So many hobbies!

What a year!

This has been such a learning year for me. I learned to knit (socks, mittens, fingerless mitts) and to spin.  That doesn’t seem like much until you look at everything I learned in association with spinning.

I’ve washed, and spun from the lock, fine wools:  Merino, Corriedale, Polypay, Polwarth, Rambouillet, Romeldale and Cormo.  I’ve washed and spun long wools:  Borderdale, Blue-faced Leicester, Border Leicester, English Leicester, Coopworth, and Cotswold.  From roving or top, I’ve spun:  Shetland, Horn Dorset, Merino, Superwash Merino, Merino/alpaca/silk, llama/Merino, llama/Icelandic, Merino/tencel, Merino/silk and Border Leicester.  I bought, and am still processing and spinning, a beautiful, award-winning Cormo fleece.  I bought, and had professionally processed, a beautiful Cormo-Border Leicester X fleece.  I’ve spun angora from combs and a blend of angora, wool and silk from batts I made myself.

I’ve learned to use a drop spindle, a spinning wheel, a flick for spinning fine wools, mini combs for spinning long wools, a niddy noddy, a ball winder, a swift and a drum carder.

I’ve learned there are as many breeds of sheep as there are breeds of dogs and each one has its own unique kind of wool from baby soft Merino to coarse long wools suitable for carpets.  I’ve learned sheep can be polled (hornless) or horned with as many as six horns (Jacob sheep).  I’ve learned you can spin fiber not just from sheep but from llamas, alpacas, rabbits, yaks, muskox, goats, camels, vicuna, guanaco, dogs and cats.

After three months of spinning, I actually won a blue ribbon at the Great Lakes Fiber Show.  Three months later, I won two blue ribbons and the Judge’s Choice Award at the Michigan Fiber Festival.  No one was more surprised than me!

I’ve spun a singles yarn, a 2-ply and a true 3-ply.  I’ve plied from two bobbins and I’ve learned to ply from a center-pull ball.  I’ve learned to Andean ply.  I’ve learned the short forward draw and the short backward draw. I’m still trying to figure out the long draw.

I’ve learned to dye wool using acid dyes in a crock-pot, by hand painting and (finally!) kettle dyeing.  I started my own business on Etsy that’s doing pretty well.  People have actually bought my handspun!

I can only hope next year is as fun a learning experience as this year has been.  You saw the sock yarn I spun over the weekend?  Here’s where I started:

Happy New Year everyone!

It's so good to be spinning again!

I finished spinning both sets of the "Refreshing" roving Friday night...

The singles on the left is from the kettle-dyed roving and the one on the right is from the hand painted roving.  You can still see the difference between the two rovings by looking at the two bobbins.  The white that was left from the undyed wool in the hand painted roving translated into light and dark barberpoling in the singles in the right bobbin.  The colors in the kettle-dyed roving are more even with hardly any white.  I have to say though, the difference between the two singles is pretty subtle.  The yarn from each would be pretty close, although the hand painted one would be lighter since there was more white.  I decided to ply the two together so I'd could knit socks that more or less matched.  Saturday night I spent 6 or 7 LONG hours plying the two singles together.  The result was this:

About 400 yards of fingering to dk weight sock yarn.  I got the amount of twist just right I think.  It's nice and squishy.  I likes me some squishy yarn!

I did pretty well spinning my singles evenly.  The little bit left on one bobbin, plied, was about 6 yards.

Spinning the experiment

This is the first half my kettle-dyeing experiment: the roving dyed on the cookie sheet.  I've been thinking of a name and once the word "refreshing" popped into my head, it wouldn't leave.  The colors reminded me being oceanside:  the turquoise and green of the water, green beach plants, yellow sun, breezes off the water.  Any names that reference the ocean are all pretty well used so I brainstormed for something else and I got "refreshing."  It works.  I'm almost done spinning this one then it's on to the kettle dyed roving.

The rush is over

The day I knew I was a real, live adult was when I realized I was more excited about the gifts I was making and giving than I was about the ones I might be getting.  This year was no different.  My parents are really hard to get presents for because they pretty much have everthing they want.  Actually, my dad isn't too bad because he loves my biscotti so I make him two different kinds for his gift.  (Mom told me Christmas morning that Dad had asked her, "Do you think Becky will make me biscotti this year?"  I love my dad!)  For some reason, I always need Mom's gift to be extra special - I guess because she deserves it.  The mitts definitely fit the bill this time.   

I finished my mom's mitts on the 23rd and wove the last of the ends in on the 24th.  I know they aren't exactly a matched pair but I'm still pretty proud of them (besides, Mom didn't care - she loved them anyway).  I based them on the Fiber Trends pattern "Easy Mittens" but I had to make up my own numbers because the yarn called for in the pattern was either worsted or bulky weight.  My yarn was fingering to dk weight.  Just imagine how soft these mitts are.  The best thing is... there's enough left for me to make a pair for myself if I want.  Yippee!

Here's an action shot of Mom using her new mitts.  Yes, my mom is cool.  She read's Tom Clancy.

She promised not to look

This is the mystery project:  fingerless mitts for my mom.  She promised not to read my blog until after Christmas so I have some blog fodder to share.  I used two circs on the main part of the mitt but the thumb is too small so it's back to dpns.  I thought I'd have this one done tonight but I was a bit distracted by a new series I got from Netflix:  Odyssey 5.  It's a SciFi show starring Peter Weller.  So far, I'm liking it quite a bit.  I'll definitely have this one done tomorrow.  That leaves me four days to do the second one and three of those days, I'm not working.  Piece of cake!

Secret project

This is all I can show you of the Christmas present I'm working on.  The recipient doesn't check my blog very often, if at all, so I feel fairly safe in showing this much.  No more after this, though, or it'll be obvious what it is.  This is some of my handspun and it's incredibly soft:  extra super-soft merino, cashmere and angora.  Oh, my!  I hope there's some left for me when the project is done.

I don't think I'll be doing much of any dyeing until after Christmas.  I just have too much to do in the next week, and besides, no one has bought anything in the past week so a week's delay won't be a big deal.  I wish I knitted faster.  After Christmas, I'll be splitting my time between spinning, dyeing and knitting.  Heaven!

The results

This is the result of my dyeing experiments.  The roving on the right was the one dyed on a cookie sheet.  You can see there are more hard edges and white spots from the bottom of the roving that didn't get any dye.  The one on the left was kettle dyed.  The colors and edges are softer and more blended with less white.  I have the week off between Christmas and New Year's and I think I'll be doing some spinning. 

I'm baking my fabulous Pumpkin Cranberry bread to give to my co-workers for the holidays and my house smells wonderful!  Good thing I made extra because I'm definitely going to have to sample tonight.  Oh, yes!

Here in southeast Michigan, we got dumped on by about 10 inches or so of snow.  I haven't gone outside at all today and this should mean I got a lot done.  Should.  I need to start a new knitting project but since I'm winging it, I haven't been terribly sucessful.  I figured out my gauge and then measured the body part to be covered by said knitting.  I multiplied the two numbers together and this should have given me the number of stitches to cast on.  So I cast on and, lo and behold, it was too big.  So I frogged, measured again, used the calculator this time, and came up with a number that made more sense.  (I don't do math.  I spell things.  My sister is the math-doer in the family.)  Before I go to bed, I'm determined to cast on yet again, and get the first part of the project done.  I'm sure I'll be very proud of my self when I get this project done and the item is wearable.  I just hope I get it done before Christmas morning. 

Eureka!

So how do I explain how I figured out what I needed to do without sounding like a complete idiot?  You see, I kinda had the instructions I needed all along.  (Marianna, stop laughing!)  Remember how I keep saying The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook is my dyeing bible?  I should have read my "bible."  Complete instructions including helpful tips.  <sigh>  In defense of myself, the Sock Workbook calls it the "Hot Pour Method" and since I really didn't understand how kettle-dyeing worked, I never made the connection between the two.  Am I embarassed?  Un, yeah, I am.  All my ranting and brainstorming and all I needed to do was read my favorite book again.  (My sister is still laughing.)

This is attempt #1.  My pH was too high so the dye hit too quickly and didn't move around very much.  I had to help it a fair amount.  I may have a bit too much water, too.  This was 4 ounces that I dyed with colors to complement what I dyed yesterday.  I'll spin the two different pieces of roving and ply them together.  From this point on, though, I'll be using 1 ounce pieces while I experiment.  There's no point in using up a lot of roving while I learn what works and what doesn't.  Seeing how little control you have with this method, I'm even more impressed with Pigeonroof and the Yarn Wench.  I can also see how you could start out with a low pH for a watercolor effect with a pale color and then raise the pH to add highlights of colors in certain spots.  That's an idea to play with.

New strategy

I'm starting to realize that if I want to be competitive, and actually make a living at this, I need to come up with a new way to dye.  Since I think kettle-dyed roving is so beautiful, that's what I'd like to be doing.  That's not to say I think my roving is inferior, it's just that my method takes too long to do.  The picture is my first attempt at figuring out kettle dyeing.  Now that I think of it, I should have known I'd get the same results as my regular method since I mostly did the same thing.  The only difference is I didn't squeeze as much water out of the roving, I coiled the roving in circle instead of back and forth and just squirted the dyes on randomly.  Of course the dye didn't seep down to the bottom of the roving.  It never does.  I essentially did the same thing I always do.  The experiment was pretty much a bust, except that I really like the color combo on the right.  I suspect I'm going to need to think outside of the box on this one and I have to confess, I'm not very good at that.  It's a skill I've not exercised very much and I'm now feeling the lack of mental muscle tone.

Pardon me while I think while typing...  So far I've been adding the acid to the water the wool has been soaking in.  Next time I'll add it to the dye and see if that changes things.  I checked out the roving Krista at Pigeonroof Studios (have I mentioned I think she's a dyeing goddess?) first sold and looked at her progression.  What she first dyed looked a fair amount like what you see above.  The dyes didn't spread much after they were applied to the roving.  After just a short amount of time, oh, less than 10 sold rovings, she had figured something out that made her dye job look softer and smoother.  (Yes, I know I'm babbling. I'm thinking.)  So... so far I've tried adding the acid to the roving and leaving more water in the wool than I usually do.  Not much changed in my dye job with those two factors.  Next time I'll add the acid to the dye and see what that does.  I'd also thought of just dumping the roving in a pile and squirting on the dye, turning the pile, squirting again, turning, squirting, etc. until it's how I like it.  The problem I'm having isn't my color choices, it's getting the dye to move from the top to the bottom.  Hmm, I may be onto something with the roving pile and dyeing and turning, repeat.  From this side of the experiment, though, I don't see much color control and if you mix too many dyes together, you get a muddy brown that looks like crap.  (I will be so embarassed if I find out the dye-seepage trick is something mindlessly simple.)  Ah, I really am babbling.  Sorry.  Bed now. 

Counter intuitive

I'm finding figuring out what colors people want to spin to be counter intuitive to how I think.  You see, when winter gets here, I want bright, cheerful colors and lots of them.  The first colorways I came up with were all warm colors and I realized I needed to come up with cooler ones.  Now I find very few people are interested in my brighter, warmer colorways but the darker ones keep selling.  This is the opposite of the colors I like in the winter.  The exception to this my Christmas roving.  I need to step back and regroup... think darker.

Tonight was a bit of a rest night so I have nothing to show except my Christmas tree...

Notice all the spinning and felting paraphenalia, knitting needles, unspun roving and bins of yarn?  Geez, I have a lot of stuff!  And clearly I need to clean.  Anyway, the little pink needle-felted box on the table (sitting on top of the Twisted Sisters sock book and next to Yarn Pirate's "Daisy" sock yarn) is my niece's unfinished Christmas present.  The box's conical lid it sitting upside down inside the box.  Only two weekends until Christmas...cripes!