Fear of Warping

I never completed my final project for my weaving class because I was pretty much on my own. My teacher was out of town for a good six weeks and I felt so intimidated by warping the loom without a hand to hold.
I do have a backstrap loom around here and a rigid heddle of a sorts (old and a different from the ones I see in weaving catalogs).
But I found the solution or so I think at this point.

This is a Brio loom. Brio as in Thomas the Tank Engine train set and all those other wonderful toys for preschoolers!
The fact that it is for a child makes the warping less intimidating. Although I imagine the warping is probably supposed to be done by an adult while the child gets to do the fun part-the actual weaving. Still I think it might help me get over my fear of warping.
I picked the little loom up at a thrift store. It just seemed to be the perfect opportunity to wrestle with this uneasiness.
While I was there, I picked up 21 copies of an old magazine "Handweaver & Craftsman", all from the sixties and early seventies.






I looked through the magazines quickly and am now going through one by one and reading the articles. But one of the first things that caught my eye was this wonderful wheel called the Penguin Quill.



Isn't it cool? I want one. I don't care how it spins.


In the first magazine I went through pretty thoroughly, I found an article on Lichen Dyeing. This is wonderful since I missed Judith MacKenzie McCuin's class at Black Sheep Gathering on that very subject this past weekend.
For such a short article, I gleaned more information on the practical approaches to lichen dyeing than from a book devoted entirely to the subject.
All of the lichens that produce the scarlets and purples need ammonia to extract the dye. Soaking for a few days or even a few weeks in a solution of ammonia & water (I'll check on the exact ratio) will yield the colors. But a quick way to check if a lichen will produce these colors is to put a drop of Chlorox on the powdered lichen. If the drop turns scarlet, then you have your hands on some wonderful dyestuff.




I spun up the kid mohair roving that I dyed in turquoise & brown leaving lots of white spots. I love the yarn!

It's about 220 yards of a 2 ply that is half way between fingering weight and laceweight. I thought that it wasn't enough to do much with. Perhaps I'd get a wimpy little airy scarf. Then I realized that I never consider combining my handspun with commercial yarn. I began to get playful, pulling out balls of yarn and finally found some Crystal Palace Kid Merino that I thought would be fun.





It's just a scarf. It really is fun to knit because the blueish yarn changes so much that I keep knitting just to see what's next.
I was imagining if I had more yarn what I would do with it. The scarf feels like a swatch. Of course I have enough for a cap.




But I was fantasizing about having enough do make something like this:





Well I liked the turquoise, brown & white colorway so much I dyed about 4 ounces of silk caps with the same dyes.
Silk caps are the degummed cocoons laid out over a mold that is shaped like a bell or a cap. There are many thin, thin layers.


They have more white than I planned on. I soaked the silk for a couple of days to wet it properly but either I have to break up the caps into thinner layers or I have to weight the caps down with something. The dyes will only penetrate thoroughly wetted fiber.
It should be fun to see what it ends up looking like spun up.

Missing In Action

Wow! It's been more than a month since I posted!
I haven't been completely idle...just busy with many different things.
I've been dyeing quite a bit in hopes of selling in my Etsy Store.
Here's some mohair top in the process of getting handpainted.











The mohair came out a little less vivid than I wanted.
This one is not all that attractive in the roving form but the idea is to have the chocolate and white tone down the vividness of the turquoise.












This one I'm calling Spring Mix and I'm guessing the spun yarn will be a grayish yarn with shimmerings of blues and pinks with a bit of green and brown.









My absolute favorite colorway so far. I used this one on some tussah silk I sold and here it is again on some angora top. I'm so tempted to keep this and spin it up myself. This is actually proof that mixing your own colors gives better results. It's just Jacquard Scarlet and the Scarlet mixed with Sun Yellow. It would be very difficult to find a premixed orange-y peach to complement the Scarlet. Of course this is color mixing in its infancy but it's encouraging. That book by Deb Menz Color in Spinning was so helpful. I do actually own Colorworks by Menz which is a crash course in color theory. I really need to pull that out again. For now I'm thrashing about madly experimenting and having fun with no thought of wasting fiber. Well, it can always be overdyed or plied with another color. And sometimes the most hideous rovings turn into the most beautiful yarns.













And sometimes the most beautiful rovings make so so yarns. But I think the angora will not be one of those.












Alright...this is a little clownish but I purposely left the core of the fiber undyed (instead of redyeing it when I discovered the lack of pigment inside the roving) so the colors will be more muted when spun. Not exactly pastel but moving in that direction. This is Henry's Attic superwash roving. So delightful to spin! It always makes such a springy yarn.


I have to smile at this colorway. I am really tempted to spin it myself to see what will happen to it. Which brings me to the problem of wanting to spin up everything I dye, just to see what will happen, just to see if it's okay.
I will end up spinning one of the mohair tops and part of the clown roving and at least a small bit of the angora just to be certain of all of them being a good product.
If I continue dyeing, it is always going to be tempting to just go ahead and spin everything. I see trouble ahead for this new enterprise.
I have been spinning a bit. I finished up some merino in Mojave colorway from Ashland Bay which right now is having its twist set in the bathtub so it's not pictured here.
But I struggled with my camel/silk roving that I bought from Crown Mountain Farm. It's not the roving, it's me. I spun less than 4 ounces so far in a very stressed state. It has to affect the yarn. I'm making a 3 ply and I still have only 2 bobbins filled.
















For the past week, I've been spinning up this merino from Ashland Bay in Sage. I think I had about 6 or 7 ounces and still have more to spin but I'm tempted to just go ahead and ply what I have to see what this yarn is going to look like. It's going to be a very thin 3 ply. I don't think I have the patience to wait.



Besides I'm ready for a little color after camel and sage!!!





At the last minute, I decided not to use my handspun for the Gothic Leaf Stole. I walked into Weaving Works when they were having their Mother's Day sale. I'd been eyeing the Henry's Attic Prime Alpaca and it did occur to me that I am a mother.
I'm so pleased with the alpaca and I love the stole so far. You can't see the lace pattern yet but maybe this will give you some idea.












I had to throw it in the hay pile to photograph it because everything is so messy around here. The hay pile is really the neatest area.

It is so much easier to use a thicker yarn for lace! I really did overchallenge myself to start out with such thin yarns and slippery ones at that.
I am proud to say that I haven't used any lifelines so far. I've hardly made any mistakes and those I have made I've been able to correct right away!!




I was picking up a copy of Handwoven because I knew that I would have my name in the Welcome New Weavers section but I was doubly thrilled to see that my teacher, Sue Willingham has an article in this edition.

I Love Dyeing!

It's so much fun to dye! I think it runs a close second to spinning.
I've been dyeing silk and mohair this past week.
Oh and I bought my first fleece!

Luckily, it was washed for me and most of the vegetable matter was removed. So I'm not sure if it really counts as my first fleece.
It's kid mohair from a goat named Jasmine who lives on Grandview Goats farm.



I couldn't wait to dye it. I threw it in the pot pretty quickly.






And days later, it's still drying! I didn't think ahead to making a drying frame. I put it in a laundry basket with holes and propped it on a clothes drying rack outside.









And in the evenings, I placed it in a pillow case and gave it a little time on my oil filled radiator.
It's straight from the jar Jacquard Acid Dye in Sapphire Blue.

I had some fun with some silk hankies and tussah silk roving too.
I had a few ounces of the hankies so I was just experimenting.
They went from this:








Painted in a haphazard way..reminiscent of 60s tie dye. And then sealed in plastic wrap and into the steamer.




This was so much fun because I had no end in mind. There wasn't much of the fiber so I didn't care if something really ugly happened. In fact, I even courted the horrendous. You might not agree but I ended up with something kind of interesting.


I plied the silk with some mossy green alpaca.










I also dyed some tussah silk roving with thought of selling it.
I really like this one:






This roving was done pretty much similarly to the hankies. Hand painted and then wrapped in plastic and steamed on a low setting so the silk maintains its luster.





I played around a bit with some other colors and some more tussah roving.







Now this one I was less happy with. I was hesitant to sell it and dithered awhile and thought it might be good for me to spin it up myself just to get a better feel for handpainting silk fibers.












On the bobbin:










And then about half of it plied into a skein:





It's so much fun. I think I'll try to squeeze some more in this week.

Stole With Bee

I'm having difficulty getting photos of the stole. We got one very good one but it highlighted a snag and then looking closely I saw what must have been a dropped stitch in the lace pattern so I didn't want to use that one. Truly, there are more than a few snags and I expect there will be more as it gets worn but I have only found two areas where the pattern is messed up a little. I suspect I dropped a stitch in these places.
Here's one with a visiting bee. (Well, it is called Hanging Garden Lace Stole.)


I really am pleased with the stole even though it is not completely flawless. It is so soft and it drapes beautifully. Despite it's size, it works well as a long scarf. Exactly the way I'll wear it. It turns out to be a good color for me unlike the shawls I made last year.
Ah, when I enlarge the photo, it becomes quite obvious where the flaws are! Still happy, though. I tend to tread the fine line of challenging myself but not to be too rigorous in my expectations if it will discourage me from continuing.












I took a break from spinning up the rest of the baby camel/merino blend and spun up the entire 8 ounces of the moss baby alpaca. I ended up with only 200 yards of a 3 ply of about "worsted" weight!!! I know alpaca is heavier than wool and yes, I did seem to break off a lot of fiber as I spun but it seems a very low yield even taking those 2 factors into consideration. I had a hard time getting the settings on the wheel and my spinning method just right. One bobbin was overspun in places. I think this is because I just started spinning the alpaca in front of a subtitled movie. The resulting yarn seems "okay" but it isn't my best effort. This is a constant problem with me. I attain some skill and then get a little sloppy and end up with something not really up to my current skill level.









I'm back to the camel/merino and I'm being very careful to try to maintain consistency with the first skein. If all goes as planned, I'll have 440 yards of a 2 ply of about fingering weight. It's a very round yarn for a 2 ply.

And I finally decided on the yarn for my next large lace project. I had spun up a half pound of merino from Ashlnd Bay as a 2 ply slightly heavier than lace weight that should work well. It's a mossy green called Garden Ivy.












My fear was that I didn't have quite enough but then I found the other half pound of unspun fiber. In a pinch, I can always spin up a little more.

Blocking the Hanging Garden Stole..Finally!!!

After 9 months of knitting...off and on, it's true, it's finally being blocked.

Unfortunately, the pretty stripes are not part of the stole...just the towel lying beneath it.
I have to confess that I'm pretty lax about getting everything just right during the blocking. I just tell myself.......next time I wash it.
I left some ends to weave in to fix after the stole is dried.
I'll get a photo of the stole once it's dried. It's a lovely lambswool/cashmere blend from Makalu Yarns in Canada. The design is one of Sivia Harding's. I bought it from Knitpicks but I just looked and can't seem to find it for sale anymore.
I have been spinning too.
This 8 oz. of baby alpaca top from Little Barn in Alabama, my new favorite fiber source.

A mossy green, in person.




I'm planning a 3 ply..hoping for about sock weight yarn. I just bought this beautiful book.

A collection of historic designs from the Selbu District in Norway. All mittens and gloves. Traditionally worked in black and white but I see possibilities for using handspun in whatever colors are on hand.
I snapped up the book because it's published by the author. At this particular point in time, I imagine the number of copies is small and it could go out of print more quickly than other books.
I usually take my time purchasing books. Like this one:


I have this out from the library for the second time. It's a wonderful book and I know I'll have to buy it eventually.








I spun up half of the 8 ounces of baby camel/merino blend and got this:

About 220 yards of 2 ply of about fingering weight. I spun it up on the double treadle Babe I bought off craig's list last December. I never really got a chance to try it out. The flyer seems to have something rough that the fiber catches on. I don't think it affect the yarn. It's just terribly annoying. I switched the flyer with the one from my single treadle and got through it all. I like the yarn and will spin up the rest of the fiber.


Most of all, I am so happy to actually have finished a piece of knitting! I swore I wouldn't do any large lace projects but I'll probably start another because Sivia Harding is doing a Gothic Leaf Stole knitalong. I plan on taking my time with it. Let's face it, taking my time would probably happen anyway without me planning it.

Plied!

It was a fun spin! I ended up with 150 yards of this handpainted superwash merino.

Llama Lace

After not too much thinking or planning, I jumped in and started a scarf with my 2 ply llama yarn. I usually get held up with sampling and nixing everything but this time I charged ahead. My thoughts are generally "Don't waste your handspun on anything other than something you'll be proud of." or "If you're going to spend all that time making something, it really should be the best you can come up with." All well and good but lately these reservations are making me very unproductive.
So I dove in with a lace pattern I charted out.








I do like the lace but I'm not sure about the yarn, needle size etc. I'm trying to be optimistic.









I did ply up that 3 ply out of the merino Rose Quartz but I still need to set the twist.
















And I couldn't resist spinning up the roving I was going to put in my Etsy store.











Already on my third bobbin with my fingers jonesing to ply. So curious what it's going to look like.