It's raining again but it's a softer kind of mizzle - mist/drizzle all wrapped up together. The cars are swishing by through the puddles, sounds outside are quite muted and it has a quiet, soporific feel, inviting you to relax for a bit in a comfy chair with a warm cuppa. I'm wondering if there is a good film on that I could lose myself in whilst comfort knitting. Might have to get out the dvd's and find an oldie....
You know what I really feel like doing today? Spinning. Out of the blue, not planned, and it's not as if I really need to start anything else new with so many things already on my to-do list. But it seems to fit this afternoon perfectly. I'll have to dust off the spinning wheel as it has been quite a while. In fact, there is a roving still being spun on it so that should be rectified immediately :) So I'm going to follow my muse today and just 'be'. I always find spinning quite meditative - keeping the hands busy whilst letting the mind wander off wherever it likes.
So a nice pile of roving to get stuck into. Now, just need to put the kettle on...... what does it matter if it's raining when there is good fibre yumminess to enjoy? Back soon with some spun yarn maybe? Enjoy your day!
After a bit of a rummage through my roving stash this weekend, I came across this lovely hand painted roving by 'All the pretty fibres'. I think I showed you it last year when I bought it but I didn't want to spin it straight away till I had got a little more practice in spinning. So, okay, I haven't spent that much time spinning, only on Jelly Jelly and black coffee but I think as those were both plied yarns, I may try to spin a consistantly even single. That 'consistantly even' bit is going to be the challenge:-)
When I learned to spin, yonks ago, it was on a traditional wheel using rolags and all the spinning techniques seemed really easy. Now, on my modern louet with roving, it seems that all my previous skill has gone out the window - sigh:-) I still have some samples of those earlier yarns so I looked them out and although they weren't as super duper as I'd remembered, they still seemed more competently spun - with even tension throughout. Different wheel and tension? Different technique of using roving? Whatever, this is the wheel I have and the roving I've stashed so A+B has to equal a decent C!!
So I've spent some of the weekend, splitting some roving into even slivers. Well, as even as I can get them. Another area that could do with more patience! Now, I'm going to make sure the thickness throughout each sliver is as even as possible as I think this is where I slipped up a little last time and got a few thicker areas. And when I hit a thicker area, I changed my technique to thin it out as I went and it went a bit pearshaped regarding evenness - hey-ho! If I spun a bit more often I really would learn from my mistakes quicker;-))
I'm also interested in seeing how this particular roving will spin up. There is a lot of length to each section of colour so if I average 3 x length of colour on the roving as the length of the spun yarn, that's a lot of each colour. It's definitely going to be stripey! I know I could choose to spin the roving a different way to change this effect but I want to see how this one plays out first. If I like the effect enough, I may get some undyed roving to play with and expand my dyeing into fibres as well.....
While I was thinking about what to show you today, I realised I hadn't shown you the finished skein spun from the Black Coffee roving. It took me pretty much right up to christmas but I managed to get the singles spun, plied and posted just in time for my mum's birthday. What was especially nice was the post arrived while I was on the phone to her so I got to hear all the 'oohs and aahs' when she opened the parcel:-)
Want to see?.... ok:-)
The sad thing was the light was so poor for photos between finishing and posting that although I took loads of pictures, very few came close to the true colour of the spun fleece. But you can get a good idea of how the two singles plied together. I was thinking there would be more of a colour contrast with greens and plums in the mix but overall it's quite subtle and harmonious.
This is my first proper plied yarn and although the singles were a little thick and thin in places this did even out through the plying to give quite a nice fingering weight/4ply yarn. But I did learn an awful lot about tension, under and overspinning and getting the right amount of twist in the plying stage so it's been really helpful - and addictive:-) Yup, I'm itching to start playing some more!
I still have a little of this bobbin left as I managed to spin one half of the roving a lot longer than the other although they weighted exactly the same:-) but I think I just seem to make thinner yarn the longer I spin! If I can just get consistant! Spinners out there, is there a knack to this or is it as I suspect, just practice?!
So I'll have to ply this up so I can free the bobbins for the next lot of roving. I'm thinking of mixing two different dyed rovings together either during the singles spinning stage or as two different coloured singels to ply together. Now, if I can just get the never ending DIY out the way for a little while.....:-)
Not the kind you drink but the kind you spin! Yes, some more spinning is going on - at last! I managed to pull myself away from the knitting to indulge in a bit of spinning. Motivation? Some spun roving as a christmas present - for a certain someone who loves colour and free hand spun yarn:-) But as they are unlikely to read my blog then it's safe to post my progress for you to see.
The roving may be familiar to some of you from a fibre purchase I made earlier this year - february to be exact! I couldn't believe that when I checked my earlier post on this but, yup, that long ago. The colour is 'Black coffee' and the fibre is by Fibreoptic - also where I got the lovely pinky/purple roving 'jelly jelly' that I spun up recently and now use for my blog banner. That skein has been gifted but I still have half of the roving left to be spun.
I learned a lot from that spinning session - like I split the roving too thin and my single was way too thin in places and not even enough thoughout. So, more spinning practice is needed:-) This time I've not made the slivers quite so thin so I can practice whether I want to draw some fleece out as I go to get a more even yarn.
I know I should probably start with thicker yarns but I just seem to gravitate to thinner threads. Well, as long as its even, I can ply to get a heavier yarn - for now. The perfectionist in me will insist on mastering this yarn thickness issue sometime soon in the future, but for now, I'll settle for a smooth, even yarn. I've read up so much about tension, ratios and the right bobbins for my wheel that I'll be dreaming of it!! Now to the spinning where I hope some of that research has paid off!
This is the roving single using half of the fleece. I think it is a bit more even than before and seemed to spin up quicker this time but still a thin thread:-) I do like the colours and how they merge together. The light has been so poor that each photo made the yarn look a different colour palette! So I've include a couple of images to give you a better idea overall.
I've also been thinking a lot about how to use the roving - particularly how to get the best from the colours. If I split the roving into lots of little slivers, it won't draw out much longer than the staple length so the colour sections will spin up pretty much to the length shown on the sliver. If I don't make slivers at all and spin straight from the full roving, I will be able to tease a lot of fibre from each section of colour before moving on to the next section. This will produce a completely different yarn with much longer colour gradations.
As I want to learn as well as produce lovely yarns:-), I've decided to try out both techniques. I had already slivered my first 4oz of roving (yes, I got two as it was so scrummy!) and had started spinning before this idea about colour occurred to me so I have to make a decision about how to proceed. I could start the second roving and ply the first sliver single with a full roving colourway single to get a play of short and long colourways meeting when they are plied together - nice - or I could have one skein of two short colourways together and one skein of two long colourways together to show the more obvious colour contrasts in technique.
Maybe I'll do a little more reading before making the final decision but I can't take too long as christmas won't wait for me!
Well, That took a bit of time! I thought I'd just start spinning a little of the jelly fibre to get into practice and see how it was spinning up. Hours and hours later...... still spinning. The toilet roll idea didn't work as I'd made the slivers so fragile, they kept snapping as they tried to unravel. The easiest method was to actually unwind the ball in a pool on the floor so it could run freely as I spun. Well, whatever works!
This was very theraputic while waiting for plumbers and insurance people to deal with our sewage leak. I could just close the door, put on a talking book and - spin. No distractions and hours would be gone when I looked up again. And, lots of spun yarn on the bobbin! My original intention was to split the balls into two piles, spin up two bobbins worth and then ply both threads together into one yummy yarn. That is why I split the roving so fine so I could have two laceweight yarns ply into something around fingering weight.
Of course, after taking hours to get one bobbin done, I changed my mind and decided to ply with some shiny embroidery thread I got on Ebay a while back. It feels rayon-like and is quite slippy but has a gorgeous shine which catches the light.
Hours later..... I have a plied skein of yarn! The embroidery thread seems a little light in places but was the closest I could get for now. A variegated quilting thread would be interesting to use - note to self. But I still have the other half of the jelly roving to spin so maybe I can try something different for that half. The first skein weighs about 75gms and is closer to a laceweight yarn in thickness - or should I say, thinness:-) I think with the shine factor, this could knit up well as a fancy lace shawl. I haven't knitted up a shawl in laceweight yet so I don't know if 75gms will be enough. If not, I may have to spin the rest up the same for a bigger shawl. Anyone know if I have spun enough?
I'm having a little break from spinning before I start the rest of the Jelly roving as it's very time consuming and exhausting concentrating for that length of time solely on one thing. Saying that, knitting complex lace shawl patterns does have the same effect!! I find I get engrossed in following the pattern and the wider the shawl gets, the more time passes and before I know it, it's time for bed! Hence a very late/early blog post today:-)
Tomorrow, a little dyeing and maybe some more knitting but right now, I'm off to sleep, g'night...... zzzzzzzzz.
The last few days I've been learning how to spin using two methods - the short draw and the long draw. Until I read a book on spinning a few months ago, I didn't know there was more than one way, I mean spinning is surely spinning right? Well, it all depends on your fleece and how it is prepared for spinning. Roving uses short draw, and carding tops into rolags uses the long draw method. After watching this video I found out I use the short draw method with rolags!!!! So I decided to set myself the challenge of trying them both out - properly:-)
The top video shows you how to spin using the short draw method. I tried this one first because it works with combed roving and I have some lovely dyed roving but can't use it til I get the hang of this.
Yes, my lovely roving from Fibreoptics and Needleworks pleasure respectively. And now I've been learning how to use it. Okay, not straight away with the good stuff though! I've been experimenting with some undyed merino - still very yummy - and I'll dye it when I've finished. I tried to spin this before with mixed results just before my wheel broke and I never got back to it. I was still feeling my way back into spinning - still am - so I resorted to using the method I knew I could do, working with tops and carding it into rolags.
But after watching this video I realised I had missed out a vital step of preparation - splitting. The whole idea of splitting is to take the roving and split it lengthwise all the way down. Now if you want a super chunky yarn you could spin it now but I definitely don't! So I split each length again - now 4 pieces. Still this is too thick for me, so again I split - 8 pieces, split again, 16 pieces. I stopped here and tried spinning this thickness but if its still too thick, split!
You have to even the thickness along each length you split so it will spin evenly. I found a really good video on You Tube that shows this method of splitting and preparing the fibres -
It has made my life a lot easier now I know what preparation I should be doing before spinning and I learn visually so this is great. And here is my work in progress....
I've done twice this amount now but it only weighs around 22 gms. This single yarn can be fixed as is or can now be plyed - two yarns together. As my first effort isn't as even all the way through and gets very thin in places I think I will ply this together to make it stronger. I don't know what with as yet. Maybe my undyed spun fleece straight from the sheep? But each fleece will take the dye differently so it could be a lovely contrast - or not!!! I could also spin it together with a thin manufactured yarn to eak out the roving as it's not very cheap to buy, or I could spin another bobbin of the roving and spin two equal thicknesses of yarn together. That is my preferred method and I will get a sturdier yarn.
So, still some short draw spinning to do then on to mastering the long draw! I think I'll save some of my dyed fleece for that experiment. 100gms on the nose and I didn't even weigh it! Onwards and upwards!
It's been a while since you've heard anything about the fleece I was washing so I thought I'd give you a little update on its progress. Some of the fleece has been cleared of all the little twigs and bits that didn't come out during the washing stage but it's such a long, boring process that I'm breaking it up into stages:-) So I started to card the smaller amount of totally clean fleece into rolags - small manageable rolls of prepared fibre - ready for spinning. The idea is to get all the fibres evenly carded in the same direction so when you are spinning it makes it easy to pull out and create an evenly spun thread.
There we are, nice rolags in a row. I don't make them too big or it gets a bit unwieldy on the carders. Better to have lots of small evenly carded ones:-) I've been doing this outside as the weather has been lovely today but after a while I got a bit too hot so I took my little pile of rolags inside and decided to see just how much thread they would make.
This is how much 3 rolags made - not bad. I thought it would take me a little bit of practice to get an even thin yarn but the problem was more spinning too thin! I tended only to get uneven lumps when I had missed a lump in carding so its more the carding technique at fault than the spinning, I'm glad to say. I played around with the tension on my wheel and the more pull I gave it the more likely my overly fine yarn would snap. So I'll stick to a lot of treadling for now until I feel more proficient. As long as I get enough spin in so it doesn't unravel when I ply.....
10 Rolags in and I'm on a roll! My spinning technique is getting better - more even but also generally thinner than when I started. I will have to practice deliberately trying to achieve specific thicknesses of yarn - lace, fingering, DK, aran weight etc. I think I'm thinking once this is plied then it will be twice as thick so don't make the single too thick but at this rate it won't be thick enough!!
The other problem I was having was the fleece was a bit sticky. I read that this is a problem when too much lanolin stays in the fleece so it looks like either using salt doesn't work or I didn't use enough. I deliberately didn't de-grease the fleece as the lanolin was meant to make spinning easier. So either I de-grease the remainder of the undyed fleece and spin it, or I de-grease and dye it now before spinning. I'm leaning towards the dyeing myself as spinning off-white is getting a bit monotonous!! Imagine selecting all the subtle colour variations to spin together! A colour paradise!!
But I am already prepared:-) I ordered some Synthraopol (de-greaser) from DT Craft and Design a few days ago and it fortuitously arrived this morning. Perfect timing, I think.
It may take a few days for me to get the fleece de-greased and dried, dyed and steamed but watch this space:-)
Today, I thought I would have a change of pace and scene and get absorbed once again with spinning. I borrowed this book out the library - 'Creative Spinning' by Alison Daykin and Jane Deane to refresh my memory as it has been a very long while since I spun anything, good or bad! I felt a good bit better after reading the instructions as I remembered most of it but learned that there are two different methods of spinning depending on whether you card the fleece and make your own rolags or buy the combed roving. I've only ever carded from fleece so I learned 'Long draw spinning'. The other method from combed roving is 'Worsted spinning'. Now a lot more pennies fall into place from reading spinning blogs!
So not having spun from roving, I thought I would try this technique first. Bear in mind I have all that lovely, yummy roving I bought recently, so my decision is not unbiased :-) I thought I'd start with a tester before the good stuff. Mind you this is 100% merino so pretty nice to work with.
After a few starts, I got going and worked out the thickness of the roving I want. Having always drafted the fleece as I go, I kept wanting to thin this out rather than just let it be!! I can see how this would give you such an even thread if all the roving strips were the same. Mine were too thick for a single so I thinned them all but then it became tricky as some bits went a bit too thin. One thing I do remember from previous spinning attempts was I always got too much twist in the single so I went a bit easier with this in mind and what do you know - not enough!! Typical:-) But in a good way. Just finding my feet again and that's okay as I feel I'm making progress.
So, now, tell me what is wrong with this picture? A clue - the treadle pedal is on the floor - not attached to the wheel. Yup, the thick plastic connector just snapped - ping! Well, more like a thud!
I know I've had the wheel for a while and not used it that often and plastic does perish eventually, but still! Just in the middle of me finding my spinning groove! Sigh.
Luckily for me I found a shop online - Scottish Fibres - that sells parts for my Louet with 1st class delivery. So hopefully, if I can work out how to fit the part, we should be back in business in a few days.
Louet S10 spinning wheel
Well, looks like I'll have to face the Ishbel mess that needs fixing after all - but that's okay, I can handle it as I'm feeling good and I've got my spinning mojo back - even if it's only a mere blob on the bobbin!
Ah, knitting, do not despair! Although I still love to knit there has been a calling in me recently to spin. My spinning wheel is just sitting there saying, 'remember me?' And I slink past feeling guilty that I have spent the money on more sock yarn than buying some lovely fibre. But that is all to end! I finally resisted the yarn urge and went for fibre instead. And what lovely fibres they are. These are the online photos from each etsy shop as I couldn't wait for them to arrive before showing you them. But hopefully they will arrive soon.
This first one is from Fibreoptic's Etsy shop and is called 'Black Coffee' - a colour mixture of expresso, coffee, mocha, and a little caramel. Yum yum. She does roving and yarns in such gorgeous colourways that your hands start itching to spin just looking at them! I just love the subtlety of the colour palette and I'm excited to see how it spins up. Kimber at Fibreoptic was so helpful and friendly in helping me get what I needed. A big thank you!
This next one is from All the pretty fibres Etsy shop. Heike also sells her yarns and rovings on Ebay and her website needleworks pleasure, from whom I bought some lovely hand dyed yarn a while back. She has been ever so helpful in giving me advice about how much roving to buy etc. I haven't really spun seriously for a long time - read over ten years. It is maybe a tad more than that, but I'm trying not to think about where the time goes and how it's gone 'whoosh' all of a sudden.
I tend to have little bursts of carding and spinning and then drift away. But this time it is serious! I'll have to get some practicing in before touching the nice stuff but after that there are socks to be knitted with my own spun yarn! (well, that is if I can get an even enough yarn...it's been a while)
So knitting, you are not being abandoned. Just think of it as a means to getting some lovely yarn to knit with. Knitting and spinning working in harmony:-) Of course, you realise this could start me experimenting with dyeing roving.....
