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Showing posts with label tour de fleece. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tour de fleece. Show all posts

August 02, 2008

Much closer

See this?

That's two bobbins full of 2-ply Sunset. The bobbins in the basket held 2 ounces each of the singles. The left one is empty (what you see is red leader cord), and the right one is so close to empty they're almost a perfect match! I did divide the batts evenly by weight, and this tells me that my spinning was relatively consistent between the two halves.

For you Babe spinners, I discovered that I could ply faster by putting the drive band on the "hub cap" instead of the usual place. It stayed in place pretty well, but I had to leave the brake unfastened to keep it from slipping under tension. Has anyone carved a drive band groove into the axel? I've got this dremel-type tool....

Next I'll skein, count, and wash them. Then I'll do some math. Keep your fingerings crossed for socks!

Oh, did you see yet that sign-ups for Mystery Stole 4 are open?
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July 28, 2008

It wasn't horse shoes


I came close, but not close enough, to finishing spinning the Giant Batt goal and winning a yellow shirt. Using my nifty index card progress system, I got to 43/16ths. The goal was 48/16ths, so I "won" a red shirt. Kind of like winning green ribbons in 4-H. LOL!

Currently on the bobbin is 1 ounce of plied Sunset spun from the fold. Currently in the Kate are 3 ounces ditto. I found out in the wee hours of this morning that it takes a LOT longer to ply fine singles! And look at the striping on the singles turning into Trek-like yarn!


And previously un-posted, the finished 3rd quarter:


Sport weight (on average!) Sunset spun long draw with the many colors blending as they came into the drafting triangle. Very soft and squishy. There's 292 yards of beeyoutiful yarn showing off in my Russian Sage. I understand now why spinners talk about keeping some yarns nearby for cuddling.
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July 19, 2008

Change of Command—oops!—Plan

I *am* reading Elizabeth Moon's Change of Command (again), but that's not what this post is about! My goal for Le Tour de Fleece is changing slightly because of this:

That's the skein of long-draw Cheviot last seen on the bobbin here. It's Navajo-plied and 1 3/8 ounces of overspun unevenness destined for pet toys, felting, or rugs. The bobbin is spun much more evenly, but still has numerous lumps from what I've determined are second cuts in the batt. Grrrr. There's not enough of me to go around to hand-card or comb the remaining 8 ounces of the Giant Batt and spin it for Le Tour de Fleece, so I'm changing my goal slightly.


That's 1 1/2 ounces spun of this fiber I bought a few months ago. It spins so much faster! It's more beautiful! It has about 1% of the lumps and VM as the Giant Batt! I am in love and want to get more of this fiber at Oregon Flock and Fiber in September.

The quantity of fiber part of my goal is still the same: a pound. It'll just be different fiber for the second half. It's not cheating but a replacement part, like a new tire. LOL

In garden news, my tomato plant is blooming:


As are the lemon cucumbers:

Ta Ta for now!
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July 16, 2008

Learning to spin from videos

Learning to spin (and card, comb, scour, ply, finish, etc) on my own involves using freely available resources from the library and the web. The latter has revealed (after much watching of pointless productions) several series of helpful spinning (and etc.) videos on YouTube. The first videos I found were by Abby Franquemont (whose blog I enjoy) here. Sue Macniven has several very good videos, too. Amanda Hannaford has a great video on long draw plus others. Rexenne, whose current primary interest is growing mushrooms, produced enthusiastic and informative fibery videos found here. Do you have any favorite spinning videos? Post them in the comments please! In Tour de Fleece news, yesterday's efforts produce another ounce of long-drawn single, so the bobbin is nearly full. I'm undecided about a plying method. For fun, here's Rexenne's Navajo Plying video:

Updates: Just found this tutorial and video on corespinning via Fiber Mine. Now I have to research what corespun yarn is good for!
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July 15, 2008

You'd think a giant batt of white would be boring.

And maybe it is. The Yarn Harlot is blogging about the possibility of boring her readers with all spinning all the time. IMO, not a chance. Here's the completed first quarter of my giant batt, posing without sunglasses in the bamboo bush.

Four ounces, 286 yards, Navajo/chained ply, 20-year-old Cheviot fleece raised in Southern Oregon. No, the sheep isn't 20; it was shorn and carded two decades ago.

Navajo/chained ply was chosen so I could practice the technique more; it's actually fun and fast to do, but requires more attention, dexterity, and fiddling than "standard" plying. The yarn would have turned out a light sport weight or heavy fingering with 50% more yardage (429 yards) plied with two singles.

Here's a picture in the shade so you can see more of its slightly overweight sport (or underweight DK) goodness.

One thing about spinning such old batts is that the carding oil had changed for the worse. The possibility occurred to me while flipping through a spinning book and finding a recipe for carding oil and the recommendation to spin it promptly. Hmm. So the second quarter of the Giant Battquickish trip through detergent and hot water, followed by a fabric-softened rinse. The noils and neps and snarls (oh, my!) that pestered me before are mostly not happening so far in this clean and soft quarter batt, which I'm practicing long draw on. Here's the first ounce.


The really thick parts are mercifully buried under the thinner parts! There's also more vegetation in this as it didn't have a chance to fall out during drafting or pre-drafting because I didn't do any! LOL Instead, I tore a chunk of batt off, shook and fluffed it, and started spinning.

Thanks for dropping by!
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July 10, 2008

Flyer Fancies

Here's my spinning from last night. It's one of the balls of drafted giant batt plus a little of the second one. See the odd hooks by the pink asterisk?


This is what comes of being a self-taught spinner. The offset placement of the hooks seemed really strange to me and it bugged me that the bobbin didn't fill up on the end. So I added a hook. I moved the "real" hook to a newly drilled hole at the very tip and put a small brass one in the original hole. A few days later, I happened on a spinning post (3/2/2008 by the green/yellow-filled bobbins) about how you can use ALL the hooks to fill the bobbin more compactly. Duh. I thought that the ones on the right for Z-twist (spinning singles) and the ones on the left for S (plying). Nope. Not at all. Now I'm spinning using all my hooks.

This cheviott giant batt is, no surprise, behaving differently than the few other fibers I've spun. If I'm not careful, drafting introduces neps/noils/tangles that make lumps in the yarn. Also, since I'm doing a modified short/worsted draw (which is what I know how to do, sorta), I was sliding my pinched fingers along the yarn as I let the twist in. Well I stopped that because it made more tangles. Currently I'm just letting go and letting the twist travel up to my drafting hand which pinches of the undrafted part of the roving. The results are much more like real yarn!

After worrying a little about actually meeting my goal, I made up a schedule/progress tracker on an index card. After some math, drawing, writing and smudging of gel ink LOL, here it is:


Each remaining day has a 4-lined rectangle with day/date/total-to-date, fraction prepped, fraction spun, and fraction finished. I need to complete 48/16ths of the giant batt to meet my goal! I'm including plying in finishing because it goes pretty fast compared to spinning. And my card didn't have room for 5 lines per day!

A little math reveals I have 3/16 complete (2/16 predrafting, 1/16 spinning) and, on average 2.5/16 per day to go. The daily goal is on pencil on the sticky flag so I can update it and move it as needed.

Oh, and yesterday I ordered two spinning books: A Fine Fleece (and dye and yarn) at KnitPick's book sale and Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning at Interweave's Hurt Book Sale. Next I want to order a plying flyer and bobbins for my Babe wheel, but not today!
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July 06, 2008

First day of LeTour de Fleece


The first day of the TDF resulted in a pretty cloud! There's two balls of pre-drafted cheviot, 28 and 32 grams, a third ball just started, and a strip of roving that supposed to be 1/16th of the giant batt. We'll see what the total weight turns out to be. Maybe this is contest material? "Guess the weight of the batt." I'd have to have readers and a prize first!

The fiber has a fair amount of VM, though opinions probably vary based on experience and perfectionist tendencies. I was able to shake or pick out much of what didn't fall out while drafting, though I'm sure some migrated back or never left in the first place.

Onward!
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July 05, 2008

Pondering a Goal for Tour de Fleece

I'm not usually a great goal setter, but the Tour de Fleece requires one, stated or not, to "win." We're supposed to spin from stash and do something that's a personal challenge. Given my relative newness to the craft and my self-teaching methods, I'm not up to anything fancy (yet). But I do have all the cheviot and karakul in 12 to 18 ounce batts. Those are *big* batts. I've spun some of the karakul already, so I'm thinking the white cheviot. A whole batt. Making quantities of yarn large enough to knit at least a pair of socks (3+ ounces). So, up to 4 batches of yarn, each consistent with itself. It will all be white (no time to acquire dye and dye the batt, even if I knew how yet), but I can dye the resulting yarn later.

My initial thought to spin a whole giant batt (visualize, if you will, spinning a giant bat around on a string!) (just kidding) seemed too grand until today when I read Stephanie's post. If she can spin 3 *pounds* I can spin one. I don't have budding Erica Claptons in the house playing the same song over and over and over! LOL

Here's the batt with Pepper included for scale. Or if you think she's a giant cat (she's not, at 10 pounds), the batt is about 22 inches by 5 feet. Yes, feet. BTW, it's overcast today, so the pictures are not the greatest, but they'll do.


And to show vegetative progress, here's my first baby courgette:


The cucumber trellis made of field fencing:


Cute cucumber tendrils:


And the tomato plant from Louise:


I got the field fencing at the neighborhood feed store. It has 6 inch square holes so I can pick/weed/whatever through it, and it was easy to set up using zip ties to "sew" the ends together and anchor the fencing to the handles on the washtub since that trellis only goes part way around.
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