Oh My!

It's been a long time!
I've been dyeing, spinning and knitting quite a bit...squeezing it in to what seems to be very busy days but I can't honestly say what is keeping me so busy.
I had an awful lot of fun with some silk.
I dyed some tussah silk roving in two colorways.










And spun each into a 3-ply skein.





I love to show the process of transformation!




Remember the silk hankies that I had previously posted drying outside. They were mostly white with blues and a bit of brown. I spun them up into another 3-ply.





This was such a quick spin because I was forced to use the woolen spinning method. I really ended up liking the yarn. Here's a bit of it swatched. (I think I haven't even set the twist yet though!)









I photographed it against the scarf I'm knitting in some commercial yarn and some handspun mohair but what struck me was how much better this yarn would have worked.






Alpaca Granny (Sorry I can't do hyperlinks or even manage to place an url here.) asked me what I did with the silk caps. I asked my friend Guy to take a few shots. He's not very used to a camera but I think he did manage to get shots that give an idea of the process.

After openning the silk caps, I pull one layer off.









And then I poked a hole in it.
















And then I stretch and pull the silk into a roving.










Then you have roving ready to spin.


This method works really well for people that are adept at drafting roving but it works pretty well for people like me that don't have that much practice. It is also possible to just go ahead and knit with the roving as is. You could pull it into the diameter that works best for the results you want to achieve.



I was so intimidated by the next method until I tried it. It is so easy! And amazingly fast! It's using a distaff for the bells. I imagine this only works for caps but I really don't know absolutely for sure.
First you open the bells up.






Do you see that neat hollowed out space? It's perfect for fitting on a distaff but even better for placing on a yarn swift. Ideally you open the swift out a bit and place some fabric on the swift before placing the silk caps on top.
I didn't do that here. In fact, I don't even open up the swift sometimes but I think that might end up damaging my swift. I'm yanking on it a lot and that can't be good. I think the idea is for the swift to turn when needed.



There's no peeling off each layer. It all just comes off as you draft.




There's also a video on youtube from Rexanne. She plies the silk as she spins. It's worth a watch.

I dyed some Blue Faced Leicester roving. What a difference from the superwash I've been working with. The superwash takes the dye like lightning... that is....... very fast so it's very difficult to get an absolutely solid color throughout the roving but the BFL took the dye beautifully and all the way through without any coaxing or contortions.















Here's the blue all spun up into a 3 ply.











And here's the bold autumn colors spun up.






You have to excuse me. I really couldn't decide which photo I liked best. Well I guess the one of the skein on the ground came out the best but I bought the piggy bank especially to showcase the yarn.





This particular roving I spun up experimentally as a single because I was knitting with some Noro Kureyon and loved the effect. I kind of intuited that the colors were too strong for a single but I still wanted to try. You can see why some handpainted rovings need to be spun and plied to tone down the intensity. Some might like it but it's not really to my taste.

You can see I have no qualms about throwing my yarn down in the dirt!








I found the best lichen book at the library. So I think I'll give lichen dyeing another try.








I'm always picking up great fiber arts books here and there but this one is worth noting here especially because there are many small projects perfect for handspun! Andean Folk Knits.










I came across this wonderful print in the local thrift store. It looks like a Russian spindle. I'm wondering what she is doing! Is she plying? Or is one of those spindles filled with predrafted fiber?