Happy Valentine's Day to Me!

Our home was burglarized January 12. Among the items lost were our computers and other tech equipment, nearly ever piece of jewelry I've ever owned (save the three pieces I was wearing that day, two sets that were in plain sight but somehow missed, and one necklace I had bought on vacation on Orcas Island the week before but not yet put away), and several beloved decorative boxes that I kept my everyday jewelry in. One of those boxes I had purchased while I lived in Kyiv, Ukraine -- a stunning hinged-lid box purchased at the little shop in the base of St. Sophia Cathedral that featured the highest quality delicate paint work of a courting scene. I adored that box.

When I saw this Golding spindle, I fell in love.

Its exquisite inset features a domestic handspinning scene. It combines my love of Russian decorative painting with my love of fiber arts -- and fiber tools. And it's not likely to be targeted should we be burglarized again (my spindles did survive the burglary this time!). It's not the same as my favorite, now-gone jewelry box, but it makes me very happy. The painting style is very similar to my box. I mentioned to Joseph that I would like something like this for Valentine's Day... and he presented it shortly after breakfast yesterday morning.

"Handspindling by Candlelight"
2-3/4" Walnut Whorl
Rare Vintage Handpainted Russian Inset
Brass Ring
1.4 oz
Golding Fiber Tools
from the Vintage and Decorative RingSpindle collection
Spindle of the Week posted 2-1-10

Love the brass ring!


Before I could justify starting a new spinning project, I had another WIP to finish. In fact, I was in the process of binding it off when Joseph gave me the spindle, so I just needed to do that and weave in the ends. You can imagine how long and grueling that project seemed with my gorgeous Golding sitting there, so politely, just waiting...

Catherine's Fiber Design No. 2

[Written 2-8-10 and postdated for chronology's sake.]

Catherine asked me to take her to The Weaving Works so she could design a new yarn: her second. She lured me with promises of actually wanting to spin the yarn. Of course, she didn't have to work to hard to convince me to go. Expecting to be off by a bit, I told her we would only get 2 ounces.


Instead, we ended up with 4-1/2! C likes her batts loaded with lots of different colors. This time she went with (L-R, above): raspberry, teal, periwinkle, sky blue, and pansy.

We took the stash home and straight away went to our trusty Clemes & Clemes drum carder. In no time, the fluffy, blended batts were practically flying off the machine!

She wanted the colors to remain distinct.

And after all that, we had two fluffy batts of this:

Plus a little one of the left-overs for me. Out came the spindles, and C spun with me for all of about 10 minutes before she was done. What a hoot!

I finished up my little leftovers batt into a cool thick-thin skein of singles.

No doubt I'll end up spinning C's batts, too... but I think I'll wait awhile to really give her an opportunity to spin them up herself.

A Little Behind

It's about time I posted the results of my first carding/color experiment, which I started back in May. When last we checked in, I had carded the four colors into batts that progressed from more peachy to more kakhi but had not yet decided how to spin them. In early June, I decided that I wanted to maintain the color progression, rather than mixing it up. Here is the result:


That's 4 oz of solid Merino top. I worked it up into 4 skeins of 2-ply totaling 226 yards. Don't see a hint of the blue in there, do you? I know—I was a little bummed, too. It worked to produce an overall lightening and "frosting" of the colors rather than holding its own even in small bits. Might not have turned out the way I expected, but I learned a lot—and that was the point of this experiment.

Given the low yardage, I had toyed with the idea of making C a tank top with this yarn, but what kid wants a wool tank top in 80-degree heat?! So we switched gears and now plan to make this into a skirt. The handspun will provide the accent striping for a modification of Hip In Hemp.

Even with C's tiny hiney, I'll need more than 226 yards for the skirt. A New Yarn provided the perfect to-go-with: a khaki wool with peach accents that looks as though it were made to accompany my handspun! Here it is:


I got three beefy skeins of this mystery wool, which I've wound into lovely cakes.


Next I will 2-ply the mystery wool to make the weight consistent with the handspun. Once I've done that, I expect to have about 700 yards total for the skirt. Then we'll knit. What with Summer of Socks and the Tour de Fleece... and the dissertation... I don't expect to knit up this project until September or October—but that's about the right timing for working on a wool skirt, don't you think?!

C's Day At The Circus Scarf

We have here the end result of a learning experiment in color The Girlio helped me conduct last week: C's Day At The Circus Scarf.


For a refresher on the experiment, click here. The short version is this: C picked a bunch of colors of roving; I spun them into yarn.

The spinning went well enough. The NZ wool I selected wasn't the nicest fiber to work with but also wasn't the worst. It worked up fairly evenly; it's just that the finished product was a little scratchier than I would have liked.


A bath in hair conditioner took the edge off the scratchies, which is good since the scarf will be worn around C's neck.


Pattern: Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf by Karen Baumer
Materials: C's Day At The Circus, NZ wool, 2-plied on the wheel, 210 yards
Needles: US 9 / 5.5 mm
Started: May 2, 2008
Completed: May 4, 2008

This pattern knits up super quick, it's fun and easy, and it rocks for handspun yarn! The garter stitch showcases the yarn well, and the short-row construction gives it interest. I used the alternate ending provided with the pattern, for symmetry.

When I pulled the scarf off the needles, it was about 4.5 feet long. After blocking, it's well over 6 feet long. This makes it just long enough for C to use it as an instrument of torture for her partner-in-crime, young Barclay MacGregor, aka "The Dog Who Ate My Spindle."


Fang and I will forgive him since he's so darned cute. C's not bad herself, even with trouble twinkling in her eye! Oh, what new misadventure awaits this pair!?!


As for the color experiment, I learned a lot on this project. Obviously, the experiment had nothing to do with hand-dying, since I bought the roving in pre-dyed solids. It was more about combining the bits. For the next try, rather than spin both singles from the entire spectrum of colors, I would do just one this way and the other with a "base" color from within the spectrum. This to better unify the yarn.

The finished scarf is a little wacky for my taste, but it's right up my exuberant Girlio's alley... which is why I involved her in this experiment from the start. Plus she loves it — and loves telling people she designed the yarn herself!


I have an idea for a table runner to drape over my grand piano. It may be the perfect project for phase 2 of this experiment.

Getting The Family In On The Act

In the course of the last week, both J and C have expressed an interest in learning how to spin. Not one to miss such an opportunity, I made these:


Two CD drop spindles. These made up quickly Saturday night, in just a couple of hours. I have enough materials to make two more, but I didn't want to do all four at once to leave open the possibility of tweaking my design a bit. I originally planned to dress them with abstract geometric images, but I decided at the last minute to take a different approach. I though the Seattle skyline was a good starting point, since that's where we live and I thought the colors would look pretty from above as the spindle whirls. The other is a close-up image of Ukrainian pysanky eggs (another of my crafty pastimes). They do look spectacular from above as they spin!

I'm particularly proud of the way I use the image to support the design and assist the spinner. I selected images with a strong vertical line pointing to 5 o'clock. This is important because the hook opening is at 12 o'clock, which means the vertical image points the spinner to the exact place where she (or he!) will want to place the yarn before running it through the hook. On Seattle Skyline, that line is created by the Space Needle. I did also put a notch in the CD for this one (thanks, J, for letting me call upon your muscle power for that part of the task!). Pysanky Spinner, whose visual orientation line is created by the black area that points like an arrow to the right spot, sports no notch.

The visual orientation line works so well that even without a notch to control the yarn, I was able to acclimate really quickly — to the point where I don't have to think about how far to turn the spindle when I'm winding on. It's brilliant! (Yes, I do say so myself.) With my Schecht Hi-Lo, I have to pay closer attention during wind on so I can "find" the notch. But with these spindles, I don't have to think about it as much because (1) my brain wants to orient the image vertically and (2) my eye wants to follow the strongest vertical line. Perhaps even most impressive is the fact that I place the yarn in the best spot every time so the fiber doesn't slip.

Here's what the spindles look like from behind.


Pretty normal. The dowel is 3/8-inch diameter, 12-inch length. I used rubber grommets, clear painter's tape (as a shim to fill in the gap between the grommet and the dowel), 180- and 220-grit sandpaper, a CD, cup hooks, and lemon oil. And yes, they do smell lovely!

"What's that fiber already spun?" you ask.


That, my friends is (on left) the next installment of my Song For Dalai Lama yarn (100% wool) and ... [drum roll] ... (on right) ... J's first handspun singles! Check it out!!!


That's right — my newly knitting husband spun himself some awesome looking singles! As soon as I finished making Seattle Skyline and gave it a little test, he had me teach him. He learned quickly and was spinning the entire time I worked on Pysanky Spinner. Truth be told, he did best once I stopped yammering at him with my running monologue of "helpful" little tips and tricks from my own, not-too-distant, learning process.

He's using the 100% Merino wool roving I had gotten from A New Yarn. (Sorry, B. This roving had been destined for you, but the man needed something to learn on, and I knew you'd be so psyched about him spinning that you'd forgive me... as long as I find another yummy roving to send you!)


I have to say that I'm really impressed by how well these spindles work! They spin forever. I spin yarn noticeably quicker on this spindle than on my Schecht Hi-Lo. And they're much more balanced than I ever would have expected.

The only unfortunate thing I might say about them is that they don't work too well for spinning in bed. They get a little wobbly when I'm lounging in bed watching TV because of the angle I use to hold things.

As for finished product, my Song For Dalai Lama singles pictured above are every bit as fine as the original singles I had spun on my Hi-Lo.

Now I know you're probably doing some math here and saying, "Hey, if she was making these spindles so J and C could learn, and then she started using one of them herself, that leaves one little 8-year-old girl without a spindle."

Never you fear: C and I picked a lovely image of a mommy and baby horse to put on a spindle for her. C was in bed by the time I started making these first two on Saturday night, and I wanted to include her in the process. She'll have a spindle of her very own soon. That's why I bought this:


Plain, white, beginner's fiber. I'm pretty sure it's the same stuff I used to learn on. I now know it's Coopworth fiber. C doesn't know it's for her yet. I figured that once I make the spindle, I won't push her to start using it. I'll just have it laying around with this ecru fiber to be at-the-ready for that magical moment when, overcome by curiosity and the lure of her pretty Mommy-Baby Spindle, she decides it's time. She can't resist anything mommy-baby oriented.

I did, however, involve her right away in another experiment I'm conducting now: She helped me select colors for some roving I'm going to spin together. Here they are:


Top Row (L-R): lavender, teal, lime green. Bottom row (L-R) Barbi pink, berry, tangerine. Her only instructions were to limit her selection to five colors. Now, you mathematicians, I know darn well there are six colors pictured, not five. That's because after C picked her five colors, I asked her what color she wanted it to be mostly. She said pink. I picked up the berry as my own addition to her selection.

Despite how it looks in the picture, I do not have equal amounts of each. The fiber is New Zealand Carded Wool from Weaving Works. I started spinning the singles on the wheel last night. This is my first time working with that particular wool, and so far I'm finding it wonderful to spin.

C's proud to call herself a yarn designer! I'm proud to call J a drop-spindler. I'm proud of myself for making such awesome spindles — for well under $2 each. And I'm thrilled that my family can share this with me!

Second Off The Wheel

In my rush to experience color on the wheel, I worked up some of Lorna's Lace's 100% combed wool top in the Watercolor (18) colorway. The roving is put up in 10-ounce balls, and I've got three of them. (Another great find from A New Yarn.) I have to say, the roving itself didn't look overly exciting, but it really brightened up in the spinning!


To-date, I've spun and plied 4 ounces. Total yardage is 257; average wpi is 13-14, making this a sport/DK weight. Again, the yarn is remarkably well-balanced and consistent, especially considering it's only my second attempt on the wheel!

Given how much of this wool I have and how well it's spinning, I'm planning to knit it into an adaptation of Lijuan Jing’s Swirl Shawl, which I saw made up at the Yarn Barn on my recent trip to Lawrence, Kansas. It was love at first sight!

Look for my next post to return to knitting topics. My Mom's Couch handspun is on its way to becoming a finished object!

First Off The Wheel

Haven't had much time for fiber this week, but I did ply, wash, and skein up my first two attempts at yarn on the spinning wheel. I'm pretty proud of how they came out.

First up, 5 ounces of the big roving score from A New Yarn a few weeks ago. I shared the singles in my previous post. I'm now fairly certain that this is Romney wool, and I've got about 5 pounds left to spin after this batch. Here it is in a 2-ply:

I haven't quite gotten the hang of judging how much is on the bobbin when I'm spinning singles, so I didn't have equal amounts for plying. Between the 3 total skeins of 2-ply, though, I've got about 165 yards of surprisingly consistent and well-balanced yarn! At an average of 11 wpi, this is a heavy worsted, almost bulky weight yarn.

There was a little bit left on one bobbin after I'd finished the other, so I tried my hand at the Navajo 3-ply method:


That's a little more than 8 yards, and it's way over-twisted. I'm going to have to practice more on this technique!

Yes, sir! Yes, sir!

Two bobbins full... and ready for plying. Those bits of over-twist will work out in the process — at least that's my hope. Everything I've read says plying undoes a lot of ills!

If At First You Don't Succeed...

Try, Try Again!


Just before 10pm last night, I sat down to try my first spinning on the new spinning wheel. Given that I'd never laid hands on a spinning wheel before, it should be no surprise that I ended up with the scrabbly scramble above. Perhaps I shouldn't have started so late at night?

Patience prevailed even where fatigue might have overtaken a lesser woman. I cut yarn, started over, and produced this before heading to bed:


Not perfect (see the funky wrapping at left), but not too shabby, either. Hope springs eternal!

That's some of the massive fiber buy I made last weekend, too.

Traveling Light

This is the only project accompanying me on my job interview in Lawrence, Kansas.


As with the last fiber I spun, this came from A New Yarn — the non-profit yarn shop I love which accepts donations of all kinds — and I don't know exactly what the fiber is composed of. I can tell you that it's not quite as soft and silky as the last one. I'm thinking it's probably just plain old will (read that "just" with all sorts of love in your heart!). The color is so richly saturated.

This picture gives a different sense of the brightness:


For all you University of Kansas fans out there who can't figure out why my blog came up on your Google search: Rock Chalk Jayhawk! Of course, they just won the national basketball championship. The big welcome home celebration for the team was last night, which is lucky because if it were tonight, I'd have more than 40,000 loud, happy people outside my hotel celebrating the victory right now!

I had planned to pack a sock project, too, but just ran out of time to prep one I thought would travel well. It's for the best that I didn't pack anything else. My bags were really heavy, and I'm not sure how much spinning I'll actually get to do. I've got a 13-hour interview day ahead of me tomorrow.

Serendipity

Look what I went and did:

I bought a spinning wheel!

Actually, J bought it for me. An early birthday present. How cool is that?!?! It's a single-treadle Ashford Traditional.

How does a thing like this happen? And so suddenly? Serendipity.

On a whim, I checked Craigslist for used spinning wheels Sunday evening. Nikki in Kingston had just posted an ad for this wheel at an amazing price — one of the best deals for a good quality, used, beginner's wheel in good shape that I'd seen in nearly 6 months of periodic looking. I knew I was likely to be the first respondent on this one, so I showed it to J. He agreed that I should contact the seller.

The next evening, we loaded the entire family (including MIL) into the car and drove up to the Edmonds Ferry Terminal. Nikki and her daughter met us on the mainland side. Rain poured down in buckets as we loaded the wheel into the car. I was so excited about my new toy that I almost forgot to pay Nikki, even though I had the cash in my hand!

Nikki raises sheep, too, and she said she'll bring me a fleece next time she comes to the mainland. I've got her cell number and am hoping it will happen. Not that I don't have enough great wool to spin... there's still that box full of natural fiber to work through. I still need to take a picture to show off!

Another whirl

I'm in deep — can't believe I didn't learn spinning sooner! It's amazing to me that I can take a pile of fluff and a weighted stick and end up with beautiful yarn. This is my second attempt:


Not bad for self-taught, eh? And this one shows it as compared to my first attempt:


That's the single. Here are more, after its 2-ply transformation:




I have no idea what the fibers are. Primarily wool. Long staples. Maybe mixed with tencel or mohair?


It's very soft and silky.


I picked up the fiber at my new favorite LYS: A New Yarn. It's a non-profit yarn store benefiting Northwest Family Life. In addition to being a place for amazing finds, they've brilliantly incorporated a large, well-equipped children's playroom. That's going to pay off in dividends for the shop. This is the only yarn store where C will leave me alone the entire time I want to be there — no nagging!

I got some other great fiber there, too. I'll post more about it as I work the fiber.

While I was there, a woman donated a large box full of natural-colored, prepared roving. She had gotten the fleece from a friend who raises sheep in California and had it processed, but she hadn't done anything with it yet and didn't think she ever would. As you can guess, I thought I might come back and get some of it. The shop manager, Claudia, promised to call me when she finished pricing the wool. By the time I arrived home, she had already left a message offering to let me buy the entire box for a very reasonable price. (We're talking AMAZINGLY reasonable.) I went for it. My MIL, who is in vising from Ohio, ended up getting it for me for my upcoming birthday. Amazing, no? There's more than 10 pounds — I still need to weigh it.

Autodidactic Inclinations: Spinning

I taught myself to spin this week.


Ta da!
Spinning and dying are my final frontiers as far as handcrafts go. I learned most others at a young age. Spinning and dying always seemed mysterious to me, and I didn't have anyone mentoring these crafts in my family. This week I decided I didn't need a mentor or a class to pick up spinning. I have all the skills and good sense I need to get started!

When I wandered down to Weaving Works on Monday, I had the sole intention of picking up a pair of craft gloves. My left wrist and forearm have been bothering me, and I thought they would help keep me knitting. While there bemoaning my recent achy knitting sessions, I walked past a display of beautiful, hand-carved spindles and remembered that Jared Flood recently floated the idea of putting up a hand-spun yarn tutorial. I simply couldn't resist.

Ten minutes evaluating resources in the books section, and I identified my guide: Spindle Spinning from Novice to Expert by Connie Delaney.

One of the shopkeepers helped me pick a good beginner's spindle. Good being defined as functional, balanced, and pretty without breaking the bank. (I may love all the gorgeous options, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money on one until I figured out whether I like spinning or have any hope for some talent doing it!)

I ended up with a Schacht Spindle Co. Hi-Lo spindle, which not only meets my criteria but can be used either high whorl or low whorl. It has a 2.5" whorl and weighs 1.1 oz. I don't have anything to compare it to yet, but I thoroughly love my new toy!

The nice woman at Weaving Works (whose name I'll have to get next time I go in — it's shameful that I'm calling her "nice woman") also set me up with an ounce of medium-grade, undyed wool. I can't remember the C-name of it right now, so I'll call my patch of sheep fluff Charlie wool.

One of my little Cairn terriers, Barclay MacGregor, who has never destroyed any of my things before, got hold of my precious purchase before I did. I didn't have the heart to photograph the carnage of the Charlie wool all over the carpet. The spindle survived, but it definitely took on a new character.

Needs a name, don't you think? Scar? Chewy? I welcome suggestions!

I scraped up the Charlie wool and set about figuring out how to spin. The book's great, and I checked out some helpful internet resources, too — including a few really good videos on YouTube. Still, it's all trial and error unless you have an expert around to demonstrate and give feedback about what you're doing.

It took me about 2.5 hours to spin the wool top into a single — learning as I went. Lo and behold, at every turn a little miracle!

The next evening after dinner, my MIL and I figured out how to turn my single into a 2-ply using the method in Delaney's book. I didn't see this method anywhere else online. It's a really cool technique that plies the beginning to the end and works toward the middle — so you can do this with just one spindle-full of single-spun yarn. We had a little trouble figuring out the hand wrap but finally rigged up something that worked.

It's small and misshapen, but it's mine and I love my Charlie yarn. Clocks in at a whopping wpi of 5-7 (variable because of its extraordinary qualities) — that's hyper bulky. As you can imagine, 1 ounce spun to such massive heft does not go far. We have here just 28 yards. That's ok. I'll come up with something special to knit it into — or I'll get more of the same fiber and see if I can recreate the bumpy learner's goodness.

The next spinning project already has my fingers flying — and at a much finer gauge. I hope to finish by tomorrow night. Can't wait to show off that one. Looks like I've found a new obsession, and dying now stands alone as my final frontier!