Barefoot Shepherdess

Tuesday :: Spinning

Straight off the spinning wheel.  Silk/wool fiber I naturally dyed with cochineal last summer.  The twist hasn't been set yet, but I think it looks pretty good.  I'm happy.

174 meters/ 42 grams.  Laceweight.

Transformation

Plain silk top...

Fresh out of the dyepot, all crinkly and fuzzy...

But once pre-drafted...

Singles...

Plied...

Finished yarn.

100% Tussah silk, naturally dyed with madder.  190 meters/ 26 grams.  Laceweight.

Sakura Season

 

...So I saved one for myself.  I actually dyed this one last fall when I was still collecting the leaves and working with the dyestuff for the first time.  It's 50 grams of BFL roving, pre-drafted and ready for spinning.  Doesn't it look so lovely and inviting?  Alex seemed to think so.

It looked so nice as it was that I left it as is and admired it all winter.  But when the weather started to warm up and the cherry blossoms began to bloom, I knew it was time to spin it up.

Since I forgot to count when I wound it off the wheel onto the niddy noddy, I'm not sure what I ended up with, yardage-wise.  But it's about fingering to light sportweight, I think.  And it's a great match to the Spanish Merino I spun up a while back:

Colorwork mittens, maybe?

Of course, we enjoyed the cherry blossoms outdoors too...

 

Happy Spring!

Colors of the Season

Happy Autumn!

Spinning Gold

Truly, that's what it seems like.  I spun a little of the Corriedale fiber I dyed with onion skin on my spindle and am surprised and delighted by the unexpected result.  What started as that bright, almost garish yellow fluff is turning into rich, golden singles with the mere addition of twist.  The photo above hardly does it justice.  I think the fibers appear to take on a deeper hue when they are compacted into the yarn form.  And the slight variation in the thickness of the yarn makes some areas look lighter or darker, giving it a semi-solid feel.  Who knew what transformation the simple act of spinning would bring!  I wonder what beauty I'll discover when I knit up the resulting yarn?

Summer Harvest

Hi there!  I've been away for the month of August on my yearly holiday to my grandparents' place in Nagano.  There's absolutely no better place for me to relax, de-stress, and store up energy for the following year.  Surrounded by mountains, breathing fresh air, and feasting on just-picked fruits and vegetables-- true bliss, if you ask me!

What's more, this year, I tried my hand at natural dyeing--

--and I love it!  The resulting colors are so warm and beautiful.  From left to right, I used cochineal on wool/silk (first two) and wool (third), onion skin on wool (fourth), and akaso (Boehmeria tricuspis), a local weed on wool.  There were so many more local dyestuffs I wanted to try but didn't have the chance to do... *sigh*  Luckily, I was able to bring home one thing:

Some umenokigoke (Parmelia tinctorum)-- or more simply put, moss-- I collected off of cherry trees.  It's supposed to offer a dark pink dye.  But first, it needs to be fermented for 60 days or more, so it will be a while before I get to try it out.

In the meantime, I'll be spinning up these lovely dyed fibers-- I hope they will be equally beautiful as yarns!

More Handspun Lace

This time, it's the 100% Merino roving I got from A Verb For Keeping Warm.  Unlike my previous attempts at spinning merino lace, I found that this was much easier to draw out to laceweight size.  As far as I can tell, the only difference between this Merino roving and those that I have tackled previously is that this feels like there is a touch of lanolin left, which seems to help keep the fibers together even when it's spun thinly.

This yarn turned out really nicely-- very soft and springly.  And I love the subtle, semi-solid effect; when plied, some parts turned out to be solid pink, while other parts became a light pink/dark pink barberpole.  I ended up with 526 yards to 53 grams.

I'm excited to see how this yarn will look knitted up.  Oh, but what project to choose!

As for the yarn that I spun before...

I really want this to become Hyrna Herborgar from Three-Cornered and Long Shawls.  But I'm worried about the yardage.  If I calculated correctly, I have about 462 yards of this handspun yarn.  The translation that came with my book says the shawl calls for 375 yards, but many knitters who have completed this shawl claim to have needed about 500 yards.  I'd hate to get to the end of this project and find that I'm just a few yards shy...  For those who have knitted this shawl, just how close were you to 500 yards?

Since I finished spinning up both of the rovings I got from A Verb For Keeping Warm...

vermillion

 

junebug

I got two more!  Both are 50/50 Merino/silk, and are destined to become-- what else?-- laceweight yarns.  It looks like this summer is turning out to be a Summer of Spinning for me.

Spinning Lace

As soon as the Swallowtail Shawl was off the needles, I immediately set to work on my next spinning project:

I know I said that this roving would be next, but I couldn't resist the lovely Merino/silk fiber from A Verb For Keeping Warm.  I had never worked with silk before and was anxious to give it a try.  My goal for this was the same as the last: to spin laceweight yarn.  And unlike before, it went very well, I think.

I was able to spin this much finer than the Spanish Merino, and I attribute it to the silk content.  I think the longer silk fibers helped to keep the Merino fibers together even when I drew out the fibers very thinly.  I'm wondering now, if some fiber blends are more suitable for spinning certain types of yarn...?

But spinning such fine yarn took a good deal of time.  And I quickly found out that two ounces is a surprising amount of fiber.  I knew that two ounces *can* be a lot-- like for Jaggerspun Zephyr, at 620 yards.  Though I was optimistic, I knew that expecting that from handspun might be a little unrealistic for a inexperienced spinner like me.  Really, I didn't know how much I could expect.  So when I finally wound off my finished yarn and did the math, I was pleased to find that I had about 462yards/ 49grams of usable laceweight yarn.  And even in appearance, it seems to compare quite well:

On left: Jaggerspun Zephyr; on right: my handspun

Naturally, I chose one of the best sections for that comparison.  So here's a more representative view of my handspun:

I do have one question for the other spinners out there: what do you do when you run into this?

I didn't notice it at the time, but one of the singles ran ahead of the other and twisted upon itself, leaving me with this extra bit hanging off the side of my yarn.  I was thinking of just cutting off the offending piece, but is it better to cut the yarn altogether, then rejoin during the knitting?  Or is there another solution?

Other than that, I couldn't be happier with the end result.  My yarn is no Zephyr, but it's lace yarn that's all my own.

Plied!

It's looking good!  Only... it's more like fingering weight than laceweight.  I was able to get about 280 yards/ 81.0 grams.  Here's a close-up look:

With just a little more yarn, I should have enough for a small triangular shawl.  And yet, I'm debating whether to spin up the little that I have remaining of this fiber or not.  While it was good for getting back into spinning, it was not the most well-prepared fiber-- the roving had a noticeable amount of vegetable matter, second cuts, and guard hairs, some of which I stopped to remove, and others that I pretended not to see and let decorate the yarn.  A shawl made from this would be cozy, but utilitarian, I think.  As I prefer something more refined, I think it's time I moved onto the good stuff.  I can always save this for some colowork project down the road.

Knitting? What Knitting?

It's all about spinning here, lately.  Right now, I'm working on spinning up some Spanish Merino that I had on hand into some laceweight yarn, for practice.  It'll be a 2-ply yarn, so I'm trying to spin the singles as thinly as possible-- which, I've quickly found out, isn't very easy.  So far, this is as thin as I can manage:

As I'm a little impatient to see how the resulting yarn will be like in terms of thickness and twist, I'm calling this bobbin done, and am moving onto the next.  This way, I can also figure out if I need to change my spinning technique to achieve the kind of yarn I want.

Meanwhile, I've been looking around for fibers to spin after I'm done practicing.  Here's what's coming next:

Merino roving from Freckle Face Fibers.  Yum!