Spinning Camp!-Day1

I'm back in Greensboro, NC for a week of Master Spinning classes! I took Level 2 last year, and am taking level 3. So far it's been so fun spinning with lovely spinners from the area. The teacher is very talented and lots of fun.

Left to right, Lincoln @ 1.5TPI, Colored top @ 4TPI and 6TPI (in theory)

On the first day, our teacher handed us bits of red top and yellow top and asked us to spin to a specific tpi (twists per inch). The first one was a 6tpi yarn, and I seemed to get everywhere between 5.5-7.5 tpi except in one little inch.

The second yarn spun out of Lincoln (rough!) was a fat yarn with 1.5 tpi. That one came out better than the first, but I still need practice being consistent with my drafting.

The third yarn was spun at 4tpi, and that felt like the best yarn to date. There are definitely parts in that yarn that is not 4tpi, but it's close.

Then we did some math and confused every single neuron in our brains. It's simple algebra really, but with all the dimensional analysis for changing from metric to English and working backwards to get the proper tpi for singles, it got more confusing. Of course, there is an English system that has some arbitrary numbers (I'm sure it'll mean a lot later, but now, they don't mean anything) for different kinds of fibers and styles of spinning wool.

For example, a worsted wool yarn needs to be divided by 540 to get the number of skeins produced from a pound of prepped fiber. For woollen yarns it is 300 yards per skein. For silk and cotton it's 800. Right. What? Why? Why can't we do yards per pound to show how thick the yarn is? We can count up to 1000, right?

Anyway, the point of the lesson was to not only spin evenly and precisely, it was also to have a visual of the kind of yarn you want to spin in your mind. Thicker the yarn, less twist it needs, and less TPI there will be.

It was so exhausting thinking so hard about spinning, I took a long nap after class!

No More Fiber challenge!

So March has come and gone, so did April, and half of May. What!

Anyway, I noticed that I have SO MUCH fiber in the house. I can knit at least 3 sweaters, 3 shawls, 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of mittens, and hours worth of spinning.

And my boyfriend still thinks I'm not insane.

After coming home with only 8 oz of fiber from the Maryland Sheep and Wool (I know, I'm proud of myself), I decided that I shouldn't buy any more yarn until Maryland Sheep and Wool next year.

Some silk caps, primary color roving for mixing colors,

and a braid from my good friend Mary Ann @ Three Waters Farm

in the coloway Morroco

Enter this past Sunday--

My good friend Miss A and I went venturing out to a farm with Jacob sheep! Since the Yarn Harlot raved about the breed, I was worried about not finding any. Fortunately, I was able to find some local fleece available. yay!

sweet sheepies

kind of shy

After sorting through the fluffy and lovely fleeces, it was like Christmas:

I'm the fleece Santa!

I'm pretty sure I can work with the fiber I have for a full year. Not just for knitting, but processing and spinning the fleece.

Let's see how long this will last =)

Knitting Season is in full swing!

Wow I haven't blogged in a long time. Work got busy and it was ridiculously hot. Around Labor Day, the weather was starting to cool off a bit, just to make it hot again. Now I'm in my cozy knitted sweater I knit a long time ago (first knitted sweater I think).

So here's what I've been doing:

1. Lots of spinning: from about August to now, I've been working on my little bags of wool from different breeds of sheep. So far I' ve spun:

Blue Faced Leicester:


Falkland


Icelandic


Jacob


Shetland


Coopworth


I only have 3 more bumps to spin to complete my spinning project! Very exciting!

From the drop spindle, the fiber I got at SAFF last October is finally all spun up:

From this 4oz bump:


To this:


To this.



So exciting! I think I want to knit the Leaf & Nupp Shawl from Nancy Bush's Knitted Lace of Estonia.

I'm going to write about my knitting another day. Now, back to work.

Fun Time Sit N Knit!

Cookie Socks update! I finished clue #3 on my left sock.

Heel: 4g. took surprisingly little yarn.

Gusset: 6g for picking up and working 30 rows.

And tonight I picked up my right sock and started working on the third repeat of the leg.

I had a chance to sit and knit with wonderful ladies that gather at A Tangled Skein in Hyattsville. There was another pair of Mystery Cookie on the needles, and there were lots of interesting conversations from WWII to childbirth to Local politics to family values. I live in a little illustrator bubble, so all was very interesting. There was even a little dog who joined us.

Connie brought her fleece sample and Idaline (her fleece) was so soft and was such a rich color! She said it was a Border Leicester and Romney cross, and I definitely could feel the silky BL that I was enjoying in my unnamed fleece. Maybe I'll name mine Bailey.

I had to resist hard to not buy any yarn! We sit right by the lovely sock yarn, and I always enjoy touching Panda Silk yarn and Lang Magic Stripes yarn.

Needless to say, I knit 8 rows in 1.5 hours. At least I didn't have to frog anything. :) yet.

After the knitting session, I went to CVS and Target to pick up supplies for Sheep camp. I'm most proud of my lazy kate, which works wonders and I know I can fit more than 3 bobbins if needed. It's a plastic basket, and I put my straight knitting needles through the holes and held the bobbins. I'm so tickled.

It was $5 for two baskets, and a lazy kate costs at least $20. For my Louet bobbins, it would've been like $140. Sometimes I'm not sure why some spinning supplies are so expensive. A lazy kate is a stand with few sticks. A niddy-noddy is a stick with two more sticks positioned orthogonally. A nostepinne IS a stick. Knitting needles are pointy sticks.

I suppose people want beautiful tools when making beautiful things. Right now, I'm more interested in getting more beautiful materials (yarn & fiber) rather than to spend money on beautiful tools. I'll probably change my mind later like I did for socks, but not yet.

Pull out a plum and say...

What a good boy am I!

I'm swatching and making test skeins!

This is knit from my handspun Coopworth roving I bought at MDSW last year. I spun about 400 yds in worsted/aran weight, so I'm thinking to combine with Noro Kureyon to make a stripe vest.

I'm pretty excited about how plying covers up some irregularities of the yarn you spin. The irregularities further disappear once you wash/set the yarn then knit it.

Now to my 2# merino roving that I'm going to make a guernsey sweater out of: I spun about .5 ounces and plied with my previous attempt. I spun about 30 yards here.

I did the Wraps Per Inch thing. It's about 12 WPI, which puts the yarn in worsted weight category. It's a bit thick, but I think it will be all right.

And here is the swatch...I screwed up the knit column before the purl recess. I need to tug more yarn to make it even. Again, the irregularities have been nicely hidden for the most part in the knit fabric. This is knit in US2 needles (2.75mm)

Here are some attempts to spin the flick carded border leicester fleece. This fleece wants me to spin it worsted. That's fine by me. First attempt came waaaay too underspun.

Second attempt was a better... I like how the sheen of the silky fleece is maintained in the yarn. I think I like the plies with more twist like this...it's bouncy. I thought I overplied this until I washed it and it was all soft and happy.



Third attempt I was trying to make it thinner. It came out little wiry and uneven, but I'm pretty happy with this too.

And here it is in order of my attempts from left to right. My third attempt was longer, so it's shown twice on right.
Last batch of fleece is soaking in the sun. aaaah...

Maryland Sheep & Wool 2010 Part III: Goodies

I had so much fun at the festival this year! I think as I learn more about knitting and spinning and so forth, I have more questions to ask about different sheep wool, hand, etc etc.

This year I bought a wonderful collection of different sheep breed wool in their natural beauty. Take a look:

Dark Icelandic roving 2 oz

Three shades of Jacob Roving 2 oz each, 6 oz total

Shetland roving 4 oz

Polwarth roving 4 oz

Falkland roving 4 oz

Coopworth roving 4 oz

BFL roving 4 oz

(I had so much trouble finding natural colored BFL!)

And a lovely circle of natural colored roving.

One of my goals this year was to find myself a nice multi-colored fleece. I was hoping to get some colored shetland wool, but couldn't find any. Fortunately I chatted with a really lovely lady and decided to get 1/2 fleece (2.75 pounds) of her Border Leicester wool. Take a peek.

It's a lovely multi-colored wool with rich lustrous locks. She said since it rained 4 days straight right before shearing, there were some tough tips, but they should wash out. I hope so. mmm stinky. It lives outside on the balcony right now.

I also got a flicker from Carolina Homespun.

A Louet high-speed bobbin.

When I showed the man my bobbin, he let out a sigh and said, "wow, that's an old Louet!" I heard that three more times and ultimately decided that the new bobbins should fit on the "old Louet" (approx 50-60 years old). It works wonders on the wheel, and looking forward to spinning faster and finer.

Oh yes I almost forgot:


I got 6 skeins from Old Mill Yarn. This is Davidson Domy Heather, a wonderfully affordable shetland wool yarn. I want to dye some of it and make a nice fair-isle cardigan/sweater out of it. Funny, this is the only yarn I got!

Let's get to some spinning!

Maryland Sheep & Wool 2010 Part I: Saturday

Yay it's Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival Weekend! This is my third year going, and decided to go both days (hey, why not). Saturday was the day I got to see Ammon and his family, and I also took along Asher. This was my first Saturday experience, so I didn't know what to expect.

Definitely didn't expect this:

What! 2 mile traffic jam?! We were stuck for good 30 minutes on SR32.

We finally got there, and first checked out some auction items.

This one was my favorite:

This year I also decided to enter some competitions.

I dropped off 2 skeins and 1 shawl for the skein and garment competition on Friday, and couldn't wait to see the results.

My sock yarn! First place! Best novice skein! I'm soooo excited!

My excited face.

My skein #2 got 4th place.

Then we could check out the festival in peace. Here are some silkworms.

Great music.

Funny sheep.

Sheep is one of those animals that you think you know what it looks like, then you realize that you don't. There are so many different breeds with different characteristics, that there is no "average sheep" image one can draw up.

I think this is Lincoln (correct me if I'm wrong)

Blue face Leicester

Teeny kitteh

Getting trimmed. The sheep must be very scared on the pedestal like that. They hold very still.

Working sheepdog demo. One of my favorites. I think the kiddies were getting too hot in the sun to enjoy it. Bummer. Maybe next time!

Blade shearing demo.

I didn't know that sheep didn't recognize each other once they are shorn. Apparently they look and smell different, so they fight to establish hierarchy within the flock. I find this really amusing. Dumb sheep.

And my favorite moment! I got to meet the inspiring, wonderful, talented, lovely Ms. Judith MacKenzie McCuin!

I was totally flabbergasted and forgot that she lives in Washington State. Duh! I hope I didn't offend her. But she was really nice about it, and signed my copy of the Intentional Spinner.

I was really good and only bought 4oz of polwarth and 6oz of Jacob. Lovely stuff. More Sunday.