Feorlen's High Fiber Diet

I finished the socks, you can go look at them in the Gallery. They are a tad large and didn't shrink at all after a machine wash and dry. The ball band doesn't say superwash, so I actually wanted them to shrink just a bit. Somebody pointed out the washing instructions that I hadn't noticed. Apparently "sock yarn" means "superwash" these days. I didn't get the memo.

I'm still not thrilled with my short row heel, but at least the second one was better than the first. They pool nicely around my ankles, which is what I was after. I knew these wouldn't be perfect, but they are fine for wearing around the house and give me someplace to start with the next pair. I have two more balls of this yarn in a different colorway, I intend to make properly shaped above the knee stockings out of them. Since one ball nearly makes a pair of basic knee socks by itself, two will be plenty even with a smaller needle. Before I do that, however, I'm going to wear these for a bit and see what I think of the yarn. It's not Merino, I'm concerned it may be a bit itchy above the ankles.

Back from Petaluma with a pile of laundry and a bunch of newly-blue yarn. I'll put the rest of the pictures on their own page soon, but here is one of the coolest:

Walnut hulls and indigo dyed yarn

This is the huge skein I made from the cone of so-so white single. I did put it first in the walnut pot, but wasn't thrilled with the color I got. It was a yellow-brown that many people admired, but I was not one of them. The natural dye expert in attendance hinted that indigo was a great way to recover from a walnut experience with which one is not entirely pleased (having done so herself on several occasions.) So into the indigo vat it went, which soaked up half the pot and required maintenance every time. But after some hours of dips, it came out a greenish gray. I've decided I need to use it for pattern weft on something in a traditional coverlet design.

I'm heading off today for another trip to the farm in Petaluma. It's a bunch of people from my spinning guild, we go to sit, swim, eat, yak and generally hang out and be fibery. There will be dyepots. With luck, somebody will be able to explain what I am still doing wrong with this sock knitting thing. We will eat way too much food and hang out with the sheep.

There will be an indigo vat, as usual, and I made huge skeins out of a cone of baby pink cotton yarn. With luck, it will turn out blue with purple bits and make for interesting weaving. The chemistry of the indigo process actually strips the fiber reactive dye out of cellulose material, which is very interesting. It doesn't happen all at once, so you get a range of colors between whatever the original was and blue and can tie areas of the material to act as a resist. I have a t-shirt that started off bright yellow and is now blue and this odd greenish-yellow alien glowing stuff where the original color comes through. This amuses me because it's almost exactly what you see when something first comes out of the indigo vat, before it hits the air and turns blue. (Indigo is not soluble in water, you have to reduce it in an alkaline solution before the fiber will absorb the dye.) But the synthetic thread used to stitch it together is still yellow.

My other dye experiment is going to be walnut hulls, kindly given by an online spinning friend. Without adding any other chemicals, simmered hulls give a dark brown. I've never actually used walnut hulls myself, so I'm completely guessing on how much to use. I stuck 100g of it in a nylon stocking to soak for a few days and the water is good and black. I've got about 750g of wool yarn and no expectations.

Dear eBay Weaving Equipment Seller:

If you do not know enough about your product to identify it correctly, please do not try to impress me with it's fine condition and original vintage detail. While I agree the wood does appear to be in an excellent state, not only is your industrial fly shuttle not an "Antique Weaving Loom," it is not even functional, having lost all its metal hardware.

I suggest you study the numerous industrial fly shuttles posted by many of your eBay compatriots and compare them with the item you have on offer. I further encourage to take note of how many modern weavers actually buy ancient mill shuttles with no pirns available and consider re-listing yours in a more appropriate category such as Antiques.

Regards,

A Weaver

No spinning this week, because I've been weaving. I started a project of several bags woven as a tube, so as something of a swatch I've used the same yarn to weave the narrow shoulder strap. It's way firmer than the finished fabric should be, but will give me an idea of how reasonable my guess at the sett is.

One thing about weaving narrow fabric on a big floor loom is it's very easy to beat it too firmly. You have all that weight against almost no resistance. In this case, it's what I want. I've set the warp for the strap very closely, the recommend sett for 5/2 cotton is 12-18 ends per inch and I've got it at 24. That means I have to beat the hell out of it to get enough weft in so it's close to the same wefts per inch as the warp. With the mass of a 45 inch reed against 4 cm of fabric, this is no problem. I tried a sample at 16 epi just to see what happened and I could barely see the warp. I'll probably try the wider piece at 18 and see how it goes. I can always fix it if it's really horrible. Re-sleying the reed to change the sett after you've finished warping is tedious, but not all that complicated.

The bigger problem of a narrow band on the big loom is managing the warp tension. I used a knitting needle instead of the big steel apron rod to tie on, and with it only attached to the cloth apron in three places it tends to shift around. This is not good, as every time it moves it changes my warp tension. The warp is only tied to the rod in two places, so if one bundle slides one way the other half goes the other. It was ok as long as the rod was buried in the roll of warp, but once all the protective paper came off I just had it sitting there. Every time I advanced the warp, I had to fiddle with it. I finished a shuttle of weft with about 40 cm to go and decided it wasn't worth winding another.

Today we went off to the fair, to have a look around and get a picture of my yarn in the display case. Fortunately there is more than one digital camera in the household.

My friend predicted I'd get a blue ribbon and I did. I'm not personally all that motivated by winning, so I had to be convinced to enter. It is another way to explore further what judging yarn means, so I can learn something there. (I won't get the comments, if any, until after the fair ends.) Perhaps somebody will be inspired to explore traditional yarns as a result, and that is a good thing.

There was a group of spinners demonstrating in front of the yarn and weaving display, one turned out to be a yarn judge. I asked her about how they evaluated the entries and the judges were looking specifically for technical skill. I've talked to many people about entering their yarns in competition and have heard several stories of seemingly random results, so this is encouraging. It isn't that I don't care at all about creative visual design (let's just say it isn't high on my list) but I do think that some people don't look past it to consider structure. It is the structure that interests me, and that is best seen by starting with even and consistent yarn. Such that apparently there was some discussion about whether on not my skein was actually spun by hand.

I get this comment once in a while, it's still always weird when I do. (People ask me all the time where I buy my clothes, you would think I'd get used to it.) Some spinners believe one shouldn't worry too much about making fine and even yarn because irregularities give it "character." If they wanted even spinning, they would buy it already made. I actually don't consider if yarn is machine or hand spun when evaluating it's qualities, only that it has certain characteristics. Handspun yarn tends to have particular ones and machine spun others. It's all still yarn. It's the whole subject of what is "good" yarn where I get bogged down in the sea of opinions and personal preferences.

I just spent the week at a conference where talk about threads and fiber had nothing to do with textiles. Aside from getting a bit of knitting done while waiting for things, nothing of note happened this week to talk about here. But there is some to catch up with, as I had to drop everything to get ready.

I pulled the sari silk fabric off the loom and it immediately twisted up. (Not shown in the non-image, above.) High-twist singles will do that, enough that sometimes a fabric just refuses to lie flat no matter what you do. (Narrow stuff is worse: less mass, less inertia, nothing to keep it in place. Wide fabrics may only curl at the corners.) I was able to mostly get this one under control by ironing, but it took a bit. I'm reconsidering my previous idea of cutting it apart for coasters, when it gets wet it will just curl up again. I suppose I could mount the pieces on sheets of cork, but covering up the back side makes it less of a weaving sample. So off it goes to the Textile Aging Vault while I contemplate.

While I was busy, my package of mystery weaving yarn arrived. I wasn't able to pick it up from the mailbox until today. I bought 25 pounds of 8/2 mill end cotton, stuff that is generally used in industry for lightweight sweater knits. Some of the yarns are even waxed, a dead giveaway that it's for machine knitting. I was able to include general color suggestions, so I'm fairly happy with the results but some is a bit odd. I asked for natural, white or pastels and specifically requested no orange. I hate orange, it makes me have nightmares about bad Halloween parties. I got a good amount of bleached white, several pastels and a dusty medium blue. There were other darker neutrals I'm not too thrilled about, like a really strange brown-green, but still colors that can be overdyed darker.

And then there was the large cone of that wonderfully subtle shade generally known as OSHA Orange. We're talking serious highway safety here, my personal nightmare yarn color. The kind that makes people ask if they can use your deer cooler. I have absolutely no idea what I could do with this, the only things that immediately come to mind are hunting gag gifts and that's a lot of work for a joke. The only dye that would cover up this monstrosity would be black. Maybe.

While we are on the subject of pictures, there were some other things on the camera once I got everything off. Here is the yarn I sent off to the San Mateo County Fair:

I didn't even measure it, it's somewhere around 100 g I'd guess. I think it's a nice medium-ish sock yarn size and it's good and solid. One thing I don't like about the yarn I bought is I keep splitting it with the needle. Here's the swatch:

Yes, that's a roll of coins there. I say it was a teeny tiny hat, remember? I did it on 2.25 mm (US 1) needles. I like how that worked, so I expect I'll do the actual projects on that size also. I even got a second matching circular needle for the occasion.

With all the excitement going on with the loom, I haven't done any spinning the past few days. I have to prep more fiber first, which I'm not so excited about at the moment. I'm also doing some computer stuff, which is why these past few entries didn't get posted right away.

Everything is working fine with the loom, I've decided to weave one long strip of fabric and cut it apart for the coasters. The sari silk yarn is very textured, which tends to make the selvedges a little messy. In general, it's weaving ok although once in a while I have to stop and untwist a snarl. It's still a single. I'm using a stick shuttle (the only thing I have that will hold enough thick yarn) and doing a very narrow fabric, so I end up fiddling with the weft every pick anyway. I think for a wider fabric, I'd skein and set the twist again under high tension before weaving with it to reduce the tendency to snarl.

So with my first project on the loom, I can tell you one thing I'm not doing again is using all twelve harnesses for plain weave. I did it just to make sure everything was working correctly and get a feel for threading. But every shed is lifting six harnesses, along with all those extra heddles. That's pretty heavy for no good reason.

The heddles are back on, I decided to only put 150 per harness because I had them already counted out in groups of 50. If I need more than 1800 heddles for something, I think I can go back and put them on. I think it will be a while before I get to that.

Of course, as soon as I got everything together, I had to warp something. That's what I've been doing instead of updating the website. I had just enough on a tube of carpet warp to match some sari silk yarn. I'm planning to do some coasters, if it turns out well I'll give a set to the guy I got the yarn from. He's a local, and I've helped him out at a few shows.

And, now that the camera is better behaved, I have a picture!

It's huge. After working with this, I know I've been correct all these years in turning down offers of 60 inch looms. This one is quite enough, thank you. Even trying to reach through twelve harnesses to thread the thing is entertaining. And to think I was looking for a 36 inch, 4 harness.

There are a few things to work out in the warping procedure, the first is to find some way to lock the beater in place for sleying. Trying to wrestle with yarn and sley hook while the reed keeps moving is no fun. My other Leclerc had this problem as well, I don't know why there isn't some standard way of dealing with it. And there is also the same old problem of getting wire heddles to move around when you want them. I can see I'm going to have to undo the clips that hold the heddle bars in place every time I thread this thing. Otherwise the heddles won't move. Even after I tied on to the back, I was still trying to get the heddles in place so the warp lies straight. Fortunately, undoing the top clip is enough. I'd never get the bottom ones back on after threading.

So I have 2088 heddles. That's enough to do the full width of the loom at about 18 ends per cm or 46 per inch. I think that will keep me busy for a while. Now I just have to get them all back on.

This afternoon I started back on getting the loom ready and got quite a lot done. All the major pieces are assembled and the next thing is to deal with the heddles. So I'm counting to determine how many I have and how to distribute them on the harnesses. So far, I've found that I'm missing one wing nut (for the treadle assembly) and I could use a couple more tie-up cords (to attach the treadles to harnesses and create patterns.) Nothing major. I decided to not put a rug under the loom so I can get the dust mop in there for cleaning. There are rubber pads on the bottom to protect the floor and I'll likely pull out a small rug or two while warping to catch dropped items. I still have to think about how to protect the wall and floor from over-zealous shuttle throws. At least it's not right next to a window this time (and the wall directly to one side is bead board, not plaster.)

This loom is about as large as I think I am capable of handling, as I can barely reach across the full weaving width. As it is, I have to fold the back beam in two stages because I can't reach both ends of the adjustable braces at once. If I ever attach the second back beam, that is going to be a real problem. Related to that is that this thing is very heavy. I had to adjust the position a few times and it's a big pain to move once it's all together. Before I got the front beam assembly attached, it was threatening to fall over whenever I unfolded the back beam.

One thing I'm going to have to get used to is the loose front and back beams. My previous loom was securely attached and on this one they are loosely fitted on pegs. It's nice for working around the loom, but it also means if you grab the beam it's going to come away in your hand. This very nearly sent the whole back crashing down on several occasions. When it's fully open and there is a warp on it, it's not going anywhere of course. But if it's folded, that could create a major disaster.

In the interest of scientific inquiry, I tried washing some fleece with the "Hand Wash" cycle of my front-loading machine. I tossed in a mesh bag with a handful of throw-away fleece, added extra detergent, set it to hot and let it go. The results were not nearly as bad as I feared, but not something I would do again. What I did get out of it is that I'm ok with putting most handspun finished items in there. I tried to felt a wool scarf this way and it came out no different from when I put it in.

The wool was a little remaining from the mystery fleece, divided into decent-sized locks. It came out with the butt ends felted together and the tips every which way. I can pull it apart into recognizable staples, but not that well. It is, however, quite clean and it wasn't before. It's felted enough that it would be annoying to card, you would never get a good yarn from it without first pulling it all apart by hand and brushing out the felted tangles. Plus, there are still sticks and burrs and whatnot, but I hardly expected that to mysteriously dissapear. Since it didn't come out one huge felted blob, it's getting tossed in the carding pile with the rest of the junk wool.

I suspect that had I added baking soda (as I must when I try to felt something for real,) it would have come out looking more like a felted blob. That is the more normal result and I'm convinced it's because of the weird San Francisco city water that makes it hard to felt things. Don't try this at home, kids.

I keep trying to find entertaining tidbits to dazzle and enlighten, but the truth is I'm not doing anything the least bit exciting on the textile front at the moment. The skein for the county fair is off and the sock is in that row after row of stockinette stitch part. I've even spun all the Merino I combed for the bobbins of singles. So what am I doing now? Fiber prep. Sorting, scouring and flicking. I haven't even gotten back to the pointy dangerous tool bit.

For those of you who were here for the whole COE thing, I realize this is a letdown. First the COE, and then the Learning Exchange and now... fiber prep? Yes, I hate to break it to you but I am one of those types who generally works on a project until it's done. I may have two or three going, but rarely more. Right now, there is a knitting project, a spinning project and a loom-configuration project, in addition to the ongoing may-take-forever spindle project. I've got some ideas for other things, I've toyed with a few samples, but I haven't actually started anything.

Since I finally finished scouring the first lamb fleece from last summer (there are two more to go, remember,) I'm continuing with the spinning of it. I'm basically going to spin three full bobbins of single and make sock yarn, which will be used for legwarmers and wrist warmers and possibly some socks. The Boyfriend has expressed an interest in gloves. Several of these things will come from this first batch. If I need more yarn, well, it was a four pound fleece.

I like to spin a bunch of yarn all at once because I get better yarn. If I do all the singles first, they are more likely to match. And if they don't, I can still do something about it (like decide I want a six-ply yarn instead.) I also do better if I ply all at once. Now with full bobbins of fine single, that's going to mean many bobbins of 3-ply yarn. But I can ply a full bobbin in a couple hours at most. I usually do it in one sitting. I count treadles when I ply, so I set aside an afternoon when I have nothing else I have to do and nobody is around. I don't answer the phone. I even got some extra bobbins so I could do several at a time.

All this is about as far as you can get from the gee-wiz school of spinning, where one is in it for exploring the unending parade of possible fibers, colors and textures. I like to pick something and do it for a while until I feel I really understand it. Add to that my preference for large projects and it can easily take years to finish something. When I finished the COE, the one thing I most wanted to do was make something. After such a long time of doing nothing but samples, I need to produce a finished object just to see that I still can. It didn't help at all that many of those yarns are things I would never choose to do for myself. "Ok, I did the novelty yarns. Can I go back to fun stuff now?" Bobbin after bobbin of technically precise yarn is the fun stuff.

Along with all the bad chintz and ugly crochet baby blankets, sometimes you find really interesting things at thrift stores. When I have time to kill, I sometimes go just to see what's there. Several times I've found little towels that were obviously woven by hand, with overshot borders and neatly done hemstitching and everything.

Today I found a blanket made of dozens of little woven squares. It was obviously done with one of those little square frame looms, something like a small version of the plastic potholder loom. This one is in purple and green frosted acrylic. Pretty nasty yarn as those things go, but firmly woven and well put together. It was $4. I got it to add to the travel gear, as short of melting the thing there isn't much that is going to hurt it. And it's sturdy enough to put up with a fair bit of abuse. As long as it stays dry, acrylic is a fine insulation layer.

I also found a pillowcase made from the exact same obnoxious polyester fleece (lime green with blue flowers) that I made a bathrobe out of some years ago. It took me a while to like this kind of "fleece" but I've learned to appreciate warm layers. Just don't get near it if you are the least bit sweaty or it will feel like you are wearing a plastic bag. (That's not too far off, really.) I had to get it, just because. From the slightly crunchy texture of one corner, apparently somebody tried to iron it.

Another recent shopping find, not from Goodwill, is a clothes moth trap. I've seen a few moths around, at times uncertain of the type but not willing to hold them for questioning. They appear to be coming from outside, as it's never far from one of our horribly drafty windows. The baited glue trap is basically an early warning system, as it's not the moths that cause trouble. I put one in the textile closet so I can monitor the situation.

It's too hot to do much of anything except wash wool, and even then I don't want to have the hot water running too long. After some weeks of never quite managing to get the dishes cleared up enough to use the sink for scouring, I finally just did it. It's so hot outside that the wool will be dry by this evening. It would be nice to do another batch, but with no air conditioning, I've already closed up the apartment for the day and I don't want to do anything to make it warmer.

I'm well into the top of the sock. Yesterday I went to go knit at the library rather than sit around and melt at home. I may do it again today. I'm going to try to take advantage of the good fleece-drying weather while I can, but it means getting the scouring done early. We'll see how well that goes.

I started this blog post yesterday, but it's just been too damn hot. So instead I took advantage of free Caltrain and went for an air-conditioned train ride. In the process of going to San Jose and back, I got almost all the way through the heel on the sock. I still haven't quite gotten this wrap and turn thing down, the knit end looks fine but the purl end is awful. It fits correctly, at least.

I did get the fair yarn done before I headed out, however. It takes no time at all to ply compared to spinning the singles. I skeined it off the bobbin, gave it another scour soak and then a vigorous wash. Last night I started a swatch, a teeny tiny hat. (Yes, there are pictures but the camera batteries are currently charging so I can't get them to the computer.) I figured I should do something in the round, and when I get it back I can send it off for my mother's doll collection. I delivered the yarn today to the designated fair-goer, who predicted it would take first place because it's way better than hers. Eh, who knows. It's not like I'm all that worried about it. I mostly did it because she asked, so her yarn wouldn't feel lonely. There aren't all that many spinning entries in the fair these days. Apparently the top prize is $15 and passes to the fair, all I had to do was send in the form and deliver the goods. She's doing most of the work, drop-off and pick-up. It's a yarn I was working on anyway and nothing particularly special.

Now I go back to spinning the single, and I think I'm just going to fill the bobbins again to make up for what I plied. I've got plenty of fiber and the yarn is something I would use for other things. I'm contemplating trying to overdye it to get a real black. This is considered black for a sheep, a very dark brown. But it's not really a proper black. I just have to decide what to dye it with. Blue has been suggested, and if I'm going to do that then I'll just wait until the next indigo party. It's going to be a while on the rest of the yarn anyway.

I'm declaring the single finished for this sock yarn. I've got about 30g on the last bobbin and that is enough to give me a decent sized finished skein. I was trying to get some spinning done again this morning but the fiber is sticking to my fingers. One hazard of living in San Francisco, when it does get warm, nobody has air conditioning. Plying won't be as much of a problem. If I can get that done tomorrow morning, I'll have enough time to wash and do a swatch.

The sock-in-progress is coming along, although as usual I'm appalled at my inability to maintain a consistent gauge. It varies when my hands are cold, if it's warm and sticky and at this point probably by phase of the moon. It's not a problem when I'm doing firm fabric, only when I'm attempting to knit "normal" stuff. Like vaguely approximating the suggested gauge. It seems the end result will still be wearable and it might shrink a bit in washing. This was an experiment anyway, so I'm not distraught or anything. I never claimed I was a great knitter.

The sock yarn spinning is still ongoing, but in the meantime I started a sock with some of the yarn I bought. I'm doing a toe-up with a figure-eight cast-on, which went ok. Of the toe methods from Knitty, it's the one that made the most sense for me. YMMV, I'm sure, as lots of people hate/are scared of the figure-eight cast-on. I have that feeling about waste yarn crochet chains. I liked the fabric knit on 2mm dpns, but I went up a size to get closer to the recommended gauge. I think it looks nice around 32/10cm (8/inch.) But the manufacturer recommends 28/10cm and at least 2.5mm needles, which is no way going to work for me. Knitting is like that. Hey, it's not like I'm really following a pattern anyway. I'm using Wendy's toe-up sock pattern as a guide. I'm only accidentally using the same number of stitches. Based on measuring my ankle I expected 72 stitches but started the foot after 68 because it appeared to be getting alarmingly large. I finally ripped back and went with 64 because I didn't like how it looked.

The yarn is Lana Grossa Meilenweit Fun&Stripes, the most normal sock yarn I could find in sufficient amounts at Carolina Homespun. (I also got two skeins of another color for some taller socks.) It's mostly regular color changes with little blobs here and there. I looked around at sock yarns for a couple weeks, but wasn't happy with what I saw. The fake Fair Isle stuff gets weird if you start changing the number of stitches and I really didn't want all that anyway. I also wasn't happy with the odd muted colors I saw several places. What is so wrong with basic solids? What I got was shades of blue, which I can live with. The other one is blue and green.

100g is supposed to do a pair of socks, so I'm doing toe-up to get as much as possible out of it. I intended to knit from both ends of the skein at the same time, but I'm beginning to wonder if it will work. I have to knit a little more to see if the stripe pattern comes out symmetrical. If it's not, then I'll just keep going until I use half the skein. This wouldn't be an issue if I could find some plain normal yarn, but apparently I'm a stodgy old crank who isn't keeping up with the latest styles. Feh.

The hats are back safely, so now I have my regular hat to wear again. And I went to Goodwill this morning and found not only a spindle case (wine bottle carrier) but a jar of Procion MX and a bag of soda ash. Somebody must have dumped excess tye-dye stuff, with as much as most people know about dyes it's a wonder they even ended up bagged together. Can't beat 99 cents.

I started back up on preparing fiber for the sock yarn. I have to find a new place to put the comb pad because the current location is killing my wrists. I need to be able to pull straight out but the shelf I have it clamped to is too tall. My arms don't work that way, and trying to pull down is putting my hands in a weird position. I'm wondering if a low stool and the second shelf would be better. I still have some things to work out with this, but it's coming along. I may even get enough finished by next week for the fair.

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.