Things that have happened

I know my blog is not followed by many (maybe 1), but I should not have let so much time pass!  I have news!  I have started a fibre farm!  I was able to acquire two angora goats and two cashmere goats. I don't know a lot about them, in terms of fibre quality and health, but they are settling in and are cute. They all have distinct personalities, like people!

Meet mama, who accidentally was named this. She was cranky and mean when she came to us and my husband started calling her old granny. So I would talk to her soothingly, calling her mama.

She is the leader (boss)(space hog) of the group. When the dog barks she is first to run to see what the fuss is about. No one can lay in her spot, and no one can drink from her water bucket. She has cashmere, but as of yet I am unsure how it will be. I brushed her when I got her, and will wash and spin what I got to figure it out. 

Then we have Blackie, again, my husbands descriptive word stuck as a name. She is spunky, bouncy and talkative. She would be the party animal, and trouble-maker. She eats like she has not eaten in days. 

She had a couple kids this year, before I got her. I have not seen her cashmere fibre. 

 

Next is the sweetest of the angoras and the most affectionate of the herd. Roxy is the first to greet me, and the last to say goodbye. She nuzzles and stays close. Maybe it's because of the bananas I have bribed her with, or the fact I know her itchy spots that I can easily scratch and she can't. 

I sheared roxy with hand shears shortly after she arrived. I am excited about making yarn from her fibre, both pure mohair and blends (for socks). That will be nice, locally made socks with materials coming from my animals and some wool from my neighbour to blend with!  Lastly, we have Katie, who is named after a friend who asked to have a goat named after her. Katie the goat is shy, timid, and the bottom of the "pecking order". With time I am sure she will come around. She is gorgeous. I sheared her too, shortly after she arrived. 

That's Katie, second from the front.  Always behind Roxy. 

There they are!  My new herd. So much more to blog about now!

What to do with leftovers

You know those days when you just need to clear out some space in your fridge?  Half-full containers, unknown contents, etc?  Leftover day then helps clear out the fridge to make way for fresh options.
Over time, I have obtained and then not liked some fibre (we're not talking about food anymore) for whatever reason, didn't like the colour, didn't like the fibre, or only needed a small bit of a larger stash.  Well, I decided that the next task on my to-do list is to take those remaining "larger" bits (over 20g) and do something with them.  The first skein will be called Leftovers #1.  This is what I am doing:

I first found and weighed some pieces that would look ok together, and I know that their fibre content is the same, Merino.  Both are hand-painted, but by different artists. 
The first is a pink to purple merino that I just wasn't fond of once I looked at the colours.  I had spun some up but just wasn't "into it" at the time. 

There is 61g of this one and 21g of the following colour that I liked a lot more, but I had used half to create a 1 of 2 skein, but didn't like how the first came out so I abandoned the second.

 

I wanted to make a sock yarn so I figured I should try to make the resulting yarn around 100g, so I added a small amount of ramie from my stash.  What ramie will be like in a sock yarn I am not sure, but I will try it out anyway.

Once I got the calculations right I determined how much fibre of each colour I should use in each carding.  I filled the card with 2/3 of the pink, and 1/3 of the turquoise and covered the whole thing with a small amount of ramie.

I then blended using 3 passes of the hand-cards over my "ingredients".  The result is a nicely blended "poof" of fibre, with a bit of sheen and silkiness from the ramie.

While still on the hand-cards, I used my fancy (ha, no) diz to remove the fibre into a roving.  The diz I am currently using is a needle size gauge, but I thinking that the hints I put out there to my talented wood-working husband may result in something fancy!  OOOh the anticipation!

Starting from the left side I thread a bit of the fibre through a hole on the diz and pull gently until the fibre is removed in one narrow strip.

 

 



Then, to store these lengths of roving for spinning, I create little nests, with the turquoise section on the inside of the nest, as I will spin these end to end starting with the pink portion.
 

 

Now that all the fibre is ready, I am spinning them fine in a woolen long-draw on my wheel.

After the fibre is spun up, I will Navajo ply the single to make a 3-ply yarn.  I attach the single to my bobbin leader with a loop, and tie a knot. 

 

Then I pull the strand of single through the loop for about a foot, and treadle in the opposite direction that I spun the single.  With my left hand I have the single in a loop, and in my right hand the single attached to the bobbin on the lazy-kate.  with my right hand I control the spin going into the yarn and move my hand up to meet the left with the third ply taut.  when I do this I feel for any over-twisted spots, or slubs, or anything that I want to inspect.  When I get to within 3 inches of my left hand, my left thumb and forefinger go through the loop to scoop up the long end of the single, at the same time my right hand stops the twist from going any further.  This gives me time to pull the long-end single through the new loop for as long as I wish (location of the lazy-kate is important to how fiddly this process is.  If the kate is on your left side you will have less over-twisted sections than if it is on the wheel kate, like mine is. 

I ended up with a fairly consistent 100g of 3 ply sock yarn. 

I did a swatch and the end result will be very soft. 

Because of the way I blended, each turquoise section is 2 rows in a sock. 

When my knitting is done, I will be sure to show you my first handspun handknit socks!

 

 

End result - First Skeins of Dog Hair Yarn

The cats love them, more than any other yearn, they are soft, and have a gorgeous halo!

Dog hair yarn

I have been saving up my dogs undercoat as she sheds because it is incredible soft and long. I thought it would be great to spin up and make something for everyone in the family. She is a cute dog, very hairy. But she doesn't shed and leave hair everywhere she goes. We have to pull out the undercoat as it gets loose. Here is willow:

She is so cute!

So under all that soft silky outer coat is a downy uber-soft undercoat. It looks like this:

I put some of the willow hair next to alpaca and yak to compare as both of those fibres are soft as well. This is what it looks like:

The alpaca on the top is the longest, then willows hair and then the yak down which is quite short in this instance. 

Next to the Dorset x wool from my neighbour it looks like this:

I took a bunch of the dog hair and carded it in with some wool so I could spin it up and see what it felt like and how it knitted up. I carded some with black welsh:

With merino:

And a bit of pure dog.

It is all good.  Now that I like what I see and feel I feel pretty good about going about spinning the dog hair into some of my work. She is a big dog, so I have collected a lot over the past couple of years. I will show you what I do with it!!

Weekly accomplishments

Spare time. Ahhh, it is not common at this time of year. I am in the throes of nutcracker costume sewing and alterations. But still I find some time to call my own. Time to make things, a time to get rid of crankiness and a time to play. 

I finished my bfl/ramie blend. I Navajo plied the single and created a small 42g skein. It looks silky and is soft. I will likely make more. 

The colours are pale, not usually on my project queues, but I kind of like it!  This will likely go into a pair of mitts, or some other small project. 

I finished a Navajo 4 ply from malabrigo nube merino fibre, that I purchased at Deanne Fitzpatrick's shop. I spilt the hand dyed roving lengthwise and spun both the same. I then 4 plied Navajo style but altering the two singles in the 4 ply position. It is very soft and just over 100g. 

Then, one night, I was cranky and I needed to crank something out fairly quickly to have a positive thing in my day. (Work was the pits, social life sucked, kids were trying my patience and I needed to be solitary. So I made a quick 50g skein of chunky BFL - alpaca. First, I blended alpaca across the hand carders with part-brown hand-dyed fleece artist wool and part-blue wool. I kept the two wools from blending but blended bothe with the alpaca.  I spun 2 singles in thick and thin and plyed them together. 

It's lofty, it was therapeutic. If only I could take my spinning wheel to work. I might be a better person there!  Ha. 

Lastly, I made this one tonight. A two ply yarn consisting of one single merino and one single merino/camel/nylon mix.  It is so incredibly soft!  The merino was a rainbow blend of many colours. It works perfectly with the blend. Which in its own is so soft. The end result is a yarn that would make a cute scarf or cowl. 

For now I dream of what comes next. When it comes to me, I will create. For now I am content. And that's a good thing!

Blending hand painted wool

I like playing with colour and the depth that different colours bring to a finished yarn. I am also enamoured with the feel of fibre. The feel as I spin it, the feel as I knit or crochet it, and the feel as it is worn on my body. Sometimes I feel like adding a bit of a different texture into the wool, and when I use hand painted wool sliver or roving, the are multiple option for affected colour as well. My current project is a wool/ramie blend, using hand painted fleece artist bfl wool:

And ramie, which is a plant fibre:

In this case I carded te wool and ramie and then used a diz to create a blended "roving" which I wound up into nests. A diz is a tool with a small hole in it, used to pull the wool through, and I pull right from the cards. I could also create a rolag from the cards, but I like spinning from a roving. The nests are small, fluffy, and soft:

I organize the nests in the order they were carded from the sliver of wool. The hand painted colours are muted because of the white ramie added, but the colours are still distinguishable:

From here, I could choose to alternate the nests in the spinning to make a different variation in colour changes, but I plan to spin them in the order they were carded. I will be spinning a light weight single and then Navajo plying to make a 3 ply yarn. 

Due to the technique used to prepare this fibre I am spinning a woollen yarn, using a long draw method. 

When it is done, I will show you, but the result will be soft and silky!  I can't wait!

Machine knitting immersion

When I was little, my siblings and I played around with my Oma's knitting machine. We didn't really know how to use it, and things would just unravel once we took our "work" off the needles. Well, there was no casting on or off, so what could we have expected?  At thanksgiving I asked my mother if I could borrow it, and she said that if I could figure out how to use it and make something with it, my Oma would be very happy, in heaven that someone made something with it. 

I started out looking at the pictures in the manual, as it is completely in Dutch, and I do not know what it says. I tried to find something in YouTube, but the model is so old that the search for information was just resulted in a bunch of dead-ends.  I figured out how to cast in and adjust the tension, and to knit rectangles. I tested a bunch of different yarn and made a cowl. I knit a rectangle, and seamed the side. It took 20minutes of knitting to create the rectangle and an hour more to seam it and make an edging by hand.

So, all right. I can make rectangles. What else can I make?

I found a pattern for a triangular scarf, with eyelets. It is not specifically for my model of knitting machine but I managed to figure it out. I am on row 39, and while the simple increase rows are quick, there is some fiddling in order to do the eyelets on every 10th row. Still, quicker than to knit it by hand. Don't get me wrong, I am not giving up hand knitting, I just think of how fast I can whip up a hat, or cowl and maybe someday, a sweater!!!

We shall see, but anyway, here is the knitting so far (with mistakes) on the wrong side of the scarf. 

When I finish this piece, I'll be sure to think of Oma.