Spinning

I wish I could say the big space between my last post and this one was caused by my leading such an exciting life that blogging went by the wayside. Actually, I’ve been watching others lead exciting lives by being Olympians. We pre-record the Olympics so we can breeze through sports and long sections of talk that don’t interest us, but all that extra TV still cuts into blogging time. And knitting time, too, since I can look down and focus on yarn overs and corresponding decreases during the pre- and post-event chatter, but have to look up for the 30 seconds or so it takes a swimmer or gymnast or runner to complete a swim or routine or lap.

Not to say life hasn’t been fun.  Mr. MmmYarn took me out for my birthday last night, to a restaurant at the top of a fancy hotel downtown. We got all dressed up for it (I was in heels), had a tasty dinner, and did a bit of dancing. I find the dressing up part fun, as long as I don’t do it too often. It’s too bad it was so foggy that all we could see was the lit-up sign at the top of a nearby hotel. The rest of the world outside those windows was a wall of solid white.

I am not participating in the Ravelympics. I set myself plenty of self-imposed deadlines and I did not want to add a real one to the mix. I will do some deadline knitting shortly, though, as I have signed up for Mystery Stole 4. Want to see the materials I picked out? The yarn is from the stash (I swatched last night) and I went bead shopping earlier today:

The Mystery Stole may be madness for me, as Mr. MmmYarn and I are going on vacation the Friday after clue #1 is out, meaning I may not even get clue #2 before we leave depending on what time of the day it’s released. So it may be out for travel knitting and I’ll have a ton of catch-up work to do on three stole clues when we get back.

Oddly, though, even doing vacation planning and watching that much TV the week has been productive fiber-wise and I have progress photos to share today.

The little hat grows very slowly as I’m only knitting on it in short bursts, such as waiting in line for my turn with the surprisingly and unusually efficient postal clerk yesterday:

Why no marathon hat knitting? Because I’m working on the Apres Surf Hoodie almost exclusively on bus rides and at home. The sleeves are done, as you know, and this is the back at the beginning of armhole shaping:

Why, oh why, the color must be so washed out every time I snap a photo is a mystery to me. Imagine the green more the shade of a spearmint Tic Tac candy and you’ve just about got it.

Under the Ott-Lite, the 2 ounces of thin orange singles I managed to whack out photographs bright and bold. This is for the orange and purple 4 ply. Here it is, 25% done, atop a background of one of Mr. MmmYarn’s early weaving projects:

All in all, I can’t complain. Except that the baby sweater’s neckline continues to be uncooperative. It’s entirely my fault for not writing down any part of my thought process.

I’ll go put another inch on Apres Surf before it’s time to go chop okra and onions for bhindi do pyaaza for dinner tonight. Yum!

July’s spinning is pitiful: only 1 ounce that I spun relatively thickly and Navajo plied so I would get some practice (and, frankly, so I wouldn’t have to deal with multiple bobbins that day because I was feeling lazy).

This fiber felt rougher, longer, and more crinkly than the natural white merino top I spun a few months ago.  I don’t know whether this is because of the individual sheep’s wool or the top’s preparation, or whether natural moorit merino is simply different in texture than natural white merino.

Fiber: 100% merino moorit top
Colorway: Moorit
Quantity: 1 ounce
Finished yarn: 1 skein, 32 yards, worsted weight
Spun at 12:1 on 7/6/2008, Navajo plied at 8:1 on 7/29/2008

This is my first mostly successful Navajo ply project. There was no cursing involved (!) this time around, simply because the singles never broke. I recently bought Judith MacKenzie McCuin’s Handspinning book and it both has photos of how to start a Navajo ply and offers the tip of pulling through several loops before starting the wheel. This did the trick for me. Usually what happens is I break the strand over and over, trying to get the chain started. I call this project “mostly successful” because the chains are not even and the finished yarn is both lumpy and overtwisted. In other words, I made yarn with character!

I did have one area of trouble while plying. I use my right hand to chain and the left both to control the singles coming off the kate and to smooth out any chains as necessary. Doing this, my left hand constantly was in the way of the right and I had to twist my body. With only 1 ounce of fairly thickly spun yarn, though, plying went quickly so I wasn’t too bothered. Now, had I been able to read bowerbird’s post that includes a little sentence about keeping the singles on the right (about 1/3 of the way down that post) before I tried this, or even thought about perhaps MOVING THE KATE TO THE RIGHT SIDE OF MY BODY when my hands were running into each other (duh!), I wouldn’t have had this problem. Location, location, location. Next time I’ll know better

On the wheel for August: traffic-cone-orange merino that I will spin 2 thin singles of, to ply with 2 thin singles of Grimace-purple merino. Wish me luck; the last 4-ply I did took me 6 months.

The Prezioso sweater was nearly done but I decided on the bus yesterday that I really didn’t like the neckline, so I ripped out the last 2 inches and it now looks a little shorter than this:

This week’s spinning fiber was one ounce of merino sliver. I generically refer to all my fiber as “roving,” but since this fiber was specifically labeled “sliver” I thought I’d try to pay attention to its preparation back when I first picked it up. I found an article in the Winter 2007 issue of Spin-Off magazine that discusses the differences between different fiber preparations.

The article says sliver is thinner than roving and, unlike roving, has no twist to it. Yes, I can confirm both of those with this merino, but I thought it was thinner simply because it’s only 1 ounce of fiber and I usually work with 2 ounces or more. This was far thicker in sliver form than the 1-ounce bits of pygora I spun up a few months ago. The fiber was very soft and easy to draft but I found it harder to spin evenly than the merino-silk blend and English Wensleydale Longwool I spun recently. In this case, it may have needed some pre-drafting (I very rarely do that, preferring instead to simply treadle and go). So I went for a more rustic-looking 2-ply yarn:

Fiber: Merino sliver
Colorway: none (undyed)
Supplier: friend of a friend
Quantity: 1 ounce
Finished yarn: 1 skein, 2-ply, 121 yards, 12 wpi (= double knitting)
Spun at 15:1 and plied at 17:1

I had been having no end of problems with Ravelry lately. It caused my computer to run out of resources very quickly and slowed everything else down considerably. I was also unable to link to old blog posts. Then Mr. MmmYarn suggested I try another browser. So, fellow Ravelers, if you, too, are using Internet Explorer 7 on a Windows XP computer that’s 4 to 5 years old, I recommend you try Ravelry in Firefox. What a world of difference!

In knitting news, Mr. MmmYarn’s socks are finished but not photographed so you’ll need to wait to see those. Perhaps I can get him to foot model up on the roof tomorrow after work. I am also working on a second hat for the family member who needs some hats. And Lily of the Valley (remember her?) sits in a crumpled blue heap in a corner of my desk, looking at me reproachfully for having done everything but tuck in 2 tail ends and block her after all these months. My hope is that by mentioning it here I will be guilted into taking action this weekend. Wait and see.

With the big spinning project done, I can get on with some smaller ones. I have a kind of grab bag of 1 ounce each of various wools and picked out English Wensleydale Longwool top the other night.

The fiber looked like this:

I spun it up into a pretty fine singles. This wool has a long staple length (I had to put my hands really far apart to split the bundle into two sections) and was easy to spin finely once my hands figured out the staple length. It felt course; I wouldn’t recommend it for next-to-the-skin wear. The wool is prettily shiny, though, and reminds me of mohair only it’s less, well, hairy.

Fiber: English Wensleydale Longwool
Color: natural/undyed
Supplier: friend of a friend
Quantity: 1 ounce
Finished yarn: 1 skein, 2-ply, 89.8 yards, 18-19 wpi (= fingering)
Spun and plied at 15:1

I spun 3/4 of the fiber in one evening and the rest plus plying the next evening. What a welcome break after the 8 ounces of 4-ply! It went so fast. However, I wasn’t so even with this stuff as I have a lot of singles left on one bobbin. Or perhaps I was even, but the bundle of top wasn’t evenly distributed when I split it using my highly scientific method of finding the middle of a bunch of roving and pulling it into two pieces at that point. We bought a small kitchen scale over the weekend so I will weigh the next fiber I split.

I picked up the green fuzzy sweater again, the one I started months ago. The sleeves are great, the waist shaping is in the right place, and the armholes are… too low. Since I picked a top-down construction, this means I need to unravel my sleeves and the body back to past where I began the armholes and calculate again. You see where this is going, don’t you? This sweater will end up abandoned like the others that only need a bit of work, in favor of some tempting alpaca that wants to be a scarf or more colorful sock yarn. Sigh.

The 4-ply yarn is done at last. I started it toward the end of October and plowed through this past week to finish it. You saw the preview of my one big bobbin of 4-ply the other day:

I know it doesn’t look like much, just one bobbin, but that really is a BIG bobbin. Next to the regular bobbin it is enormous. It holds the contents of 4 normal bobbins:

This was a long process. Spinning went on hiatus for a while during the colder months because it was really too cold to spin in the apartment. I couldn’t keep my hands warm enough, plus it’s hard to wrap up in a blanket up to the shoulders when you’re at the wheel.

I ended up with 421 yards. Lest you think that doesn’t sound like much for a 6-month span of spinning, remember it’s 4 plies. That’s 4 x 421 yards = 1684 yards, enough to cover the length of 16.84 football fields. There are also two smaller hanks, detailed below.

I am very pleased with how this yarn turned out:

Fiber: 70% merino wool, 30% Tussah silk
Colorway: Red
Supplier: Carolina Homespun
Quantity: 8 ounces
Finished yarn: 1 skein, 4-ply, 421 yards, 10.5 wpi (= worsted weight)
Spun at 15:1 and plied at 3:1

Penny included for scale:

Despite the long periods of time between bouts of spinning, the plies were relatively consistent. I held the 4 strands separately between the fingers on my left hand while plying. The one traveling between my thumb and forefinger was a little looser and thicker than the other three. I didn’t mark my bobbins so I don’t know if this was the first one, when I was still figuring out what I wanted to make, or my last one, when I was sick of the project and wanting it to end. However, having inconsistencies spread over 4 plies made for a more consistent yarn than when spread over 2 plies. You’re less likely to have two too-thick (or too-thin) bits line up with each other.

Plying was easy. Call me crazy, but it seemed I needed to treadle much, much less to twist the 4 singles around each other than I do when I ply 2 singles. Treadling speed when I went from 4 bobbins down to 3, then down to 2, was markedly different. I had to treadle much faster once I got down to 2 plies. Perhaps this is a spinning phenomenon I’m unaware of?

The bit of inconsistency between the 4 bobbins showed when I was finishing plying. After one bobbin ran out, I spun the remaining 3 bobbins as 3-ply and when another ran out, 2-ply. I have 33 yards of 3-ply at 15 wpi (= sport weight) and 25 yards of 2-ply at 18 wpi (= also sport weight):

Apparently I don’t have a photo of this as fiber. It had great streaks of red and dark blue, lots of silvery grey, and big slubs of white silk that I left in as I spun. You can see the color streaks here and there in the finished yarn although it’s mostly well-blended.

By my reckoning, this project puts me in the ranks of intermediate spinners. I set out to make a 4-ply worsted weight and got it. When I was a beginner, I made lumpy, bumpy yarn with lots of character but no goal; I took what I got. I say an advanced spinner can make what she wants, be it smooth and thin or thick and slubby. I’m not at that point yet where I can make a character-filled yarn with purpose, so I consider myself intermediate.

In organizing things for Ravelry, I found the first stuff I ever spun, back in September 2000. It’s really coarse and the little bit of fiber I have left is nearly impossible to draft. I’m surprised I was able to spin it at all and even more surprised the instructor and shop owner sold it to me as perfect-for-a-beginner supplies. But here it is, my first yarn. It’s a lumpy 2-ply spun on a Louet drop spindle and wound between thumb and elbow (no niddy-noddy yet):

The insructor had small quantities of various types of fiber to play with, so I picked out two colors of mohair and spun up a bit of that, too:

Ah, the memories.

After I started the black fuzzy scarf the other day I got worried I might run out of yarn during the commute and started a new project two days into it so I’d have a second traveling project to fall back on. Do you know that feeling? It turns out I needn’t have worried. The hat is already done:  

Pattern: own
Yarn: 3/4 skein Mission Falls 1824 Wool, 100% merino superwash, color LJ-5 (dark green) and a little bit of Wolle Roedel Universal Superwash 2-Color, 100% superwash merino wool, color 2284
Needles: size 4
Size: Toddler
Started May 2, 2008 and finished May 4, 2008

This quick little knit used up an odd skein of green yarn I had in the basket. This is the first time I have used 1824 Wool. It felt great in my hands. It’s soft and squashy and I can see myself using it again to make a toddler sweater or two.

A few nights ago I spun the last of the 4 singles needed for my 4-ply yarn and last night I sucked it up and plied it all. It was not a good night for plying. I came home grouchy after fighting all day with inanimate objects that refuse to do my bidding (I work in I.T.), then circling around the neighborhood for more than 20 minutes to find a parking spot (street sweepers on Thursday morning mean you can’t park on that side of the street Wednesday night). However, watching those 4 singles turn into one cohesive yarn was a beautiful sight, both relaxing and amazing.

Plying took 2.75 hours. I haven’t measured yet but gauging by the crick in my neck and cramp in my left hand, I’d say I have over 250 yards. Luckily I have two tensioned kates that can each hold 3 bobbins. Here is my high-tech two-kate setup for plying 4 strands:

Notice the dining chair legs are exactly the right width to hold the Lendrum kate and the Lendrum kate does a great job holding the other one.  My kates limit me to 6 singles but considering I have only 4 gaps between fingers on my left hand (I run each singles through its own gap to prevent tangles) I don’t see myself attempting a 6-ply anytime soon. More details on this project, including glamor shot and final yardage, to follow.

How about a preview?

Today I buckled down and finished the third ply of what I intend to be 4-ply yarn. Spinning was on hiatus a few months while it was simply too cold in the apartment to sit at the wheel (I can’t throw a blanket over my legs like I can when I’m knitting) so ply #3 took a long time. I am tempted to ply this and forget about #4 so I can finally move on to something else but I did go to the effort to split the fiber into fourths, so I will spin it. Here is what I have so far:

I thought I’d also show you photographic evidence that the Jaywalker socks are progressing. They are also at about the three-quarter mark:

And my little basil plant hasn’t committed pre-planting suicide after all:

Hahaha! Just kidding. We went out and bought this happy-looking plant today because my windowsill seedling still looks like this, some 8 weeks after planting and more than 2 weeks after sprouting:

Plus it is still the only seed to sprout in the tray. I continue to blame the other houseplants for this; they must have whispered to it to remain a seedling, for its own sake.

I just watched a video of the Running of the Wools. All I can say is that sure is a lot of sheep.

We saw a break in the rain Saturday so I hauled finished items downstairs to get photos. The stripes on the linen scarf still remind me of exercise wear but I like how bold they are:

Pattern: own
Stitch pattern: Feather Faggot from Barbara Walker’s First Treasury, page 185
Yarn: Euroflax 100% linen yarn, 3/4 skein black (color 18-2223-17) and 3/4 skein hot pink (color 18-1234-1)
Needles: size 4
Size: 6″ x 72″

Although the non-elastic yarn was rough on my hands, I enjoyed working with it.

I joined the colors by twisting the yarns around each other at each color change, just as you would when working intarsia. Remembering to always bring the new color under the old one on right-side rows and over rather than under on the wrong-side rows prevents tangling and also creates a neat little ladder of color changes on the wrong side:

Working with linen reminded me of something I read a while back in Spin Span Spun by Bette Hochberg, something that really boggled my mind. A little explanation first: linen and cotton were (and still are, I suppose) fibers commonly used when creating something that needed to be strong but not necessarily warm. Linen was often used in sails. And the thing that really got me: the Phoenicians and the Romans and the Vikings and all those old pre-Industrial Revolution world explorers you learned about in elementary school sailed the Seven Seas in ships that had very large sails… and all those sails were made of handspun thread that was then handwoven into the sail fabric. Amazing.

I haven’t spun with linen yet. I wonder how hard it is. I tried spinning from a cotton ball once, spectacularly unsuccessfully.

This week’s bus knitting looks very festive:

The original title of this post was “2007 finished items,” but I realized that was a bit of an exaggeration. I did not finish quite so many items. Here is the photo collage (made in about 30 seconds using Picasa) of what I did accomplish:

This is 47 items finished in 2007: 3 bags, 5 pairs of booties, 2 cage cozies, 15 hats, a mini Danish Skra-Troje sweater, 11 scarves, 1 shawl, 6 pairs of socks, 2 baby sweaters and a child’s vest. And only 4 of these items were made from published patterns. I see now that one of the scarves is in the collage twice; maybe Picasa thought it needed to fill in the gap as I was short a photo for this arrangement?

This list does not include two larger items I made but didn’t quite finish: the purple cotton sweater still needs buttons and the Lily of the Valley shawl needs 4 ends woven in and to be blocked. Ah, procrastination. It also omits the three bags I made for my submission to Knitty which I may not show on the blog at this time. And, as every knitter knows, it does not count the many starts and unravelings made in the course of a knitting year. All in all, an item a week. Wow. I obviously enjoy variety.

I did not meet my goal of spinning up one bundle fiber per month, but spinning made a good show in 2007 with 7 bundles spun plus a couple of small experimentals:

The 4-ply is still in progress. Sigh.  

I did well in Knit From Your Stash 2007, which I began after Stitches West in February. While I did buy a little yarn, I think fewer than 10 skeins, most of what I made this year was from my stash. I find it incredible that I made 52 items and still have LOTS of stash left over. Perhaps in 2008 I should focus on larger items, although I think 52 small items (1 per week) might use about the same amount of yarn as 12 big items (1 per month), don’t you think?

This week I cleared some remaining merino off a bobbin by plying the singles with cream-colored polyester sewing thread. I like it:

Fiber: 100% merino wool and 100% polyester sewing thread
Colorway: Rose Quartz
Supplier: Carolina Homespun
Finished yarn: 2-ply; one skein at 25 yards

In fact, I think I like this better than the original 2-ply. The wool’s colors show so much more clearly here. I overspun this rather a lot while plying, simply treadling until I liked how much the thread twisted around the wool rather than attempting to create a balanced yarn. Once I skeined it, it twisted and crumpled into itself as though it were plain singles. After I soaked it and weighted it to dry, it settled to being just a little overspun.

Mr. MmmYarn and I made our own ravioli tonight. The leftover pasta dough ended up being little bow ties. Yum!