SpinnySpinny

Posting mainly to have notes on the ongoing project. I’ve got the S and Z yarn wound into balls so I should get on with actually planning the warp. They came out in the neighborhood of 30 wraps per inch so I’m going to go for a sett of 20 ends per inch in plain weave. (I don’t have metric reeds, so I have to stick with what I’ve got for this part.)

I figure a 40 cm/15 inch wide sample is good, so that’s 300 ends total: half S and half Z. To use approximately half the yarn for warp that would give me 2 meters, of which about 1.25 will be usable. That’s a pretty good-sized sample. I’ll wind two sections of warp, 150 ends, with each yarn and then have about half left for weft.

I won’t need that much because the smaller warp has proportionally more loom waste, but I’m not going to worry about it. Too much yarn is far better than the alternative.

I went to Stitches West at the Santa Clara Convention Center this morning to do a spinning demo, and of course since I was then in for free, some shopping.

It’s kinda like MacWorld for yarn. It would be dangerous if I bought knitting yarn, but typically I don’t. There were more vendors with spinning equipment and fiber, which was nice. I of course bought stuff I didn’t intend to. I wasn’t organizing this demo but only showing up to spin for a couple hours. I did teach so I wasn’t a complete slug. But I might have been more focused if I had actually had breakfast. Or lunch.

The demo was not the usual guild thing but for the Spinning and Weaving Association, a trade group of manufacturers and retailers. We were teaching, but not with the box of CD spindles the guild has. I got to play with a Ladybug wheel from Schacht, a beginner wheel less expensive than the Matchless.

It’s a nice little wheel, but I have to say I’m still a Lendrum partisan. The way it was set up was too slow for the kind of yarn I spin and too fast for real beginners. From looking on the website I think it had the medium whorl rather than the slow one but I’m not really sure. I found the scotch tension adjustment a little fussy, with the small plastic knob slipping when I tried to adjust it. Apparently it can also be set up for double drive, which I wouldn’t recommend for a first wheel. (Yes, when it works it’s wonderful. But getting it set Just Right is a bother.)

We had several small rigid heddle looms designed to use typical knitting yarns. They were already warped, I didn’t play with them but they seemed to be typical for the style. They had floor stands, which was nice. I really don’t know the manufacturer, I thought they might be the Knitter’s Loom, but it seems that Ashford is not a member of the association.

There was a small drum carder also, I carded some random layered batts and was spinning huge fluffy woolen yarn. Entirely unlike what I normally do, but suited to the fiber and equipment. Everybody seemed to like it and it got people’s attention.

I then spent about 90 minutes doing a fast tour of the show. I got a new spindle, some hand-dyed silk fiber and a length of Japanese silk fabric. Here’s a summary of the haul:

Hand-painted tussah silk from Fiber Fiend. It’s in blue, gray and purple in a colorway called Blackberry Swirl. Also a Maggie spindle from Carolina Homespun (27g I think the label said, before I lost it.)

The silk from Japan with a floral design was from John Marshall. No way I can afford any of his own work, but this was a nice piece he found in Japan. He told me how they are turning up now because people aren’t doing much traditional work anymore and you can find them discontinued. Good for shoppers, at least the Americans who are buying wholesale and bringing them back, but bad for the craft. I’m not sure of the exact technique but boy is it nice. It has a large group of flowers on branches on each end and some additional flowers between. I’m guessing it was originally intended for kimono, with the large design.

I’ve got both yarns skeined, blocked and measured. The second S yarn came out slightly finer but not enough that it’s a problem. I still have fiber left so I can always spin more. It came out a bit hairy, what I would expect for a coarse fiber, so I’ll need to thread it on more shafts than you might think for simple plain weave. In this case, I think 4 should be fine.

Z 643m, 145g
S 707m, 142g

The hard part is going to be keeping them straight. I already had to check my numbers several times to make sure I got the right measurement with the right yarn. I hope to have this warped and well underway while The Boyfriend is out of town else I’ll never get enough quiet time to get it done right.

I went hunting for a piece of fabric buried in the closet this afternoon and ended up doing a minor re-org. That happens when what I’m looking for has been in there a while. It’s much wider than it is deep, which makes it a pain to organize. I have several large utility shelves and still stuff is stacked on the floor and hanging off the back of the door.

I’ve been pretty good about not buying more than I can figure out where to store. I have years worth of project material in there already. Of course, my usual solution to that dilemma is to get better at packing it all in. Because, well, today Thai Silks had some really nice batik half off.

There are a few posts to catch up on so I’m going to try to get some of them out of the way while it’s still too early to be up and making noise around here. And, yes, there will be pictures now that the camera situation has gotten straightened out.

A mysterious package arrived at the mailbox this week and it contained holiday gifts. (I’m not going to comment on schedule because several of ours are still sitting here waiting to be packed up.) It was from The Boyfriend’s brother and his wife, whose wedding we attended last summer. And there were Textiles! Which is totally cool. Really, really nice ones. They went to Scotland for their honeymoon and clearly did some shopping. These are commercially spun and woven but I’m going to post them anyway.

Here’s the first, a large Shetland wool throw. It’s pale green heather single both warp and weft in plain weave, with warp fringe. It’s nicely finished with the felted fringe that won’t get all skanky after a few washings.

The second item is a cashmere scarf, which I couldn’t resist showing with the new tweed jacket. There was a comment made how somebody felt like he should be off rambling the moor.

Cashmere is seriously warm, so this is actually a very practical travel item for those Italy trips.