Hodge Podge Spinning

I have a couple of things on my wheel right now, and by that, I mean I have three bobbins, each with a different kind of fiber on them.

Bobbin 1
     100% alpaca that I dyed myself... and kind of felted. Yeah, it's not so fun to spin, though not terrible if I fluff it out before I start for the day. Hopefully will end up in the Celestarium shawl one day. Need to be a bit darker first.

Bobbin 2
   Alpaca/Merino blend, all natural and hard to see the differences. It's a roughly 66/33 split, but I'm blending them myself, by holding strips of each together. We'll see how it goes, hopefully pretty well, though it is kind of a pain to try to keep both kinds of fiber in all parts of the yarn.

Bobbin 3
    Milk protein top and silk cloud. I had small amounts of each of these and found that they were both difficult to spin on their own, so of course the solution is to spin them together.

There's really nothing to see at this point, but I'm venturing into blending on my own. I'm sure there are better ways to blend top, but this is how I'm doing it for now.

Adventures with a Ball Winder

I need one soooo badly!

A friend of mine let me borrow his ball wonder the other week. Wow, it was so great! I caked all my handspun and a few commercial yarns as well. It was so quick and easy, though it was a bit loud.

I guess the next step is to try the method I saw on Pinterest where you wrap it with a stand mixer. I keep putting it off for some reason. Apparently it's very quick, but I can't seem to feel that it wouldn't really help the noise factor.

 

This one isn't mine, it's from geocachingknitter.blogspot.com, but you get the idea of how it is supposed to work. But it looks like that will wait for another day...

Braid Dying

Today we're going to go back in time a bit and go over how I dyed that yellow alpaca that did so well at the fair.

I figured it was only 3.5 ounces, so if there was ever a good time to experiment with alpaca this was it. I was going for a variegated yellow-orange fiber. I knew I wanted the whole thing to be on a base of yellow, so I just threw the braid into my crock pot and then added the dye.

It probably would have helped quite a bit if I had soaked it first, but it came out basically orange on the surface.
I washed it, let it dry- while still in the braid. After it was dried I pulled out the braid and decided that there was more white than I wanted. So I braided it again, which left different sections exposed, as you can see below.

It went back into the crock pot, washed, dried, and spun into this!

 

It didn't end up quite as variegated as I had hoped originally, but there is still some white and a bit of orange in there too. It probably won't become a standard method for dying, but it was fun to try.

100th post and news from the Fair!

So apparently this is my 100th post; I guess I feel slightly less horrible about not posting more this month because I have some pretty big news in the scheme of my knitting/spinning life to share.

 

First, I got a new card reader so my camera and new(ish) computer can talk, so hopefully no more blurry pictures. Sorry about all of those. I may have to take some make up shots of my various yarns, but we'll save that for another day.

 

This last week was the local fair! I entered 5 items, two knit and 3 skeins, into the novice category. I know, I know, I'm really not a novice knitter, but I think I really do still qualify as a novice spinner, and this fair lets you enter as a novice your first year almost regardless of experience (granted if I ever find a fair that has similar rules, I won't be taking advantage of the real newbie's). And it worked out this year; I was the only novice, so I wasn't taking ribbons away from someone who is really new. Anyway, here's how it all went down.

 

Gotland- 2 ply- from Tour de Fleece
First place in novice 100% wool 2 ply
I was very happy about this, as this was my first skein to hang straight directly off the niddy noddy. The judge also made some nice comments about the consistency of the ply, so yay!

Dyed BFL- 2 ply- Spun in January or February
Second in novice 100% wool 2 ply
Since these first two skeins were spun so far apart, it's nice to see that the latter really was better. This skein, along with three others is marked for a shawl from the Malabrigo Book 4. That also means I get to enter the shawl next year in a special category called "Second Time Around." I hope it'll work out, I might have some issues with the gauge...

That lovely alpaca sweater from my handspun alpaca!
First place in novice large wearable items
This is where I got to show that I really was a novice, to the fair at least. Apparently when you spin the yarn and then enter the project, the judges like to know that you spun the yarn and didn't buy it. I probably could have gotten bonus points if I had said this was my first "real sweater", but I didn't (I guess that's not fair, I did knit a little sweater for Tiny when she was like 3, but for some reason I never count that as a sweater...).

Tapiz Mitts- Malabrigo Silky Merino- 4 color Fair Isle
First Place novice small wearable item
Started the first one right after the alpaca sweater in like February, and finished the second one less than a month ago, but they made it. The judges liked my color choices, and there weren't many other color work items, so that will have to be something to keep in mind for future fairs.

Last but not least, 100% alpaca- 2 ply- from TDF

First place novice exotic fibers

 

I wasn't even going to enter this because I dyed it with food coloring (which I will tell you about at some point), but a friend told me to put it in because not too many do exotic fibers and it should do well. It made it into the special awards case. It didn't get a special award, but it was in the case with all of them. Pretty good considering it's only the second time I've spun alpaca other than what I did for that sweater.

 

So I can now say that I am an award winning spinner and knitter. I don't have to tell people what the awards were, but I do have awards. I already have thoughts going 'round for next year's fair to help keep the ribbons coming!