Feorlen's High Fiber Diet

Just because I have given up on getting this yarn done in time for the San Mateo County Fair, that doesn't mean I'm not working on it. I finished spinning all the fiber I had prepped a few weeks ago, so now I'm back to flicking wool. I've been doing a lot of sorting and messy prep work on the kitchen floor, as it's the easiest to clean. Flicking wool throws little bits of junk everywhere no matter how I try to contain in. I'm going to vacuum and mop in the morning anyway because we have guests coming over, so I figured this would be as good a time as any. The loom parts are put away for tomorrow.

While I was at the store the other day, I got some Ashland Bay top in two identical colorways of Merino and Merino/tussah. Again, everybody was shocked I bought something not natural color, but I've been branching out. I'm also coming to terms with commercial top and feel better about spinning it. I'd still much rather do all my own prep, but I've gotten better at spinning commercial top without too much reworking (as long as I'm not overly fussy about the results.) Since the two blends are the same except for fiber content, I had this idea to weave a twill block pattern with one in the warp and one in the weft. When you do this with two colors, you get some blocks more the warp color and others more the weft color. If the colors contrast enough, you get this shimmery op-art sort of effect.

The two yarns would differ only in sheen, the silk being reflective and the Merino matte. I haven't tried anything like this before but the theory makes sense. At any rate, it should make nice fabric. It will be singles, and I'll almost certainly do one with S twist and the other with Z. I'm not sure which, however, so I want to experiment with twist direction in another fiber first. I bought some discount (because it had some bad spots) brown Blue Faced Leicester top a few weeks ago for exactly that purpose.

My hats are on their way back from Convergence, I should have them early next week. I was concerned at first because I got a call from the shipping place wanting to know how I was going to pay for return shipping (HGA was supposed to cover it.) But when I called back later with my FedEx account number, it had all been sorted out. The person I talked to said Convergence package handling had been disorganized, but at least now I'm getting my stuff back. So everything is ok.

I've been thinking about this county fair thing and I can't see how it's going to happen. I just don't have enough done to feel comfortable having it finished in time. I could just send off the entry form and if I don't make it then it would just be a waste of $4 or something, but I really don't see it having any chance of happening. I'm not much interested in competing, but a friend asked and I figured it would be good to give it a go at least once. Oh well.

The heddle sorting continues. As does the spinning of solid color singles for sock yarn. I'll spare you the details, other than to say I've got a bobbin and a half done. The president of Spindles and Flyers, a friend of mine, has been trying to talk me into submitting a skein for the San Mateo County Fair. The entry form deadline is coming up fast and items must be delivered near the end of the month. I don't know if I will have anything finished by then. I have a day or so more to think about it.

So, of course, I went shopping at monthly spinning night instead of actually getting any spinning done. I've been thinking I should try some socks from commercial sock yarn before I set out to do with handspun, so I can contemplate what I want. I've only done a couple socks and it's been a while. So I picked up enough to do two pairs, one short and one tall. I've been looking at sock yarns but not happy with what I've seen in a few other shops, the colors were oddly muted and mostly they were the instant Fair Isle stripy things. Stripes are ok, but I didn't want funky patterns that would only get weird if I don't work on the recommended number of stitches. After pawing through an entire bin, I found some I could live with at Carolina Homespun. Everyone was amazed that they were not gray. (There was only one skein of gray in the yarn I wanted.) Now I just have to work out the toe-up thing so I can knit until I run out of yarn.

More loom arranging. After getting the heddles off the first harness I grabbed (which had a lot more than I thought it ought to) I determined that there is some method to this upside-down thing. Most of the rest are flipped top to bottom in groups of ten. This would make them much easier to count. But, as I still have to redistribute them and add more, I'll get them all going the same way anyway. I prefer to work with heddles that are all going the same way, and counting doesn't bother me so much. I can always mark them some other way later.

Yesterday I got the package of yarn back from my Learning Exchange group. It was just yarn, the evaluations will come later apparently. So now I have a sample from everyone in the group who finished. Some did not, so there are only ten samples out of the original thirteen members. The coordinator wrapped everything up nicely in tissue and a lace ribbon and included a handwritten note. The entire package was lovely, and it was great fun to go through it all and see what everyone had done.

I like to see other people's yarn. I want to see not only what other people are up to, but how they approach yarn design. This group had a range of spinners, from two to twenty-five years of experience, and the yarns were of all sorts of kinds of Merino. Raw fleece (some from personal flocks,) small-lot mill carded and the ever-present Ashland Bay. There were blends with silk, angora and mohair and yarns both fluffy and smooth. Most were two or three ply, but there was a single and my 4-ply. Some spinners measured angle of twist but most didn't, one participant included an extra sheet describing the different scouring methods she tried. Scouring is important for Merino, because it has way more grease than pretty much anything else.

I don't know how long it will be to get the evaluations, but the group leader has all the materials so things should be coming along. I'll post more later.

Today I finally started in on getting the big loom set up. There's still cleaning and organizing to do before I can actually put the big pieces together. This thing had been sitting in a garage for a while, so some of the metal parts have a bit of surface rust. And the previous owner managed to put the heddles in every which way. I took some fine steel wool and polished the apron rods. Those are the things you actually connect the warp yarns to when you are warping the loom. They aren't perfect and they certainly aren't perfectly smooth, but they don't need to be. They only need to not get nasty rust stains all over everything. (Why yes, I do have the metal kind of wool hanging around here as well, in the hall closet with all the other "homeowner" stuff. Which grade would you like? Natural or synthetic? Want some finishing oil with that?)

So that was the easy part. I looked at some other things that might need to be de-rusted and determined that it's a good thing I don't expect to do a lot of funky chunky warps. The 5 dent carbon steel reed is a mess. Many of the other metal parts have some sort of powder coat finish (think metal computer boxes) so they aren't a problem. But the harnesses are frightening me.

Heddles are designed to go on the loom all the same way, so that when you thread them the eyes all face the same way. You don't want to accidentally thread one in the wrong direction and have your warp snag on an errant heddle. Bad news. I guess the previous owner was a novice weaver when she got this loom, because they are put on in little clumps of this way and that. Basically half of them are randomly upside down. I need to shuffle a bunch of heddles around anyway to get them distributed the way I like, so I'm going to take them off and put them back on all the same way.

Because most of you probably have never owned a big floor loom, this is, shall we say, a non-trivial operation. There's over a thousand of those suckers, spread across twelve harnesses. I managed to empty one. The general process is to put a big needle on either end of a cord and thread both ends of the heddles on it as they come off the harnesses. And I'm constantly switching which needle takes the top or bottom end of the heddles. Eventually they all come off in the right order and in the right direction, neatly threaded on a string. I'll get that done and then start thinking about actually counting them. Yikes.

The diz experiment went well, although I need to do something about getting a better diz. The plastic jug is ok for thick stuff but that's about it. It's too soft, so the hole gets larger as you go. Not good. I tried using a button, which was better, but it's hard to work with. Not only is it just difficult to hold, but since it's so small I end up grabbing fibers on the other side when I'm not supposed to. Believe it or not, the hole is too large as well. Time to go shopping, or maybe something will turn up at a thrift store or random junk pile. You never know.

More fiber washing this morning, and let me tell you I'm liking this sunshine thing. Summer in San Francisco is not known for sunny days, but we live on the other side of the city from the fog-inducing ocean. Oh it gets over here often enough, but it's not so much that we live in perpetual pea soup like some parts of the city. And we now have a nice big back courtyard that gets sun. After being in the basement for so long I'm just astounded that I can sit here with the windows open (We have windows! And they open to actual outside!) and it's just nice. Not too hot, not too cold, and a pleasant breeze. The Merino I scoured this morning is already almost dry. (And my neighbors occasionally wander by wondering what that weird object with the dead rats inside is. Good thing nobody actually asked, as I can't explain much farther than "Es la lana.")

The past couple days have been sunny and warm, perfect fleece washing weather. Unfortunately, they have also been a bit windy, which makes drying fleece outside a problem. I recently found the solution at a local Cheap Stuff From China store, of which there are many all over San Francisco. There was the "Infant Sleeping Tent," a pop-up mesh tent of sorts. The label has some of the worst Engrish I've seen in a while ("To protect baby form bitting by mosquitoes and files" is only a sample) but it's actually a handy little thing. Don't know that I'd trust it for use with actual babies, but that's not my problem. I don't even remember what I paid for it but I'm going to go back for more. It might have been a buck but certainly not much more. Here's a picture:

The fleece in there is some of what I got from Forest Home Farms annual shearing party in San Ramon a couple weeks ago. East Bay Mystery Sheep at it's finest. It's short and full of kemp but not too dirty. It might be a lamb because it has that curly tip like first fleeces tend to have and it's fairly soft. From the spongy feel there is obviously some down breed in there (Suffolk?) and a bit of California Red. I figured I'd use it to mess around with some drum carder experiments, although at this point I think it's getting tossed in the I'll Card It All Together Eventually pile. There's a lot of kemp in there and the red hair is not high on my list either.

Something else that came up in class is combing fiber. I've been doing this a long time so I get the general idea, but only with hand-held combs. Now that I have somewhere to mount my combs, I got the pad that goes with them and started experimenting. I cut up a plastic jug to make a diz, too. I'm not happy with my combing attempt because one of the clamps gets in the way, but it was enough to get the idea. Pulling off top with the diz was more successful, so probably I'll do that while I work out the issues with using the combs. I need to experiment with different size holes in the diz, I made some blanks and punched a hole in one with a small knitting needle. (If you make some, be sure to punch the hole from the inside of the curve to the outside. That's the way the fiber is pulled, so it won't snag on the rough edge.)

This brings up the never-ending discussion on which end to spin from. When I comb or flick fleece, I spin from the cut end. It just works better for me. Some people spin from the tip end. I did an experiment and tried spinning from both ends of the same hand-combed top. I also used short backward draft, my usual, and short forward draft. Either way, spinning from the cut end makes smooth yarn and spinning from the tip end doesn't. I can't smooth it out and the fiber just feels nasty in my hands. I thought that maybe the no-deathgrip-pinch short forward draft was the difference, but no.

Many people also say it matters which end of a commercial top you spin from, too. I can't tell the difference with short backward draft and only a little with short forward draft. I do notice it more with cotton, but not only is that an entirely different kind of fiber structure and size, but a different spinning technique. You can't do any sort of worsted short draft with cotton, there just isn't enough length to be able to pull out half a staple length with your fingers.

I keep trying all these things to see what people see in them. Once in a while I find something that really works for me, but mostly I just wonder what all the fuss is about. I'm all for understanding traditional methods, but that doesn't mean I'm going to just assume that is the best and only way without checking things out myself.

Something we went over in class last weekend was the short forward draft and how to adjust the wheel and spin one's "default" size yarn. I usually spin worsted with the short backward draft and I could never quite tell just what various teachers were talking about in short forward draft. Obviously, you move your hands differently, but there's more to it than that.

In with all the various discussions of worsted I've heard or read, there is usually this idea that one is pushing all the air out of the yarn with your forward hand. That is, your fingers are most definitely pinching. This is how it has to work with a spindle, otherwise everything will fall apart. Only fully-formed yarn can support the weight of the spindle. So you slide your fingers up after pulling out the next bit of fiber, with untwisted fiber above and yarn below. So far, so good.

With a spinning wheel, you don't have to be as concerned that the wheel is going to yank the yarn away from you before you are done with it. It could, of course, but you can adjust the tension so it doesn't. The death-grip pinch isn't necessary. Still, everybody talks about short forward draft as pinching and pulling out bits of fiber. I've tried this, and I can't get close to an even yarn. It's just not possible to pull the same amount each time. The short backward draft I use is something like pulling out a larger bit of fiber to thin it out and then slide my fingers back. It appears to happen all at once, but really it's two parts, and I can even out the amount of fiber by pulling in either direction since I'm working with an amount near the staple length. This is why I look at the fiber while I spin. It works well for crimpy wool that tends to stay together, but not so well for smooth stuff.

While I was researching different spinning techniques I read something interesting in The Ashford Book of Spinning. Most people start off with short forward draft because it feels like you have more control. This book talks about it, but says that it is something of a dead-end technique because conceptually it doesn't lead to using the long draw. The author seems to prefer the short backward draft because it does. But if you want to spin smooth yarn from combed fiber, you don't care about long draw. So why the distinction? I suppose the author likes woolen spinning. Ok, fine.

I never really worried much about spinning the "right" way, but I try to experiment with different ideas to find one that works best for me. And the short backward draft is serious trouble for my wrists on an upright wheel, one with the orifice directly in front of me. My left hand, the one that holds the fiber, bends to the side while I'm drafting. It's because I'm trying to compensate for the location of the orifice and keep the fiber flowing in as much of a straight line as possible. I can't control the twist as easily with my forward hand if I'm both pinching and changing direction at the same time. I've tried some other wheels and found that the orifice on the right, a "lefty" wheel, is what I need. I'll get one of those next, but it will be a while before I'm wheel shopping again. I've had some success with wearing wrist braces to remind me to not do bad things with my hands. The short forward draft doesn't give me this problem, but there is the trouble with not being able to pull out the fiber uniformly.

I couldn't figure out whatever is the trick to pulling out the fiber evenly, so I assumed I was just a failure at short forward draft. Since everything I'd read about spinning worsted said no twist ever in the drafting zone and indeed describes it as drafting without twist, I figured the pinch and slide was considered integral to the technique. So, here I am in this workshop, where the teacher is trying to get across the concept of the "default yarn," what you spin automatically for a particular set of wheel adjustments. It's like you aren't pulling the fiber out, the wheel is doing it for you and you are just overseeing the process. But it doesn't use the death grip pinch. And it's worsted. "How can this be?" I think.

I watch closely and I see fingers sliding back but hardly pinching at all. No worrying about the dreaded twist-in-drafting-zone business. The drafted fiber twists, down to the edge of the fiber supply, but at that point it's done being drafted so it's not the drafting zone anymore. A little pinch to pull the twisted yarn forward about a half a staple length and the process starts again. The other hand, the one holding the fiber, doesn't move at all. Aha! The wheel is adjusted so the twist doesn't fight to get past your fingers and pulls it on the bobbin at the same rate you are drafting. You aren't pulling out the fibers, the twisted yarn is pulling out the fibers and their neighbors are coming along for the ride.

I understood this process from spinning really long fibers like flax, where there isn't this angst about whether or not it's "true worsted." The twist goes right up to the edge of the fiber supply, and then you pull the finished yarn forward. Fibers that are half in your yarn and half in the fiber supply pull others out with them. You slide your fingers down at the same rate the twist is moving into the yarn, so no death-grip pinch is required.

Judith insists you shouldn't look at the fiber but just do it by feel. If you are fighting the twist or the yarn is getting yanked away from you, adjust your wheel or let it go and spin a different size yarn. I could use some more practice, but it does work. And it doesn't kill my hands. The one thing that bugs me is it is a lot slower.

I took a workshop this weekend, spinning for socks from Judith MacKenzie McCuin, and as usual Judith is a blast to hang out with for a fiber geek. She has an interest in traditional textiles and primitive sheep, two things I'm rather fond of. But she also knows industrial textiles and judges competitions, two things I am still trying to figure out. In class we talked a lot about what makes a good sock yarn. I'd like to do more socks, and I might yet get around to that, but mostly I wanted to take this class to learn more about yarn structure. Most of what I knit is with sock-like yarns.

I always come away with something to think about, and some of it seems to have little to do with the topic under discussion. Because I'm mostly self-taught, I don't know that I'm not supposed to see the gaps between the so-called conventional wisdom and my own experience. Sometimes they are quite wide chasms and I'm baffled as to why. For as much as everybody likes my knitting, my range is rather limited. I know the basics of textile history concerning knitting but it's more recent than my primary areas of study. So I don't really understand why knitting yarns are the way they are. I had my suspicions on this point but after conversations with Judith apparently neither do all that many other people. Including nearly all yarn manufacturers. She says that the things we find in the stores are really yarns designed for weaving. I'm not entirely clear on why, exactly, but I'll work on that.

We threw away some much-trumpeted beliefs about sock yarns, the major one for me is that fine wool does indeed make great sock yarn and you don't have to blend it with nylon. My own commercial Merino blend socks end up with huge patches of nylon as the wool wears away. I've heard that so many times that it makes me wonder if it's been pushed by the nylon manufacturers. (Things like this have happened, in textiles and elsewhere. DuPont didn't have much interest in encouraging natural fibers just like General Motors didn't have anything good to say about urban rail transit.) You can blend all you like, and nylon is a rational choice for blending with short wools, but it's not by any means required. The important point is that longer fibers make better sock yarn and to get smooth and even yarn it should be spun worsted. Lumps and bumps have their interesting uses, but you don't want them on the bottom of your feet.

Wool has many useful properties that make it a good option. Wool for socks should have a lot of crimp, to make elastic yarn. Elastic yarn makes elastic fabric. Elastic fabric doesn't sag or wrinkle. If it isn't moving around inside your boot, it isn't causing blisters on your feet. As one who wears boots a lot, this is a big deal.

Another important feature about sock yarns, and also knitting yarns in general, is that they be three-ply or more. This makes a round yarn and produces a smoother knit fabric, something I already knew. But I wanted to know about twist. There is this huge fuss about balanced plied yarns but all over the place there is traditional knitting that has never heard of the balanced yarn. Balanced yarn is very pretty, but it leaves the individual fibers more prone to snagging and wear. It's entirely possible to make successful socks with less than three plies. But you have to think carefully about the construction. We passed around some socks from various countries and they were quite different from the modern American idea of what a sock should look like. Some were very stiff, from strongly twisted yarns knit very firmly. They would most compare to slippers rather than something that goes inside one's tennis shoe. One was knit of singles from a horrid scratchy goat fiber that seems like it would be impossibly uncomfortable. But it fit so closely and so well that it is very wearable, something Judith didn't discover until some time later. If they don't move around, they don't scratch.

The reason I make knitting yarns with a firm twist in the single and 3-ply is to get a finished product that is dense and hard-wearing. More twist in the single means a more tightly twisted plied yarn, so the fiber is held in place more securely. Better still is to add a little more twist in the plying, so there is not the chance of loose fibers hanging about, they are all held in place with twist. But that violates the fundamental tenet of the balanced yarn. I've never really understood that, so I asked. After all, in a previous workshop Judith talked about how woolen yarns are best with a low twist in the single and more twist in the plying (and nearly useless as singles alone.) Those pretty balanced yarns look great hanging up for display at wool shows, but she has her doubts about their practical applications.

So there it is, I'm not crazy. This has been bugging me for years, with all the books, teachers and yarn judges that go on about balanced yarns. I was very careful about what I said about plying as to not be immediately branded apostate. I spent hours finishing plied yarns wet with a spindle for the COE because I knew that was the first thing a judge was going to look at. And the one yarn that wasn't, intentionally and for a specific purpose, was marked off for exactly that. I understand the mechanics and I entirely don't get why it is such a big deal. Slightly unbalanced yarns work fine in normal modern knitting and highly twisted yarns make fabrics that wear forever. So if unbalanced plied yarn is indeed heresy, at least I know I will have good company in Spinner Hell.

There are many other things from this weekend, ideas to contemplate and techniques to practice. I think I may now finally really understand the difference between short forward draft and short backward draft and why it matters. I'll write more on these things as I work through what I learned and discover how to apply it to my own spinning.

I'm getting my two matching hats (seen in the Gallery section) ready to send off for display. I mentioned a while back that I was invited to send something for an exhibit of COE recipients at Convergence, HGA's big conference. I submitted my paperwork and yesterday I got the forms and such back in the mail. Shipping labels, id tags, "Return Shipping Authorization Instructions" form, along with three pages of instructions. Sigh. Every art show has it's own set of requirements, instructions, forms and so on. If I were a bigtime artist, I'd have to be doing this all the time as part of my marketing campaign. That's one way you get people to buy your fancy expensive artwork, you submit it to juried shows and hope you get in. Your name gets in the program book, hopefully spelled correctly and with a decent photo of your work, and people know what you do and where to find you. The thought has been kicking around for a while, but the sheer volume of paperwork is one reason I haven't been all that diligent about trying to be one of those Bigtime Artists. Producing two or three pieces a year at most isn't a good way to make a living, either. This art thing is rough, why I haven't completely given up on the computers yet. The Boyfriend has to win the IPO lottery first.

I've got one hat blocked and the other one is drying. I've got my shipping box and my packing paper (conveniently left over from the move.) To keep the nice blocked shape, I have to stuff them with paper and ship it all in this huge box so nothing gets smooshed in transit. I've been told they will be on hat forms, that should make them look nice, but I have to get them there unmangled and ready to display. None of that is necessary for return shipping because all I'm going to do is shove them back in my coat pocket. I have a padded envelope that would be fine, but reading through the instructions I find that there is nothing in the procedure about providing different packaging for return shipping. I guess I could just do it and note it in the return shipping instructions.

I'm sure this was developed through years of experience, but bold capital letters make me a bit twitchy. At least this time I don't have to cut out little cardboard tags of exactly the proscribed size and so on. I'm just not big on all the formality of this art show stuff.

The Learning Exchange samples are going in the mail, The Boyfriend is off for the long weekend, and work is being relatively tame. I even already took care of my mother's birthday present. I can hang out and do all the fiber stuff I want.

I've started spinning for some legwarmers, but not the kind you think. You see, I like the idea of handknit socks, but I don't actually like knitting that fine so they fit in my shoes. But it's Summer once again in San Francisco, so my legs are freezing all the time. I'm going to make just the leg part of some knee socks, out of one of the black lamb fleeces I got last summer. It will probably take a little elastic in the top cuff to make it work, but that's really no different from the sock variety.

In the I-Have-A-Loom-Now department, I ordered some cotton weaving yarn. One is a big cone of singles blended natural green organic cotton, which I will probably ply with itself the same way I did with the stuff I found on pirns at the surplus craft store. It's all really fine, presumably intended for weaving sheeting. I now have white, brown and green and I think somehow dishtowels will happen. I just need to get the studio cleaned up.

Addendum to previous entry: I found their website. The authors of Big Girl Knits have a website at www.biggirlknits.com. (Duh.) There's a blog and everything. And the book launch party is this weekend. But not like I'm going to be in Lansing. (Strangely, my association with The Boyfriend now means I am, on occasion.)

I decided to buy some yarn to give one of these a try while I contemplate handspun. The Boyfriend approves of curve-hugging sweaters on big girls, too. :)

I picked up a new book today, one that leaped out at me at the store and chased me down. I wasn't planning to buy anything other than the Spanish phrase book I went in to get. A knitting book, of all things. It's Big Girl Knits by Jillian Moreno and Amy R. Singer. It's a collection of mostly sweaters designed for fat chicks, from a bunch of different designers. There's even one from online SpinningFiber friend Emma Crew.

I've been thinking about making a sweater for a while. I haven't really done knits with any kind of shaping, although I well understand the theory from sewing. And what I saw I really wasn't liking: big rectangles. If I wanted to wear a garbage bag, I'd go get one from the kitchen. Boxy is not at all a good thing for a short fat chick with a big ass. Oh, and narrow shoulders. Anything dropped shoulder is just a bad idea, I don't need the shoulder seams hanging around my elbows. I know it's possible to knit in shape, I just wasn't looking forward to the twenty-seven attempts it would take to figure it all out myself and develop a pattern. Remember I said I'm not all that much a knitter?

Here is a whole book without a single drop shoulder oversized box. They all have shaping and, more importantly, lots of directions on how to make things actually fit. No "Sweater in a Weekend" super chunky yarn, either. A lot of that stuff doesn't even look good on skinny women. The authors are sassy and in-your-face and make no excuses about being fat, they just get on with it. My absolute favorite line in the whole book: "Black is not magic. Black does not make you look thin; black does not give you a shape. black makes you look like a fat girl wearing black."

I've known about short rows, Lily Chin did an article for Threads a long time ago and I still have it someplace. And increases and decreases are a beginner basic. But getting it all together the right way takes trial and error. I expect it will take a couple tries to get something that is perfect, particularly when I start changing yarns and such, but this is a huge head start.

I'm working on my second learning exchange yarn, three plys of different colors. My first sample was about my usual small-ish size and the space-dyed pink vanished in the final yarn. Now I'm making the singles about twice as large so you can actually tell there is supposed to be something going on there. I like subtle, but my idea of subtle is usually not even noticed by anybody else. So it looks like I'm doing two bulky knitting yarns. How... un-weaver of me. Oh well.

The yarn is one ply burgundy, one ply red and one ply the dyed pink. I'll have pictures up when I get somewhere, but for now I've only just started on the first single. I pulled off about 30 g of each fiber (yes, I measured.) I need about 70 m of yarn for all the samples, I hope that will be enough.

If I were ambitious, I'd knit a swatch of the other yarn and take a picture for the website. Err, maybe later. After the sofa gets assembled.

It hit me today, as I was cleaning out the sock collection. I know what to do with those old socks! I'd been trying to come up with some practical re-use of the wool blend socks I wear year-round here in San Francisco. The feet are all worn out, but the tops still look great. But I don't sew sweatshirts or anything in need of a cuff.

But yesterday I was at an outside spinning demo where it was cold and windy, an unusual thing for the East Bay this time of year. I was fighting the wind to keep my fiber under control, so I tucked it into the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Now I have a nice wool-blend wrist distaff for spindle spinning. And I don't have to feel guilty about throwing away those old socks. You can read about it here.

I started a page for my Learning Exchange yarns. I have one done so far, with pictures. It's some brown-gray Merino fleece I got in Vermont a few years ago. Parts are too short to comb, so I've been flicking it with no particular purpose in mind.

I'll add more as I go. I've got a second yarn started, that tentatively involves scary pink hand-painted fiber. No, not that same one again, although I did start with the Merino/Tencel for sampling. I didn't have enough, so I dyed some white top. One of my other goals for this project is to not buy any fiber. And since I'm not planning to do anything with the yarn, I can design all sorts of stuff that I would never actually use myself. There is something liberating about that, in a way, although The Boyfriend keeps commenting on the "Anti-Feorlen" yarns I'm turning out. I may have to stop just to protect my cranky traditionalist reputation.

Finally the website is back up. I wrote a few entries while it was down and now I can start putting up new stuff.

I'm almost done with the single for my first learning exchange yarn. The topic is Merino, so I wanted to explore carded fiber spun woolen. I have never been happy with how Merino spins drafting against the twist, nor any similarly textured crimpy fine wool. It doesn't draft smoothly, it clumps no matter what I do to it. Most fleeces I see are too long to spin well this way anyway, but I happen to have a small amount of shorter Merino fleece.

It's horribly filthy, I've been flicking it to get all the gunk out thinking I might try carding it. I hand carded a bin of rolags. As much as I hate hand carding, for this small amount of fiber finding someone with a fine cloth drum carder would have taken longer than just doing it. I'm spinning a moderately fine single, with just a little more twist than the minimum required to hold the yarn together. I'm trying to keep it even but it's just insane. I'm not going to stop every length to fix every last slub like I had to do for the COE. Long draw is supposed to be fast and the yarn soft and lofty, such low-twist yarn would have to be absolutely perfectly even to not have thick and thin bits. What little twist there is tends to go to the fine spots, leaving the thicker sections to puff up.

Less crimpy fibers draft into an even yarn reasonably well, but more crimp does nothing but clump. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with fiber length, the same thing happend with the nasty mystery fleece and that was not even remotely near the theoretical 3 inch limit for woolen spinning. But it was a fine fiber with a tight crimp. As was the Columbia cross I tried. And no matter how much I spin of this kind of fiber, my yarn does not improve. I've gotten better at stretching the rolag out into yarn, but it always ends up drafting unevenly into either slubs or thin sections. Supposedly you pinch the rolag so you are drafting a consistent amount of fiber with each length, but where the streched-out rolag breaks into a thin yarn-sized spot happens basically at random. Almost never where I am holding it.

So I'm doing a 4-ply and then I'll give it a good thrashing to full it. I might pick off the larger lumps, as I'm sure there will be some left. It's basically what I did for the 16-ply cable I did of the mystery fleece, but I don't feel like going through all that again.