Category Archives: Spinning

Having a play with carding

A couple of weeks ago Lisa very kindly brought her new-to-her drum carder along to spinning group and let me have a play with it.

I think my carding technique needs improvement but it was a lot of fun! I had two shades of red merino fibre which I blended together. Both from Fibrecrafts, the darker colour is called Crimson, and the brighter one Scarlet.

Here is a very bad picture of the two different colours, the darker on the left, the brighter on the right.

And here is one of the carded batts. I did just one pass, and put the colours in in layers so you can’t see the blended colours particularly well here.

There are a few knobbly bits where my feeding onto the carder wasn’t particularly good, and they have made the spinning a little bit lumpy (along with my general inexperience). I have started spinning the singles, and have done about half now. I am hoping to do a bit more of this over Christmas.

Hopefully you can sort of see the two colours. It is eventually going to be a 3ply, hopefully about DK weight, and become part of my handspun leaves waistcoat. I must assess the yarn I have spun so far for that, and see how I am doing.

Loseley Country Fair

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Back on the 27th of September (I am catching up, I am just a bit slow!) I helped out on the West Surrey Guild of Spinners, Weavers, and Dyers stand at the Loseley Country Show.

Here we all are setting the stand up.

And here spinning away!

We had about 6 or 7 spinners, a couple of weavers, and Mary demonstrating God’s Eye weaving and woven bracelets on a table at the front which was a big hit with the kids.

It was a fun day out, we had a great site for the stand, just to the side of the main arena and for most of the day we were packed with people coming to see what we were doing. It was only really quiet for the first and last 1/2 hours of the day. The only disadvantage with it being so busy was that I didn’t get much of a chance to see what else was at the show, although I did have time to have a quick dash around near the end, and you can’t come to Loseley without getting an ice-cream 🙂

I was spinning some dark brown alpaca, and then some lovely silk hankies which Lisa gave me.

I bought the alpaca fibre from Fibrecrafts, and it was very nice to spin once I got the hang of it. A bit different to the shetland I had been spinning before.

I am very pleased with the way it has come out. It is lovely and soft and squishy. It is a 2ply, roughly DK weight, and I have 102g and 166.5m. It is going to be part of the handspun leaves waistcoat.

The silk was dyed in beautiful shades of pale purple, but I’m afraid I don’t have a photo of the hankies because I was too impatient and just dived in. It was really interesting to spin silk, it’s very strong and very fine. Since the hankies contain the whole cocoon there are all different lengths of fibre in there, so the yarn does tend to come out with some lumpy bits. I am keen to have a go at spinning silk top to see how that compares.

Here are my efforts (in several skeins because I snapped it a couple of times while plying)

This is barmily thin, rather like lumpy sewing thread 🙂 I haven’t worked out what I am going to make with it yet, I have 55m of 2ply, something interesting and lacy I think.

Black Shetland

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I have finally finished spinning the black Shetland fibre I bought as something to practice with while I got used to Susie. This was very nice to spin, very easy even for a beginner. The yarn is a 3ply and is a thinnish DK weight, it is a bit wobbly but I am getting better! It is going to be part of my handspun leaves waistcoat.

I thoroughly tested the capacity of my bobbins while plying, and was very impressed to get 190g on one bobbin! This is about twice the amount I could get on the Ashford.

Altogether I have 303g and 741m.

I am going to go and wind it into balls now so it will be ready to knit with.

Handspun leaves waistcoat

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One of my contributions to the Show and Tell at this years patchwork knitting workshop was the start of this waistcoat.

The grand plan is to make something using some of my first few bits of spinning. To give it a moderately coherent look I am going to stick to natural shades of brown and black, and some reds which I have dyed.

The modules are reversible ribbed leaf shapes which I first saw at a workshop with Horst Schulz three or four years ago. I don’t think it is in any of his books, and the notes I have taken are a bit on the sketchy side! The safety pin stuck in the brown alpaca leaf is to remind me which is the right side. Although the pattern is reversible, I wanted to be consistent with always starting a new leaf on the same side, and it was getting a bit time consuming to have to work it out each time. The waistcoat has actually looked the same since the workshop while I spin a bit more yarn to add to it. I thought I had loads of yarn when I started, but once I collected it together it wasn’t quite as much, or as much variety as I had first thought! I have just finished some black shetland and some dark brown alpaca which will go into it too. I am trying to make it a random collection of colours, not in any particular pattern, but I’m not terribly good at random.

Luckily this pattern is quite forgiving of my rather inconsistent handspun, some of them are quite a bit thicker than others, and the brown alpaca with the safety pin is very dense! I am going to try and spread out my earlier yarns among my later ones so the finished article isn’t too lopsided.

A bit more pre-tour yarn

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I realised that I hadn’t shown you my first attempt at spinning sock yarn yet. I actually spun this before the red BFL. This is superwash bluefaced leicester again, dyed in the fibre, in a progression of colours, rather than a random mixture. I am hoping that as the yarn is knitted the colours will gradually shade from green through turquoise to purple. We shall see how successful this is!

There is 75g in each skein, and about 340m altogether. It measures about 13 wpi and so is somewhere between a 4ply weight and a DK weight.

I spun the lower skein first, and I think I got a bit over-keen with the plying of the second as it is plyed quite a lot tighter than the first. I’m not sure yet how much this will affect the finished socks. They may end up coming out slightly different sizes. I will just have to remember to wear the bigger sock on my bigger foot 🙂

A bit of pre-tour yarn

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With all the excitement about Le Tour de Fleece I failed to blog about some yarn I finished shortly before the tour started.

This is some superwash Bluefaced Leicester dyed in the fibre by me. I used the left overs in shades of red and brown from the dyeing day at Ash.

I like how it has come out, mostly red, but with little bits of brown and a variety of shades of red. There is 232m and 100g and it is about a 4ply ish weight, bits of it are a bit thicker 🙂 It is going to become part of my handspun waistcoat which at the moment exists only in my head.

Le Tour de Fleece: Day Twenty-Three

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Well today is the final day of the tour. For me it has been a sprint all the way to the line to finish off this yarn.

First off here is the finished yarn from yesterday.

Today I spun up 50g of BFL:

Then plied it until one of my BFL bobbins ran out:

This was 103g, 279m.

Then I plied the remaining grey Dorset with both ends of the BFL to create a 3 ply again, until the BFL ran out. This was 14g, 41m.

The remaining 1g of grey Dorset I chain plied to create 7m of what feels like garden twine. I’m afraid I didn’t take a photo of that (you aren’t missing much). I think part of the problem was that the Dorset isn’t very soft, and part of the problem was that I plied far too tightly.

I am pretty impressed with what I have managed to achieve in the Tour de Fleece. I have just had a tot up and have spun 730m of 3ply out of the Dorset fleece, which works out as 2190m of singles! This is not including the bobbin of black Shetland which I haven’t measured. It has also been fantastic to see everyone else’s spinning, it has given me loads of ideas for things I would like to try. Roll on next year! (I think I might have a bit of a rest first)

Le Tour de Fleece: Day Twenty-Two

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Exciting finish on the top of Mont Ventoux today! I have actually achieved quite a lot in my spinning too.

First here is the finished skein from yesterday. This is one strand of white Dorset, one of grey Dorset cross and one of superwash Bluefaced Leicester. I have 93g and 278m. I still haven’t managed to measure the thickness but am guessing around 4ply / fingering weight.

Then I spun up my remaining 18g of superwash BFL:

and plied it with the remains of the grey Dorset and BFL. Here is the plied yarn on the bobbin:

and on the skeiner:

This weighs 43g and measures 124.5m, a similar thickness to the previous skein.

I still have loads of grey Dorset and the first bobbin of BFL left so I went for a dig upstairs and found another 50g of BFL, and I will spin that tomorrow to ply with the remnants.

In celebration of the newly fixed washing machine I have washed the sheets today, so I had better go and put them back on the bed so I can get a reasonably early night. Finish of the tour tomorrow!

Le Tour de Fleece: Day Twenty-One

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I started my plying today. So far 278 metres done. I haven’t measured the thickness yet, but it looks to be about a 4ply weight at a rough guess. Here it is on the bobbin:

And here on the skeiner:

I am plying together one strand of grey Dorset, one of white Dorset, and one of superwash bluefaced leicester. I have now run out of the white Dorset, but there is still quite a lot of the grey Dorset and the bfl, so I think I shall spin up the rest of the bfl fibre I have (there was about 18g that I couldn’t fit on the bobbin yesterday), and ply that together with the leftovers. I am really interested to see what this will be like when knitted up.

Le Tour de Fleece: Day Twenty

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Today was a race around the Lac d’Annecy in the individual time trial. I don’t have a lake here, and racing round our pond would be a bit tricky with the hedge in the way, so I settled for spinning like mad in the living room. I feel I gave even Alberto Contador a race for his money today with my spinning!

My bobbin of superwash bluefaced leicester is finished!

I think this is the fastest I have spun. I managed a whole bobbin in only 2 days. It is fairly fine too. Barring major disasters I should be able to finish this yarn before the end of the tour.

So, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we ply! (ok I have been dying to say that for ages – apologies for the bad pun)