Look What I Got! September 6, 2011

 

What could be in the box?  And why does it have a huge question mark on it?  That seems mysterious.

 

  

 

*gasp!*  It’s a Schacht Sidekick!

 

 

 

It’s so small!  The cat isn’t even scared of it.  Folded up, it’s 21.5 inches tall, 8 inches wide, and 15 inches deep.  And it only weighs 13 pounds!  Which, honestly, is lighter than my laptop and just 3 pounds heavier than that cat.

 

 

Unfolded, the wheel is still delightfully small.  The orifice is 25 inches tall once it’s all together, which is a nice comfortable height.  The treadles are great.  It’s noisier than my Matchless; I’m not sure if that’s because of the rubber drive band or what.  I don’t remember the Sidekick that I tried at the Sock Summit being noisy, but it might have been that the ambient noise was too high for me to hear it.  Or I was just too excited to pay attention.

 

 

 

Look at how cute it is!  That drive wheel is so small.  And blue, I love that it’s blue.  So far I’ve spun a little on it- not as much as I’d like because I’ve been pretty busy with a new Knit Picks pattern and some late summer house cleaning.  But so far it’s great!  I’m going to find/make a nice padded case for it.  It comes with a carrying strap, but it’s a little short for my taste- the wheel is basically in your armpit when you put the strap on your shoulder.

 

Hmm, maybe I’ll go spin on it right now!

Hot Off the Wheel April 12, 2011

Not much going on here right now.  So here’s the pretty yarn I just spun last weekend.

 

 

This is the Hanks in the Hood batt that I tore into rolags in this post here.  It’s 3 oz, 50% merino, 50% bamboo.  I had trouble getting the right colors in the photos; the yarn is really a cool combination of grey-green and teal.

 

 

I spun this with a woolen long draw on my wheel, which gave me a nice poofy squishy yarn with great drape.  Very similar to the yarn I made in December, which was the point.  It varies between a DK and sport weight yarn and I think I’ve got about 80 yards of it.  I forgot to keep count of the turns around the niddy-noddy, so the yardage is a very rough estimate.

 

Did I mention that woolen long draw is fast?  I spun up the singles in just a few hours and plied in half the time.  But I like using worsted yarns better.  I think I’m going to spin up some worsted laceweight on my wheel next.

Bat, Bat, and Batt February 7, 2011

This is a bat.

 

This is a bat.

 

 

And this is a batt.

 

 

A Hanks in the Hood batt, to be exact.  The beauty above is half merino and half bamboo.  The shiny light blue fibers are the bamboo; the greenish fibers are the merino. 

Batts are made by putting fibers through a drum carder.  The process is similar to hand carding but is less time-consuming because of the large surface area of the drum.  Carders can blend fibers or colors together or allow them to be layered. 

 

Batts can be intimidating.  When unfolded, a batt is a big (seriously big!) rectangle of combed fibers, completely unlike the wrist-thick snakes of roving or top that are so common.  There are lots of different ways to spin batts- for example, you can pick a corner and start spinning, or strip it into roving and spin it that way. 

 

Usually I buy strips of top and spin them worsted.  I really value stitch definition in my yarns, so I didn’t think I would ever want to spin woolen which is softer but lacks definition.  But I started to get interested after I bought a Russian spindle.  It’s physically impossible to use a worsted short draw on a supported spindle like that!  (Ask me how I know.)  Having searched all over Russia (story coming later) and finally getting a spindle, I really wanted to use it.  And to do that, I needed a carded fiber, ideally one in the form of rolags.  I would have liked to make my own (I have plenty of “experimenting merino”) but I don’t have any hand cards and those things are expensive!

 

Wait, what was I talking about?  Oh right, batts.  I took the plunge and bought a batt when I realized that I could make a batt into rolags and spin them with a woolen long draw.  Ironically, I didn’t use the batt on my Russian spindle.  I decided to use the batt to spin and knit Lowell’s grandmother a birthday hat.  (Not a party hat, just a hat given to her on her birthday.)  This sounds like a lovely idea, right?  Especially since I had never used rolags, never spun with a long backwards draw, only had two weeks to spin then ply and then knit the hat, and I was travelling for one of those weeks.

 

But I did it!  I spun half the batt, which was the same as the one above in every aspect except color, on my Cascade Mt. Baker spindle.  The spindle broke just as I finished the first ply, so I had to spin the second single on my Matchless.  Don’t worry, a little wood glue has fixed the spindle right as rain, plus I got two more spindles for Christmas.  I was shocked- I loved spinning long draw.  I loved the little rolags, even though I had to join a new one every few minutes.  Do you know something- spinning woolen is fast.  I mean, seriously fast.  I ate up rolags like they were chocolate truffles.  I was done spinning and then plying the 4 oz batt in just over a week, even including spindle malfunction and travelling.  I even got the two singles to match up in length with only a five inch difference!  I swear, this was a magic batt!

 

  

 

The yarn was beautiful.  It was soft and squishy, the drape was lovely, the bamboo made little shiny highlights, it was warm.  I was in love with this yarn and so was everyone else who touched it.  It was so nice that I’m kind of afraid to spin the other batt- what if it doesn’t come out as well?  Now, to be fair, the making of this yarn was not entirely without trouble.  I rolled the batt into rolags with the merino on the outside and the bamboo on the inside.  Often what would happen when I spun them is that the merino would pull off from the outside, leaving me at the end with a core of pure bamboo which was slippery and hard to spin long draw.  It also ruined the look I was going for, which was a mostly blended merino/bamboo yarn.  But, I still love how it turned out and, in retrospect, if I hadn’t been so stressed to finish in time, the bamboo wasn’t so bad.

 

Next post, I’ll show you how I made the batt into rolags as I prepare that blue batt up there to turn into a hopefully luscious yarn.

 

Oh, and here’s the finished product:

 

 

A simple beanie style hat with a garter brim and a wavy, lacy pattern.

 

 

 

In the one on the right, you can really see the long runs of bamboo, even though the color is all off.

 

The happy recipient!

Side Effects Include January 5, 2010

Suffer from depression? Try Spinnyng, the new drug from ancient civilizations. Side effects may include sensitive thumbs, spinner’s limp, fuzzy growths known as "supplies," slubs, and increased risk of cashmere which could lead to serious problems with qiviut.

Ask your doctor for more information about Spinnyng!

 

I’ve been very diligent about taking my Spinnyng every day.  So far, I’ve managed to grow my stash quite a bit, following the plan laid out by my last post.  Let’s see, this pretty braid came from Knit Purl in Portland:

I ran over to Knit Purl while everyone else was finishing their coffee (conveniently located two blocks from the yarn shop).  I might have gotten a few other things while I was there, including some Malabrigo Worsted in Oceanos and Madelinetosh merino in Fjord.  Oh yes, the fiber is Chameleon Colorworks 100% Blue Faced Leicester in the Taos colorway.

 

I also managed to connive the family into taking me to Weaving Works, under the pretense that it’s an interesting store even if you don’t do fiber crafts.  I’m not sure they bought it.  But I bought a lot of fiber!  I bought 2 oz of dyed merino in a colorway they call “Autumn.”  And they had some dyed merino/bamboo in the most gorgeous blue-grey that I couldn’t resist.  I got some of that (maybe more than “some”), some light blue, and a warm brown in the same fiber which is officially the first fiber that I’ve bought with an actual finished product in mind.  I plan on these fibers becoming a scarf of some sort, although I haven’t really thought about what kind of yarn I want to make yet.  I don’t quite feel confident enough in my spinning abilities to tackle that project yet.

 

        

 

But I am getting in good practice!  Check out this bobbin:

 

This is the 2.5 oz of Blue Faced Leicester that I bought in October from Weaving Works.  I dyed it with some food coloring using a hot pour technique.  It’s mostly light green with some spots of white, teal, and brown.  Not my best dye job, but then this isn’t my best spinning either.  This is purely practice spinning, although if I get something useable out of it I’ll be happy.  I just filled up the first bobbin tonight and started a second one.  Spinning is the best part of my day right now.  Very meditative and soothing, no pressure.  I go into my studio, put on an audiobook, and suddenly it’s two hours later.  I’m so addicted to spinning right now that I’ve even started bringing my spindle around town instead of a sock project!

 

But doing worry, loyal knitters, I have a new scarf pattern on the way.  It uses some very yummy Malabrigo Worsted.

Loot December 28, 2009

Yikes, this last week has been busy!  Family in town, Christmas preparation, tons of cooking… I’ve barely picked up my needles!  Let alone sit down to write a blog post.  Happily, the holiday season has gone off with barely a hitch.  Nothing burned in the kitchen (I cooked my first ham and turkey,) no one got brained with a Rock Band controller, and Santa did not trip down the stairs to fill stockings in the middle of the night.

 

We did have to make some last minute stockings, but they turned out pretty well.  My mother-in-law and I picked out a different fleece and button for each person.  We cut out the fleece in a vague stocking shape and then whip-stitched the two halves together.  Then we added a strip of green fleece to the top as trim, also whip-stitched, and sewed on a piece of fleece to hang the stockings.  The buttons hid the sewing of the hanger.  We might have added names (or more likely initials) if we had had more time.  They’re pretty cute, yes?

 

     

 

This was a great Christmas for knitting.  I got a slew of great books

 

and the Spin Off calendar and a great Knittyspin shirt

  

 

and two Sheep Incognito prints, High Strung and Dare to be Different

 

 

I love Conni Togel’s style.  Her sheep are so cute!  And funny.

 

And, the biggest gift…

 

MY VERY OWN SCHACHT MATCHLESS.  Read that again.  SCHACHT MATCHLESS.  It treadles like a dream.  And it’s so pretty.  I just have to pet it every time I pass it.  I have to be careful not to drool it.

 

  

 

To go with my spinning wheel, my in-laws gave me some Bijou yak fiber and a beautiful orifice hook (it has a clover on it, maybe it will bring me spinning luck?) and a WPI tool.  These were bought at Village Wools, one of my favorite stores in Albuquerque.

     

 

Have to cut this short, we’re heading down to Pike Place and everyone’s waiting for me.  I’m hoping that if I look really cute in my new spinning shirt and start twitching from fiber withdrawal, they’ll let me swing by Weaving Works on the way.