SpinnySpinny

I haven’t had much to say because most of it has been pretty dull. I’ll spare you the details of the not-family-friendly conversations I’ve had with the inkjet printer over alignment. I did some research at the library and worked on more writing. Oh, and I changed my jury service so I don’t have to go the week before I need to mail all this stuff off. Isn’t that thrilling?

I am doing some spinning at least, I got the fine textured cotton done, reeled a bobbin of silk (and glued another together into a sticky mess) and today I’m doing singles for a lofty cable yarn. That one is fairly mindless, a nice break. I’ve been warned that The Boyfriend might be coming home early from his business trip, I hope it’s not before I can vacuum up the fiber that’s all over the floor.

I have a third millspun reproduction and the Andean swatch now. The swatch is drying, so it will be a while before I can get pictures up. But on the second attempt, it worked nicely. A little weird warp tension here and there, and I have no clue about the traditional way to finish these things, but it’s done. I spent most of the day weaving, once I got it warped the correct way, it went quickly. Even if I did forget where I was every other pick for the first two repeats. I even found a use for those 0000 double pointed knitting needles I foolishly bought — they work great as shed sticks for needle weaving the starting edge. I wove in various ends that could conveniently be woven in and neatly tied off the rest. The other end has a fringe, to show how the overtwisted warp works and also because I didn’t want to fight to open smaller and smaller sheds.

Tomorrow is another fleece-buying opportunity, err, spinning event. I’m sure I will see all kinds of things there that I just Must Have Right Now, but I will have to avoid temptation. I already have too much raw fleece sitting around the living room in plastic bags because I can’t put it in the storage unit like that and it takes forever to wash 400g at a time in the sink. I was going to bring the swatch to weave but once I got into it I realized it was too fussy because I didn’t know the pattern very well. But I did get the bread started for my potluck dish! I had to promise The Boyfriend that I’d make a little one just for him, he really likes bread and I don’t bake as often as I used to. (Yes, I did indeed make the trek west with my wagon full of household goods and a jar of sourdough starter. I haven’t used commercial yeast for about eight years now.)

Last night was the monthly get-together at the local spinning shop. I picked up a few things I’ve been needing: new drive band, shed sticks for weaving and FLYER CLIPS!! Finally I can replace the nearly-dead ones on the Insanely Fast Flyer. Plying this Andean stuff just kills them. I’ve been trying to locate some replacements for months. Was it last summer? I don’t even remember anymore. I also got some Egyptian cotton top, which I will try for the fine cotton yarn and see if I like it better than the Pima. I picked up some alpaca/silk, not normally something I am interested in, to try it with the supported spindle. Early results are mixed, I may end up with the cotton pencil roving after all and this turns into a holiday gift exchange goodie. I really didn’t want to do a whole skein of cotton on the supported spindle. I’d rather not do anything on the supported spindle at all, actually.

With The Boyfriend gone for the weekend, I’m getting a lot done. The Cascade-alike is drying and it is a bit fuzzy but other than that looks pretty good. I stuck all four bobbins on knitting needles in a plastic box to ply and that worked ok. It only tried to shred a little bit. It looks kinda like somebody washed a skein of Cascade 220, so I guess that’s not too bad. Not that I’m washing this stuff. I sprayed it with water and hung it to dry to set the twist.

I created a new Misfit this morning by attempting to copy some things that I see all over in the yarn stores, a thick and thin bulky spiral. It looks exactly like something I’d expect to find put up in a 50g ball and selling for $15. The thick parts are too thick and although it looks good now it is so low-twist that it would start to pill even just trying to knit it. Sound familiar? I don’t like the ones in the stores for the same reason. I did it again with the fat single a little more even and it is more stable. It looks disturbingly like something from Lion Brand. But it’s a special effect yarn from a blend of fibers, in this case wool, silk and ingeo. The sky blue silk/ingeo blend from before didn’t spin up as smooth as I’d hoped, so I did something else and used it for the binder with a big Merino single. I knew there was a reason I bought that bump of black top.

I have to spin more of the cotton/silk blend, because I don’t have enough for the wpi card. Fortunately I had some blended fiber left. I did a little but I need more, this stuff is so thin that there’s going to be like 30 meters wrapped around the little piece of cardboard. In the interest of avoiding that nuisance, I started on the camel hair. I’m doing another cable, in two colors and fairly thick. It will go fast. That’s a good thing.

Now I can get back to my reheated pizza. The Boyfriend goes away and see what happens? It’s not all bad, at least. There are vegetables. And soy cheese (because I can’t have very much of the real stuff.) I ordered two so I’d have it for a few days, the place messed up my order and in fixing it I ended up with four huge pizzas. I gave away a bunch and we will still be eating it for a week. At least it’s good pizza.

Finally I have the last required fiber, thanks to a local guild member who appears to have collected every possible spinning material ever produced. I have about 60g of camel hair top in a sortof beige shade called “blonde.” It’s really just hair, with the down removed. Once upon a time it came from a magical place called Straw Into Gold, a spinning shop in Berkeley that closed about a year before I moved here. It is entirely possible that this stuff has been sitting around since the 70s. I last saw someone spinning camel hair about fifteen years ago and nary a hint of it since. So now that problem is taken care of.

The now sky-blue silk/ingeo blend is ready to spin, it only took forever. I ended up doing basically punis yet again, because all that carding broke a lot of fiber and it’s now more like cotton. But other than that the blend is nice, so I’m not going to worry about it. I need to finish the Romney first, if I can keep from getting distracted I might have the single done tomorrow. Even with the extra I need to do the swatch. It’s so nice to spin something I enjoy. Now I just need to keep from getting distracted away from the rest of the writing. I have a little more than two months to finish this. Between the local science fiction convention and an expected business trip, The Boyfriend is going to be out of the house for a while starting next week so I get to do nothing but spin.

Finally the brown cotton is done. Now I need to ply it. I tried but I immediately had problems with it snarling and breaking. I’m going to let it sit on the bobbins a while and hope it’s better behaved in a few weeks. I did some experiments with the other cottons I have but I still have to decide what I want from them.

In the meantime, there’s plenty more to do. I’m working on one of the blending skeins, I’ve decided to do the two ply as one of bamboo/tencel and the other of ingeo/silk. Each pair is close in length, which makes things a lot easier. The tencel is very shiny and the bamboo is not, together they are a nice in-between. I’m blending blue ingeo with bombyx top. It comes out sky blue with little white bits from the neps in the silk. (Just like the brick, it’s not great silk. Same source, too.) I just spent about four hours blending 18g of dark blue ingeo and white silk and I still have to make the rolags. Blending anything takes a long time with hand cards, even more for very different colors. The bamboo and tencel should be easier, I’m doing that with a hackle. (Well, a wool comb actually.)

A few days ago I pulled out a bunch of odds and ends from the combing waste and today I dyed it yellow-gold. I’m going to use it to reproduce one of the millspun yarns. Leftover junk is pretty close to “Approximately 100% Wool” if you ask me. That’s what that yarn is, take all the stuff hanging around and make something from it. Now I have to try to match it.