So many hobbies!

The Quest!

As you know, I've been taking sheep breed classes at the Spinning Loft where we learn about the different wools each breed grows.  These classes are a lot of fun and I get really jazzed learning new things.  My new quest is to sample wool from all the different sheep discussed in the book In Sheep's Clothing:  A Handspinner's Guide to Wool.  The Spinning Loft has some of them but there are many more that Beth doesn't have.  Okay, okay, it may not sound all that exciting to some people but in addition to folks in the States, I've been emailing people in Ireland, Wales and Australia looking for samples of some of these wools (which I will, of course, be paying for).  It's a bit like a scavenger hunt actually.  So far I've only heard from a couple of people on this side of the pond but it's only been a day or two and I have hopes I'll hear from others.  Don't worry, I'll keep you posted on my successes.

I don't have a fibery picture tonight.  I've been getting things done in preparation for being gone for a week, including swatching for my fingerless mitts.  The yarn I was going to use I didn't like knitted so I frogged and went for another that's in shades of blue.  I think it'll work out nicely.  I'll leave you with a taste of what's in store for me next week.  I'll be back February 3rd.

Mission: Possible 2008

I've joined Mission: Possible 2008 on Ravelry.  If you're not in Ravelry yet, basically you have to take 12 items - yarn, unspun wool or UFOs - that have been taking up room in your stash.  You have to either use those items or find new homes for them and finish the UFO or frog it and deal with the yarn.  I have a bit of everything:  wool yearning to be yarn, yarn yearning to be knit and UFOs yearning to be finished.  I also have socks yearning for mates.  I've decided on a Baker's Dozen.  Here's my list:

1. Spin the second "Divine Melon" roving.
2. Knit the second "Divine Melon" sock.
3. Finish the "Embers" sock (I've only got the toe left to go but I don't know how to graft...).
4. Knit the second "Embers" sock.
5. Use or destash 2 skeins of Claudia Handpainted in the "Ingrid's Blues" colorway.
6. Use or destash 2 skeins of Claudia Handpainted in the "Blue Terracotta" colorway.
7. Use or destash 1 skein of Cider Moon in the "Istanbul" colorway.
8. Knit a pair of mittens for me out of Fiesta Boomerang in the "Madrid" colorway.
9. Finish spinning the Cormo/Border Leicester roving I bought last year.
10. Spin enough 3-ply Cormo for a simple pullover sweater - I've already spun about 400 or so yards of heavy worsted weight yarn.
11. Knit myself a pair of fingerless mitts out of Interlacement's Toasty Toes in a rainbow dyed yarn.
12. Knits socks from my "Refreshing" handspun.
13. Finish my first scarf - it's about a 3rd done and was tossed aside for more interesting knits.

The picture is missing the scarf and the brown Cormo/Border Leicester roving.  I leave Saturday for a week's vacation on Sanibel Island in Florida and I'll be taking along the unfinished "Embers" sock and the Interlacements Toasty Toes for the fingerless mitts.  By the time I get back, I should be able to cross #3 and #11 off my list.

Blog Management

How can I know how to do something six months ago that I can't figure out now even with directions?  I spent about an hour and a half tonight trying to get the damn button for "Mission: Possible 2008" in my sidebar, obviously without any luck.  At least the link is active and sends you to Ravelry.  So frustrating!  Hopefully, I'll be able to get Typepad to explain it better that they're Help pages.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about my new quest!

Happy MLK Day

Wouldn't it be nice if we really did all get along?  Judging people by the color of their skin is absurd.  We should be judged by what we do not by our genetics.  People are just people.  (Shifting a bit...okay, alot)  Shouldn't we be spending as much money on the arts in schools as we do on sports?  Fine, sports teach teamwork and God knows, we all need more exercise.  But creating something from nearly nothing is incredibly empowering.  Those of us who spin take fluff and make yarn and then the knitters take that yarn and make clothing or toys or pure art.  How cool is that?  Children who learn something artistic, be it painting or music or origami, learn pride and self-respect.  Shouldn't that be as important for our children to learn as teamwork?

Stepping down from my soapbox...

Some people don't like using combs for spinning because there's a fair amount of waste.  When you spin from the comb, you spin all the long fibers but the short fibers stay on the comb and end up as waste.  While I was spinning the mohair and Cormo, I took the short waste fibers and stuffed them in a bag.  Tonight I took the bag, grabbed a handful of fluff and started spinning.  The white bits are second cuts from the Cormo fleece (second cuts are where the shearer when back over same spot a second time and sheared off a very short length of wool).  Once all the fluff was spun, I plied it tightly with the same thin Cormo single I used to ply yesterday's skein.  This skein has a lot more texture and bumpy spots.  The picture shows my mini-niddy noddy which makes about a 24 inch skein.

Tomorrow I'm going to spin night again so I may not post.

The cold is brutal!

Winter is here with a vengence!  This morning it was 15 below zero with the wind chill.  Yikes!  This would have been the perfect weekend to stay in under blankets and watching movies.  Naturally, I had things planned both days.  Go figure.  Saturday I was at the Spinning Loft for a class and today Ginny came to visit and we did lunch and saw "National Treasure."  (A fun movie.) 

At the Spinning Loft, I started my third sheep breeds class, this time studying double coated breeds.  This first class we studied the Icelandic and Herdwick breeds.  Double coated breeds have a fleece that has both coarse outer, or guard, hair and a downy undercoat.  These are more primitive sheep than the modern, single-coated breeds.  We used wool combs to separate the coarse long hair from the finer undercoat.  With Icelandic sheep, the coarse, long wool is called the tog and the soft, undercoat is called the thel.  The coarse tog can be used for rugs or other items that need hard-wearing fibers.  The thel is soft enough for clothing.  Herdwick wool is coarse and is used primarily for carpets.

I read somewhere (I wish I could remember where) that, while we might think of the primitive breeds as less useful because only part of the sheep might be good for spinning for clothing, these sheep needed to be everything for the people who raised them.  So, the neck and shoulder wool would be fine enough for sewing thread, the back for outer wear, the belly for next-to-skin clothing and the rump and britches would be good for rope or rugs.  In addition, the sheep itself provided meat.  Since most peoples only had access to one kind of sheep, that sheep needed to provide fiber for many needs as well as food.  This was an eye-opener for me and knocked out my Cormo-is-king snobbery.  Cormos provide fine wool for fine clothing and not much else.  (I remember:  it's from an article in the Winter 2007 issue of Spin-off magazine.  It's an article on the Gutefar breed of Gotland.  The article is by Judith MacKenzie McCuin.)

I bought an ounce of some lovely dyed mohair locks at the Spinning Loft and spun up a beautiful yarn.  Using my Louet mini-combs, I loaded up the combs, alternating between Cormo and mohair until I had two layers of each.  Then I combed the wool once, transferring and lightly blending it to the second comb.  From that, I spun a single which I plied with a thin Cormo single. 

The yarn is nicely soft.  I'd always thought mohair was a bit coarse until Beth told me that I'd been feeling crappy mohair.  The stuff I bought from her is soft and silky.  Combining it with the soft Cormo was a wonderful sensory experience.  I may have to do it again at Tuesday's spin night.

Quickie post

It's going to take me a while to upload to my store so tonight... a little eye candy:

Chocolate Hearts

Refreshing

Clown Pants

Seaside (this one's my favorite)

This is a better picture of the Spring's Coming yarn than the one I posted earlier.

Survey says!

I had 3 votes for leave the skein as is, one vote for overdye it and one undecided (mine).  I'm going to put it up in the store as is and if it doesn't sell, I'll overdye it and relist it.

Thursday night I'm going to have a big upload to the store.  I'll have two skeins of handspun (Spotty won't be done by then) and ten dyed rovings.  The dyepots and cookie sheets are full tonight and are either cooling or still cooking.  Photos tomorrow.  Monday night I dyed these:

Bauble - 4 oz. of Superwash Merino

Dying Embers - 4 oz. of Superwash Merino

Last night was fun at the Spinning Loft.  There was much spinning and laughing.  Beth, as she is wont to do, harassed me about my handspun sock.  She thinks I ply with too much twist and I used too small needles when knitting.  Clearly she hasn't had to deal with the cold floors in my condo.  Thick socks will be a blessing.  Now that I've figured out just what enough is, I put the right amount of twist in my yarn for the type of wool used and the yarn's intended use.  Sock yarn gets more twist because it wears better.  Personally, I think yarn with more twist is more attractive than yarn with less.  I am strong.  I can take it.  Which is good because I'm going back Saturday for more.

Overdye or not?

A quick post tonight.  I went to Spin Night tonight at the Spinning Loft and got home in time to go to bed.  This is the yarn from the mis-dyed Ming roving.  To me it's too drab and I don't like the yellow.  So, give me your opinions:  do I overdye it or do I put it up in the store as is?  Leave me a comment with your 2-cents worth. 

The Dyeing Muse loves me

The weekend's dyeing jag continues:

I don't have a name for this one yet but I quite like it.  Mmmm, lovely, soft BFL.  BFL, being a long-wool, has a luster that short-wools, like Merino, don't have.  You can really see it in this picture.

Another of the Spring's Coming roving.

This one was an experiment I'm calling, for the moment, Spotty.  I'll be starting to spin it up tomorrow to see how it looks in yarn form.  At the moment, I'm not liking the red in there but we'll see how the final yarn looks.  I've got two more cooling in the dyepots that I dyed tonight.

My sister gave me my Christmas present today.  (Hey, life happens!)  Two 8 oz. bundles of gorgeous Crown Mountain roving.  I think there will be some awesome socks in my future.

Actually, I'm considering spinning singles of each one and plying them together.  Can you knit a sweater out of a pound of yarn?  I'll have to look into that.

Sleep, glorious sleep!

It's amazing how much better I feel having caught up on my sleep.  Saturday I had two 2-3 hour naps and got another 9.5 hours of sleep Saturday night.  I didn't spend the whole weekend sleeping, though.  Friday I plied the Spring's Coming yarn:

It's actually a bit brighter than this picture shows.  I'm in love with it!  I also did some dyeing:

This is Spring Greens - 4 oz. of Blue-faced Leicester roving.  Again, the colors are brighter than this photo shows.

 

I don't have a name for this one yet.  For some reason, "Daphne" just came to mind.  So, this is my new "Daphne" roving:  4 oz. of Superwash Merino.

There are two more cooling in their dyepots, one drying and another that didn't dye very well that I'm spinning up.  I was attempting to kettle dye "Ming" but the brown I'm using must have been made using yellow which leeched out and dyed some spots very yellow.  Once it's spun and plied, I'm going to overdye the skein, probably in blue.  That's one beautiful thing about dyeing wool:  if the roving dyes in a manner that makes it un-sellable as roving, you can spin it up into yarn that will, more often than not, will be beautiful.  If for some reason, the colors create an unpleasant yarn, you can overdye it and transform it.

Until I develop my own dyeing style, and perhaps even after, I plan on using all three of the methods of dyeing I've tried so far:  handpainting, kettle dyeing and crockpot dyeing.  Each method has its own look and each can create a lovely dyed roving.  The Spring Greens roving above was dyed in the crockpot while Daphne was kettle dyed.  Currently drying is another roving that I handpainted on a cookie sheet and cooked in the oven.  My dyeing Muse has returned and I'm having a blast!

Almost there

You know how I feel about plying.  I'll be dreaming about this all night.

I had a bit of a crisis last night.  I made the mistake of looking at Pigeonroof's Etsy store and in my weakened state (read PMS), I instantly felt inadequate and a poser of the first degree.  The rational part of my brain kept saying I was being irrational but the irrational part of my brain, which was in control at the time, wasn't listening.  I did the only thing I could think of which was to turn the TV up and just keep spinning.  Today, I ordered more dye.  (Business expenses are allowed on my spending diet.)  I have deep purple, bright orange, bright red and leaf green coming.  This weekend I'll be picking up the pace and trying some ideas I've had for kettle dyeing - not so much colorways as ways to apply the dye to the roving in the pot.  I think I may be playing too much with the dye and roving once they're making friends in the hot water.  I think I'll head over to the Salvation Army store, too, and see if they have a bigger pot that's suitable for dyeing.  Crisis averted.

What are you going to be doing this weekend?