Christening

Just before Christmas one of our former guild members e mailed to say that she was selling some of her late mother's spinning and weaving equipment. I was the lucky first one to reply so as well as various warping pegs I soon became the happy owner of a lendrum with plenty of bobbins. All thanks to my past self who was wise enough to save birthday and Christmas present money instead of frittering it.

I knew exactly what fibre I was going to use for my first spin as I won a raffle prize of Babylonglegs fibre at a spinning day. As Sarah helped me check my new wheel, it only seemed fitting.

As the fibre came in three lots, I decided to spin a three ply (as a hat tip to Sarah's preferred yarn structure). I also decided to play with fractals using a one, two, three split. So, the first ply was spun across the top; the second was split in half along the length and spun and the last was split in thirds. With each ply I tried to keep the colours clear.

As always with Sarah's fibre, the spin was smooth and pleasurable and soon I had three bobbins of beauty which I was excited to start plying.

Which is when the problems began.

Everything started off fine, but then I realised I'd snapped a ply and been making a two ply for a couple of minutes. I couldn't just take that part out because of the sequencing, so I laboriously started unplying and rewinding. It took hours. It took the twist out of the singles. It made my arms and shoulders ache. I couldn't let it defeat me.

Once I had the plies unwound the only thing I could think of doing was to respin the singles to get the twist back in. However that meant I had to then spin again to get them the right way on the bobbins. I even did the same to the third bobbin to make sure it had the same amount of twist.

I joined all three plies back on and with a sigh, restarted. Five minutes of plying and the end of the bobbin popped off. By this time my shoulders were around my ears and I was tempted to cry or throw the whole wheel across the room. Instead hubby tried to help in various ways. None of which worked. Eventually, I had a strop, snapped the plied yarn and did the spin and respin thing onto more bobbins. Thank goodness this wheel came with lots of them.

Heartily sick of it all, I put the whole lot in the naughty corner and stewed for a couple of days. I came back to it and this time the plying went well, but I was really disappointed that I couldn't get all of the yarn onto one bobbin. I made this into a positive and decided to chain ply the remaining singles, just to see.

Cute enough on the bobbins, so winding them onto the niddy noddy then into skeins was very exciting. 

I'm so pleased with how these turned out, despite the wheel related difficulties on the way.   I've learnt a lot and resolved to use my Sonata for plying larger quantities. (Thereby taking a step to understanding multiple wheel ownership.) Next is finding just the right project I guess.   No rush! 

Revitalisation

I didn't realise how long it was since I'd posted on my blog.  Oops.

I've had quite a run of contracting work, so let's blame my lack of words on that shall we?

I do know that after Christmas the creative muse left me for an extended holiday - battered by Christmas and all that entails, and a less than optimum working environment.

After a rather peculiar end to this latest contract I felt the urge to make something.  I wasn't sure what.  I started knitting my beautiful lambswool hand spun into a jumper, but it's not quite right (so is consigned to the naughty corner for a time out).  I looked at my warp dressed loom (yes, I got one - he derseves a post of his own though) but didn't feel inspired.

The only thing that tickled my interest was having a play on my blending board.  I grabbed the first bag of scraps I came to and remembered how much fun these are

I tried taking a picture at night - how dull these look.  However, in the daylight...

 Kaboom!


I didn't know how I wanted to spin these and ended up playing around with coreless corespinning.  I've yet to find anyone else referencing doing this with rolags - please point me to anyone who does.

The resulting single seemed to my inexperienced eyes, rather rope-like and overspun.   Being coreless, it was still very soft and squishy.  I wanted a bit more give in the yarn and thought that I would like to ply it with something to help counteract the extra twist..  I grabbed a reel of thread and some machine embroidery lurex type stuff

And just quickly thread plied the single

I gave the skein a bath and snapped it a few times to encourage the twist to even up a little, then let it dry hung in the gentle heat of the airing cupboard

Finally, here's my finished skein - soft, poofy and squidgy!

Bounce bounce bounce

Following on from my playing with colour, I spun up the hidden depths batt so that the greens would have something neutral to pop against.

So,there's 238 yards of approx DK.  The green blue pop is at the beginning/end of my yarn and stems from what was on the bobbin before I spun up the green rolags.  I love how it looks in the skein, but I'm not sure I'll be using it at this point

What do you think?  I love the colours flickering in and out and I'm so curious about how it will knit up.  I'll have to decide what to make first though - any suggestions?

Playing with colour

I went to one of my guilds on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed a mini workshop on Tones, Tints and Shades.  It was given by Pam Austin, who always entertains me.  (She taught me to long draw by smacking my hand when I tried to control everything worsted style - something that horrified me at the time, but amuses me greatly now.)  Pam explained how blending colours with different neutrals changes their appearance and we used hand carders to produce the effects she talked about.  I won't go into too much detail as it's her workshop and living.

So, fired with enthusiasm, I spent some time on Sunday experimenting.  Here are the fibres I used  that were in my bit bag - yellow with a streak of purple that had clung to it, lime milkshake harshness, deep navy blue, natural that somehow looks pink, and grey drier lint (not really, but it was peculiar stuff)

Here's a taste of the shades I carded up.  Look as those airy rolags!

 Want to see some blending shots?

I put a mix of fibres on the card

One pass

The other carder

Action! (very hard to take all of these pictures with one pair of hands and one crappy, very crappy camera phone)  Look how the awful short grey stuff was clumping at this point.

Still struggling to get it blended at this point

But after some more work.....

I am so looking forward to plying this!

And yes, that is a mirror underneath the flyer - this way I can see the nearest end of my bobbin without having to half stand

Batt-y goodness

I've been playing with the drum carder and I'm in love with what comes out of it. I'm calling the one on the left hidden depths and the one on the right deep lagoon.

There's got to be some benefits!

It's been a bit of a month or so in our household.  I've had a long running cold that turned into a chest infection, my son passed his driving test first go and hubby managed to miss a step on the stairs and broke a bone in his foot.  I was away at spinning guild for the day, and fortunately I had my phone turned on (a rarity) and heard it (even more rare),  A rush home and a trip to the Urgent Care Centre confirmed that he had broken a bone in his foot, so we came home with two crutches and a moon boot.

Three days later and he decided he wanted to go to work.  On the train.  To Birmingham.  Without any medical aids.  Wearing walking shoes.............  Men!  Anyhow, I did what I could and offered to take him to the station, and pick up if required.  At this point I realised that his train leaves our station before 6.45.  Hence I had a lot of time to enjoy the morning before going to work myself.  I had a leisurely breakfast, hung out the washing, looked at our sleeping rats and still had time to enjoy the morning sunlight with a bit of spinning - total bliss!

Spinning my winning

At the pre Christmas meeting of the Guild of Long Draw Spinners, we had a free raffle where I was the lucky winner of a shoe box full of gorgeous poonags. They were soft, wormy and not my usual colours, but oh so beautiful. I had no time to spin them before Christmas, then a shoulder injury took care of the first 6 weeks of 2015.  It was frustrating to say the least.

Finally I was healed enough to open the box and spin!  I had a jumbo flyer and maiden for my Sonata for Christmas, so I decided that I'd try it out and attempt to wean myself away from the fine spinning that is my default.  (I attribute this to parsimony - so many more hours of pleasure from fluff if you spin it small!).  I realised half way through that I hadn't taken pictures of the poonags in their glory, so here you can see a few with the singles that flowed from them/

Here's the singles caked up - still not particularly chunky, but going in the right direction

I didn't know what to ply it with at first.  Then I remembered that years ago I was gifted a wrap with permission to unravel it.  This proved to be a game in itself until I realised the cunning way in which the wrap had been put together.  As the unravelling breakthrough happened so late at night, there were no pictures and I would feel mean about revealing too much about the wrap - both who it came from and what pattern it was.  Suffice to say, the two ends of colourmart silk matched beautifully with my singles

I decided to play on the differing fibre contents and experiment with a spiral ply.  I found it a bit hard to start with, but eventually cottoned on to what I needed to do. Initially I thought I would ply the silk around the singles, but it looked a lot better the other way round as it allowed the handspun to poof at will.

You can see the fun I had with spiral plying!  (Sorry for the off colour - definitely not so orangey in real life!)

It's not very even throughout the skein - you can definitely see my progress as I learnt what I needed to do.  This is before finishing.

My daughter had a doll with hair like this

Are these glasses ageing?

All washed, relaxed, skeined and twisted into skwooshy beauty.  Look at those shots of orange, the lemon and the mushroom gill shades

Caked into 146 grammes, 322 yards of DK squish!

I could pretend that the start of the cake is flat to aid cast on, but it's where I was getting to grips with the technique

I've yet to decide what to knit with it.  Plus, as these are so not the colours that suit me, I am toying with the idea of over dyeing the whole thing.  Would it be rude to do so?

Lace spindle love

I bought a beautiful Turned On The Cut spindle from someone's destash and had a great time spinning this yarn from a batt I carded at the Alpaca Spinner's Woolly Day the other month

I taught myself to chain ply on the spindle and had a play at using random fibres too

Some of the colour combinations make me feel rather uneasy.  

I've got more similar colours to the stormy blue on the spindle at the moment which I'm hoping will give me a more useful yardage when combined.  I've taught myself ply on the fly for this second spindle, but I'm beginning to think it's a great party trick, but it's possibly slower than forming the single, winding on and plying as there so much swapping about