to ply.

But, last week, while I was waiting for an amazingly long download, I decided to take out my Forsyth mini combs (double row) and play with it a little bit. Just a little bit, you know, just to see how the merino would be like with combed. A few hours later…

combed-basket

Disclaimer: This basket was the result of 2 evenings worth of combing. I spent less than 3 hours to produce 50 g of combed top.

These were combed twice: Charged, combed off onto second comb and then transferred back to the original combs before pulling the top off. I just used hand over hand method instead of a diz. Twice also meant that the tip end is set at the correct end for spinning.

Who knew combing would be so addictive? Or that spinning from hand combed top would be so luscious? Okay, I knew the latter, but not the former. I’ve had my mini combs for over 3 years now. I’ve only played with it to comb some lincoln x corriedale that wasn’t gummy only on the warmest of all days. While it was pretty, the long locks were too much for me on the mini combs. It was also before my wool combs class with Robin Russo. (She’s teaching it again at SOAR this year. I highly recommend this class!)

So, now, I am faced with the dilemma of whether to ply up the 40 g of singles already spun and use that for my project. I think it will be enough for the scarf I designed. Or, do I spin up the 50 g of the combed top? And use the combed top in my final project instead? There is a third option, which is to ply the 2 singles together. Then I definitely will have enough yarn, and plenty leftover.

Actually, I’m going to spin the top anyway because I can’t resist them. And I need to spin them up before Ellie finds the basket and takes a nap in it and squish all the lofty goodness out of them…not to mention the nicely aligned fibers.

Spindle Fun

By Ann

On 30 Mar, 2009

In Spin

Spinning Jill on a spindle reminded me how much fun spindles are, and portable. It’s easy to tuck a spindle and a bit of fluff in your purse/bag and pull it out whenever. And to top it all off, Kristine gave me one of her fun little pouches of fiber last week at the weaving retreat. The rovings are by-products of her dyeing process and she packages the bits of leftovers into fun little pouches. You can do as you please with them: wet/needle felting, spinning, embellishments, whatever. (I don’t see any mention of this on her website nor at Morgaine‘s, although I know that Morgaine sells them.)

ccf-spindle

The pouches are full of colors and each pouch is different.Â It’s a bit like finding the toy at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box.Â You don’t know what you’ll find in there. (Okay, you do, since they are in a clear cellophane bag.) Kristine was spinning from her pouch with her drop spindle, grabbing whatever bit of color that she touches first. This provided a completely random assortment of colors and lengths of singles.Â When plied together, you get even more surprising combinations.

I couldn’t resist. I immediately started spinning from my own pouch. I’ve also experimented by pulling several short lengths of fiber of different colors together and drafting them together for a marled single. Intermixed with straight lengths of a color, the marled single keeps things shaken up. Between Jill and this pouch, I haven’t touched my spinning wheel for quite a while. It’s addictive fun!

Blog Note: After the blog move, I’m no longer getting email notifications that a message has been left on the blog. I have to physically visit the blog to see the messages. This also means that I can no longer reply to you via email regarding your posts. I will be leaving my replies here on the blog.Â A search shows that this appears to be a common sporadic problem with the current version of WordPress. It may go away on its own. I just won’t know when that might be.

Spinning Jill

By Ann

On 29 Mar, 2009

In Spin

I picked and washed about 8 oz of Jill.Â The post wash and dry weight of Jill was just a hair over 5 oz.Â That’s not a whole lot of loss.Â I would have expected more loss due to grease for a merino.Â But this is a pristine fleece.Â I found very little vegetable matter in the fleece.Â A few stray bits, but nothing else. A wee bit of 2nd cuts, again not anything really noticeable.

I’m flicking the locks and spinning directly from the locks.Â After showing Judith last weekend what I’ve been doing, she immediately said that my Strauch Flicker was much too much for the delicate fleece. So, I pulled out the cat brush instead.Â Much easier on my hands too!

moorit-in-process

So, there you see it. Very basic. A cat brush and a drop spindle.Â (Don’t ask which spindle because I don’t know. I typically lose my tags as soon as I get fiber on the spindle, which means as soon as I get it in my hot little hands. They are meant to be used, n’est pas?) I can tell you that it’s very light. Less than 1/2 oz. (10 grams, perhaps?) What you see on the bobbin is my first spindle full. It has about 15 grams of singles on it. More than the weight of the spindle. But the spindle wasn’t even half full. But I will not be filling my spindle that much from now on. It really affected the grist of the single. I wasn’t able to draft as fine as I did at the beginning, when the spindle was still empty.Â The single had to be a bit fatter to support the weight of the spindle toward the end.

I want consistency more than I want to try and pack as much as possible on the spindle. After all, it’s all about the process, not speed nor efficiency.

Oh, I wound off the single twice. Once on the first storage bobbin, and then onto a second one.

Why? Judith suggested spinning from the tip (as it grows from the sheep, or as if you are spinning right off of the sheep), and plying from the butt end.Â If I only wound off once, then I would be plying from the same end that I spun from, the tip.Â Twice, I get the butt end out and ready to ply. Make sense?Â (And of course, we all do what Judith says, right?)

jill-in-a-bag And one last photo for you because it tickles me.

This is the plastic zipper cover that came with the flannel sheet set I bought for the Point Bonita retreat last week.Â In it, the remainder of the washed locks that I have yet to flick.Â Two neat little walls of locks, tip to butt.

I don’t know why it pleases me, but it does. The locks were a bit messy after they came out of the wash and dryer, so I gently pulled them apart. Of course, at that point, I loathed to put them back higgledy-piggledy. And so, here we are.

Jill in a bag.