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!

Finishng up TdF2014!

So I wasn't quite as productive as I wanted to be, even though I did reach my ounce goal, but the traveling threw me off my game. Anyway here is what I got done!

Four ounces long wool in Thick'nThin

Four ounces merino/silk singles

Four ounces 2-ply gotland

Four ounces 2-ply chunky targhee

 

Three and a half ounces 2-ply fingering alpaca and four ounces long draw 2-ply merino

 

All told, that makes 23.5 ounces in a 20 day event. Not bad, and I certainly went through a lot of my fiber stash (though I did get a new shipment from Paradise Fibers at the very beginning of the Tour).

 

I guess it's time to check the graphs...

I have plenty of fiber left, but I did make it through quite a bit of my stash. It's sure a good thing that I have all those bags of fleeces in my garage. I'll have to start those up again next week.

 

I'm very excited to see what I get this month in my PF fiber club, hopefully it'll be something new and exciting! I'm sure it will be, they always put together a great  shipment. Which reminds me that I still need to post about last month's shipment, maybe over the weekend.

 

 I've also been working hard getting ready for my first fair, well as a knitter/spinner. I've taken my horse to fairs several times, but that was about 20 years ago. It's all a bit different this time around without my mom to take care of all the logistics. Anyway, that means the Tapia mitts are done! I'll have to get some pictures of those up sometime soon too!

Catching Up

 

So here is what I have been working on. The purple is Ashland Bay 100% Merino in a color called Rose Quartz; it's a nice purple, but it's not rose quartz. The yellow is a cream Baby Alpaca that I dyed yellow. Both are about 4 ounces and two-ply.

 

I was traveling from the 11th-19th. I did a bit of drop swindling, but as I was getting a blister from wrapping the single onto the spindle, I didn't get much done.

 

There are only a few days left of the TDF, but time is getting tight for finishing projects for the Fair also. The TDF is done on Sunday, and items must be postmarked for the Fair on Monday... cutting it close.

 

Once I found out how close the Fair is, I decided to switch from spinning and keep working on the Tapia mitts. Only 17 rows and the thumb left. Hopefully I can get that done today.

 

I am also plying my Thick'nThin wool yarn with some cotton thread, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. I want to just stop, but I kind of feel that I should get it on the niddy noddy first.... so many decisions. Well right now the priority is finishing the mitts, and mowing the lawn, blah.

 

 

 

Day 5, Long Draw

So I got some new fiber from the Fiber Club, and it had more of that lovely vertically dyed wool. Also, my yellow alpaca was not dry, so I figured I would try something new.

Ashland Bay Merino Top "Rose Quartz"

 For whatever reason, I figured I should try some long draw. It's coming slowly, but it is coming together and the long draw is doing much better things for the dying, though we'll see how it looks once it's plied- though I could always chain ply it and preserve the more solid color sections. I'm getting a lot of pigtails on the bobbin, but I'm not overly worried about that as I can work them out in the plying- though maybe not as easily if I chain it... this will require more thought...

I started on the merino last night after the euphoria of the chunky Targhee, and it's not going badly, or even terribly slowly, but we are leaving town on Friday morning and I have been busy with prepping for that. Hopefully I can finish the first two ounces of the Merino tonight.

I'm also working on dying some other alpaca too. I'll let you know how that comes out another day. Right now it's time to keep packing...