SpinnySpinny

I thought I had posted this picture already, but no. I’m almost done with the first half of the wool/silk, I’ve decided to make a 2-ply weaving yarn. I’ve got plenty of the natural color wool to go with it. The silk has some noils in it and I didn’t want to try to use it as warp without plying, so I’ll just do all of it the same.

I’m picking out some of the larger lumps from the silk, but mostly just spinning. Normally I want perfectly smooth yarn but the haphazardly dyed silk just isn’t going to let that happen and I have to get over it. I split the batts into strips and pulled each into a long roving. After all that I wonder if it really is faster to drum card than comb, but I would have never gotten the same color blend that way.

The finished fiber is about 170g, enough for a small project. I made two color layered batts because I wanted a high contrast blend that would survive being spun fine and plied and not be totally a solid color by the time I was done. I have no idea what I will do with the yarn, so I went with a somewhat less adventurous color. One of my other possible choices was magenta.

The fleece has been sitting around for years, it came from South Australia and is some sort of Corriedale cross. I sorted out the rest by color and length but this stuff was shorter. I don’t even know where all the silk came from, other than several years of spinning workshops. For now it’s going back into the fiber closet because I still have some Merino to finish spinning.

Started with this pile of fleece (plus a little of plain white)

and this collection of workshop samples

a little blue dye and a lot of carding later:

I spent most of the day with the drum carder. Last week I pulled out several small bags of fleece to blend together and this morning decided I didn’t have enough. So out comes the collection of workshop samples and other odds and ends and between all the different kinds of silk I have enough to do something. Gold tussah, bleached tussah, bombyx multiple sources and a few wool/silk blends. I left some of the larger amounts for another project and took all the bits and stuck them in some blue dye.

While the color was steam-setting (three hours!) I started preparing the base fiber. I set aside the lightest color wool to blend with the silk. The wool was all combed out in the staple with a dog brush and then carded, the wool blend took three passes and the silk five (because it was all clumped together after being dyed.) Now the gray-brown and blue batts are ready, tomorrow I just have to do the final layered blend of the two.

There is probably about 200g of fiber, enough for socks and a hat or a large scarf. I’m thinking I’ll do 3-ply sock yarn and then see what I feel like making. The yarn should come out a tweedy blue-gray. I’ll have pictures later.

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 have banished the evil baby yarn from my life. I shall only think uplifting thoughts of fine silk and handspun wool.

All of that to re-sley and it still looked horrible. The closer sett seemed to make no difference on how the weft packed in and I’m not going to sit there and slowly ease each and every pick of a six meter warp into place. I’ve cut handspun warps off the loom when they weren’t behaving, I’m not going to let this one intimidate me into weaving it off.

Now I just have to decide what to do next. I think it will be more of the 8/2 cotton, but I can’t warp it right now because I need to leave the loom folded until Holiday Party Season is over. I know better to leave something around where 35 guests can all go “oooh” and “ahhh” and stick fingers or drop cookies in it. Our friends are nice people, but that’s just tempting fate. I could start measuring, however.

Last week I bought a bunch of silk fabric, so now I get to play with it. I wet out a piece of organza and sorta madly crinkle-pleated it into a bundle and dumped blue and purple dye all over it. I know I used far, far too much dye because organza weighs nothing, but it was what it took to get the fabric good and squishy damp. We’ll see how it comes out after it sits for three hours in the steamer. The one downside of all this clearance silk dye I bought. If I get really ambitious, I’ll stitch some gathering threads into it (by machine, thank you) and try some shibori the next time we do an indigo party somewhere.