Spring Spinning

I recently finished spinning up a pack of sample blends from Owl of Athena called the “Humbug Fibre Blend Sampler Pack”. All were lovely to spin. Some were a bit challenging for me, as a new spinner, being quite slippery. I had a few moments when the singles lost cohesion and came apart, both in the spinning and plying. But I learned to compensate by giving them a little extra twist.

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Which was a valuable lesson, as I’m now spinning some silk and alpaca together. Both are slippery, and the silk has a short staple (right term?).

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It’s quite challenging, and I suspect the fibre I spin after this will be an easy one, so I can relax again.

Blue & Linen

When I started spinning this roving, I thought it would take me several weeks to get through it. But it didn’t.

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The long pieces of linen were a bit of a challenge to spin in neatly, but only enough to make it interesting. I managed to get most of it smoothly spun in, but here and there it sticks out and makes the yarn hairy. The plying worked fine this time, so I must be getting the knack of it again.

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I have no idea what I’ll make out of it, but right now I don’t care. I made yarn!

Spinning the Cap

So the next spinning project I’ve tackled is spinning the silk caps. I’m using the method where you separate a few caps, then make a hole in the centre…

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Then stretch…

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Draft carefully…

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Then wrap onto a toilet roll…

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And spin…

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Working this way eliminates the need to draft while spinning, which is great because it takes a good bit of strength to do it with the silk cap. I’m assuming this is because the silk threads are mostly still in long lengths, so I’m actually breaking them when I’m drafting. It certainly makes a good crackle as you stretch it. Drafting this way is, however, rather hard on the hands.

The silk tends to catch on any rough skin. I was doing a lot of work in the garden at the time I spun this, so it was catching a lot. I did a couple of caps in each session, and worked my way through until it was all done. Then I plied it and got this little skein.

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A lot of work for a little skein, but it is so soft and lovely.

Once I work out how to turn the silk cocoons into caps, or wind it out into thread, the only thing standing between me and a 1year1outfit is a local source of enough silk cocoons to spin and weave into a garment. Oh, and finding the time to do all that. Which is still all pretty unlikely, but who knows?

In the meantime, I’ve started spinning a blend of Shetland, silk and linen by Woolz’N’yarnZ.

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It’s very relaxing, but that’s not what brings me back to it again and again. Spinning on the electronic wheel means I have something creative I can do standing up. Most craft I do competes with writing for sitting down time.

Comb or Not?

Way back when I first gave spinning a go I bought a pair of carders, only to sell them later. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on tools just yet, so I did a little searching on google and ebay and decided to see if dog combs would work. They have the same sort of fine, bent wire tines and are much cheaper.

Among the fibre I bought at bendy is a small pack of fleece dyed red. It’s also greasy, which is strange, because I’d have thought the dyeing wouldn’t work if there was still grease in the wool. I guess they might have added the grease later. Anyway, I have a few pieces a good comb.

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It turned it into red greasy fluff. I tried spinning it on a drop spindle with what I think is woollen – or woollen-ish. It makes a rather messy single. Not that I mind that.

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But I do wonder… Should I bother combing it? Should I wash out the grease?

First Electronic Handspun

Here it is:

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Plying it was… interesting. I never had problems with plying yarn nine years ago, but this time I had trouble judging how much spin was enough. Some sections were under spun. I wound up winding it onto a stick and then adding twist by hand where it was too loose. It probably didn’t help that I decided to make it a three ply, which I’ve never done before.

Why? Well, I wound up with only a small amount on the second bobbin. I joined the ends of the yarn on both and began winding yarn onto the second bobbin in the hope of evening them up, but the yarn broke at a point that, according to my scales, put 1/3 of the yarn on one bobbin and 2/3 on the other. So I divided the one with 2/3 onto two bobbins to get three in total then began plying.

I could see I wasn’t getting much twist and tried adjusting a few things as I went. Two of the bobbins ran out at nearly exactly the same time, leaving one with enough yarn on it for me to try navaho plying – which I had more success with.

It’s all skeined up now. The question I have now is: do I wash it? There’s no lanolin in it. I have vague memories of a need to wash the skein, but I can’t remember if it applies with washed and dyed fibre.

A Bendy We Will Go

So last weekend I spent 5-6 hours on trains in order to go fibre shopping for four hours. Well, I didn’t only buy fibre, but the main bulk of my purchases was. I wanted to try some plant fibre, and silk, and also get some pretty sheep’s wool. Here’s what I got:

This is the collection of non-sheep fibres:

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This is the four different kinds of silk I picked up:

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And these are all the blended sheep-with-something fibres I bought:

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I also bought a cookie cutter in the shape of a martini glass, a little Christmas pudding for Paul, a big date and butterscotch pudding, two hair clips, one merino ‘head sock’, and some alpaca yarn from a new mill on the Great Ocean Road.

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I regret that I didn’t buy one of the nifty little spindle and spindle companion sets from Luxury Overdose (look under sold items if there’s none in the shop) and some carders from the Ashford stall. I’m not sure yet if I need a carder or a blending board, and I really want to be sure the spinning thing isn’t temporary before I splash out on expensive items, so both were in the ‘walk away and think about it’ category. I hadn’t managed to come to a decision when 4pm came around and I had a shuttle bus to catch.

But I might be able to pick up second hand carders at the Guild, and hopefully I can order the spindle set on Etsy in future, so really, holding back was sensible.

Electrified

The 1year1outfit challenge must still be lurking in my subconscious, because I keep finding myself thinking about how it could be done with non-mammal fibres. Since there’s no yarn made of silk or plant-based fibre grown within 500km of Melbourne, it’d have to be spun. Since I didn’t really take to spinning, if I found some silk or plant-based fibre grown within 500km of Melbourne, I’d have to get someone else to spin it for me.

Or maybe not…

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This electronic spinner came up for sale on Ravelry for a price I thought I could recoup if I didn’t like it. The seller was in Canberra, but I had a friend from there coming down to visit two weeks later. Another possible buyer was already considering purchasing it, but they changed their mind. Everything seemed to line up to make it convenient to buy.

Last Friday it arrived, and since it came with a half-filled bobbin and the rest of the sliver, I gave it a whirl. It took a while to remember how to join new yarn, but once I got past that everything went smoothly. On the same night, I taught my Canberran friend how to spin on a drop spindle, as she’d brought one with her. It didn’t spin well and had no hook, so eventually I found my old turkish spindle and got her spinning on it. That certainly helped wake up my nine year old memories of spinning lessons!

Two days later I found time for some more electronic spinning. So far I’m enjoying myself. It isn’t just that I don’t have to pedal, but I can take it nice and slow, and the wheel never decides to go into reverse on me. Last time I kept at spinning until I had proven to myself that I could do it, despite not enjoying it much. The trouble was, I’d get bored. This time I plan to listen to podcasts and audiobooks if it starts to get monotonous, but I suspect I need more zen-like craft activities now than a decade ago. Stress gets to me more now I’m older.

The fact that this all happened just before the Bendigo Sheep & Wool Show is another fortuitous coincidence. I’m planning to buy some silk and plant fibres to see if I can spin them. If I can, then I’ll be keeping a look out for local sources of these fibres. Just for curiosity’s sake. Really.