Handspun yarn – Hazel Purls

A Felted Single

Even though I’ve now been spinning for seven years, I have avoided spinning the simplest of yarns – the plain single. I have spun singles – coreless-corespun and thread wrapped yarns are both singles. But I’ve left the plain bulky single alone. Until this week.

One of the recent braids I dyed was very slightly felted (just slightly) and as a result I didn’t want to spin it too fine. (It was the first one I dyed in the slow cooker, while I was still getting the timings right, and may have been handled more than usual.) I wanted to spin it chunky so that I could use it as a weft for a cushion. And felted to give it the extra strength needed for such an item.

After spinning the resulting skein was incredibly twisty:

I gave it a bath in very hot soapy water, moving it around lots. I shocked it by plunging it into very cold water (and then repeated between the hot and cold a few times). I also tried thwacking the skein onto the draining board – but found that was an excellent way to make the kitchen look like it was raining inside and get me covered in water. I finished by rinsing the soap out in changes of hot and cold water.

After this treatment the skein was completely different:

Not a twist in sight.

One Day, Two Sleeps

This is what my study looks like at the moment:

On Monday I’m moving to our new house. I’m very excited – but right now I’m also very, very tired (so I’m sitting down and writing a short blog post, before I pack the computer away).

During half-term week the children were away with their dad. While they were gone (and as moving seemed a long time away!) I managed to go out every evening, catch up with friends and have a lovely week (albeit without children). Spinning with friends, spiritual circles, and dinner and a film with a friend were all on the itinerary for the week. At the end of it on my one free evening I caught a lovely sunset over fields near my house:

During my day and evening of spinning I plied two skeins of yarn. The singles were spun some time ago, and this finished the colour project from 2015 TdF (I will put a link in here, but tonight I shall just refer to it without the link *yawns*):

I’m going to be offline for a while. My new house doesn’t have a phone line, and it looks like it’ll be the end of November before one gets installed. And, each time I’ve been in the house, my mobile has no signal! So, I shall be out of touch and in another decade (the 90’s?) for a few weeks.

Right, I’m off to start packing the bedroom… I’m hoping I can do most of it sitting down on the bed! Actually, I think I’m hoping I can do it in my sleep! I shall see you in December from my new house! Good night!

From fluff to yarn

This yarn started in April as a desire to use some stunning blue Teeswater locks. Lots of playing around with different colours eventually resulted in a pile of wool, bamboo, trilobal-nylon and some seacell…

To the blending board:

Spinning the first single:

Plied and drying on the line, on what feels like the first dry day in weeks:

This yarn reminds me of piercing blue seas, with crashing waves, golden sands, seaweed and white horses; and so I’m calling it Seascape. Ideally I’d like to knit this into something to wear by the time Open Studios starts (in less than two weeks), however I have a second call on my time. The “personal news” I mentioned in my last post – I’ve put my house up for sale! Eeep!

Well, hello!

It’s been a bright sunny day and, as usual, I’ve been filling it up to the brim. I got home a short while ago, and the sun was still shining (albeit slowly setting), so I grabbed my chance to photograph the latest spinning on my wheel. (My last attempt at taking a photo outside a few days ago resulting in my wheel being snowed on!)

It’s spun Sari ribbon. It’s linen, instead of the more usual silk, which as you may know I avoid because I’m a vegetarian.

I spun the ribbon around a core of wool – creating the core as I went (so basically I used coreless core spinning for this – with the wrapping “fibre” being the ribbon). I then plied it to get a softer texture. The last few feet didn’t fit on the bobbin, but I was still able to add the necessary twist to finish the yarn. I really want to call it a braid as it’s so chunky.

The Sari ribbon was from my friend FibreTastic who was able to source me a couple of skeins of linen, rather than the silk.

While I was in the garden I spotted that one of my auriculas was in flower. I finally potted these up this year, after many years of neglect, and I’m enjoying how they are looking this spring:

A Show

On Saturday Creating Space are having a show! I’ve been thinking about how to display my creations, and it’s not easy! Difficulties to overcome include hanging stuff on walls that are solid painted brick (I’ve decided I’m not going to), and showing a process for the things I make.

I’ve been shaking out shawls and examining skeins of handspun yarn. I’ve bought some thin ribbon that I’ll use for ties on my skeins (I’ll be rewinding them so they look neat) and I need some fabric for a table cover (I’m sure I have something suitable in my stash – at least I hope so!)

Harriette will be coming out this Saturday and will be modelling one of my shawls (probably the time travelling shawl). She’s really excited to be having an outing. However, I’m not sure she’s going to approve of travelling in the boot of my car (I’ve not told her yet).

I’ve also decided to get some photos printed, these I’ll put onto 12×12 inch cards and show them in an album with short descriptions. These photos will include flower pictures, processes and creations I no longer own. Here’s a collage of the pictures I’ve chosen.

I’ll be able to pick the photos up tomorrow (I hope). I had a minor problem when I looked through the photos I’d originally sent. I realised I’d not understood the format requirements and submitted photos of a poor quality. Fortunately I was able to phone the company in the morning and they were happy to cancel the order I’d placed online and accept a new order from me. If I’m happy with the photos when I get them tomorrow, they will probably have a customer for life! I’ll have a busy evening tomorrow collating the photos! I feel like I’m recreating my blog, but in real life!

The importance of grip and slip

When I was first learning to spin I couldn’t understand where grooves and whorls on the wheel needed to be smooth and where they needed to have a good grip. I assumed (wrongly) that all places where there were drive bands and brake bands should be unpolished. Worse, when I was cleaning my wheels I didn’t take enough care about keeping polish from these places.

During the TdF I was using one of my Ashford traditional wheels with the sliding hook flyer. This was the second wheel I bought, and the flyer was the first wheel upgrade I purchased (at the height of my ignorance on whorls and grooves).

When plying the two skeins during the tour I struggled a little with the wheel during the last few yards, but not enough to worry about it. However, when I plied the most recent skein the wheel was almost impossible to use. I couldn’t get a good balance between twist (from the drive band) and pull-on (from the brake band). I changed the drive band about 4 times (trying different materials: cotton string, cotton weaving yarn and pony band lacing) and I also changed the brake band. I applied copious amounts of spinning oil. However, the wheel was still extremely difficult to use and was making the most appalling screeching noise – it sounded like a drill. In the end I carried on regardless (extremely glad there was no-one in the house except me that night to hear the noise).

Sadly the fight with the wheel shows in the resulting skein – which is unevenly and generally under plied (with some sections being particularly poor). I will have to run the yarn back through the wheel to correct this.

A couple of days ago I started correcting the problems with the wheel. The wheel uses scotch tension so the brake band runs over a groove in the bobbin. It’s fairly common to use a nylon line (like fishing line), though I’m not fond of this, and having got used to using a mercerised cotton thread (like thin crochet thread) I prefer this. Because this is the brake band the first thought is that the groove should have a good grip. In fact the groove should be fairly polished and run smoothly under the brake band. Any roughness may cause the band to catch and the bobbin to run jerkily, or make it difficult to apply a little more pressure to slow the bobbin down, without it gripping completely and stopping it in its tracks. So I’ve carefully sanded (with a fine sandpaper) the grooves at the end of the troublesome bobbin, and applied a wax polish (ideally I should use an oil finish, and may do so in the future) repeating until they were smooth. I shall do the same with the other bobbins in due course.

The groove in the drive wheel was feeling very smooth so I’ve gone around this with a coarse sandpaper to increase the grip. I’ve done the same with the whorls on the flyer. The smallest gives a ratio of close to 20:1 which means there is very little surface area available so a good grip is essential. I’ve seen rosin (as used on bows of violins and other string instruments) suggested to improve the grip of drive bands on wheels, so I shall investigate this if I have any further problems.

I’m happy that I’ve fixed the problem, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating (a picture of the skein will follow when I’ve properly tested the wheel and corrected the plying problems).

Should you be reading this as someone who is learning to spin and trying to get their wheel functioning properly – here’s the short version (for a scotch tension wheel): The groove(s) on the bobbin should be smooth (sanded and polished). The groove in the drive wheel and the grooves for the whorls on the flyer should be grippy (no polish).

One, Two, Three, Four!

Harriette has been complaining that she’s not been doing any modelling work. In fact it’s so long since she last modelled anything that she’s forgotten when she last did some. She’s currently stood in my study with some hand-dyed skeins of yarn draped around her and she says that I should either do something with them or put them away as she’s not a hat stand (technically she’s a clothes stand – shush, best not tell her).

Sadly I didn’t think to cater to Harriette’s aspirations when taking pictures of my first object. I think I was too busy making patterns with it! It’s a scarf and I finished it in the run up to Christmas.

scarf-folds

scarf-side

scarf-roll

scarf-ends

The yarn is handspun blue faced Leicester and bamboo that I carded into batts to make a gradient coreless core-spun yarn.

Over the Christmas/New Year period I finished plying some polworth yarn. I threaded both plies with beads and used the intermittent coils technique I learnt on Sarah Anderson’s course. My coils improved as I went along (my hands got better at controlling and moving the twist and coordinating with my feet!) but when I do another intermittent coiled yarn I’ll put more twist into the singles. I haven’t yet decided on a destination for this, or what technique I’ll use for it.

coils

During the summer I spun up some alpaca and bfl. In October I started spinning up some merino and seacell and last week I finally finished the spinning and started plying them together. Even at the last moment I wasn’t sure that plying them together was the thing to do, but as the colours have gone onto the bobbin I’ve been pleased with the result. I’m surprised that two very strongly coloured singles are making a paler more subtle plied yarn. I’m interested to see what the finished skeins will be like.

basket

abms-plying

Finally, I’m still working on the knitted shawl it’s been quite a few places with me, including a beach at the end of October while the children dug big holes in the sand.

sandyshawl

While at the beach I took the opportunity of going for an early morning walk and taking some photos. Here’s sun, sea and sand just after dawn:

sun and sea

sandysun

Harriette is really keen that I finish the shawl soon, so we can go outside for a bit and get some nice photos that include her. She’s hoping to see some daffodils.

Goldilocks and the Three WIPs

A long time ago I spun two different dyed tops of Shetland and plied them together. But then I didn’t really like it enough to knit with. At the last Creating Space I took it out and discussed the options: knit it, weave it, over-dye it (I really didn’t like the colour) or spin something else to weave with it. I decided on the last option and grabbed some blended bamboo and merino tops to see if I could spin this using the coreless core spinning technique:

coreless

However, once home I decided I quite liked the variation of colour in the Shetland yarn and didn’t want to lose that by weaving with something else, but I still didn’t fancy knitting it.

yarn

So I worked out how much yarn I had and calculated that this was enough for a woven shawl. I warped the loom with the larger skein and I’m weaving with the shorter skein.

warped

I have a third small skein, which is the result of plying one of the leftover singles with itself. This is proving to be ideal to add a small amount of detail to the weaving in the form of Danish medallions (these look fiendishly complicated but turn out to be delightfully easy and I can see lots of ways to use them in my weaving…)

shuttles

danish

dms

The third WIP is a Bouclé yarn. I’m using BFL for the core and binder with Mohair to form the loops, all dyed with the same colours. I’ve spun the core and I’m working on the mohair single. So far I’m not enjoying spinning the mohair, so I’m having to do this in small doses.

boucle

So where’s Goldilocks? Well, sometime ago I mentioned that I was running out of space on my blog, but that a larger package was too expensive. When my account came up for renewal I emailed the company at about 9:30 one evening and asked them if there was anything they could suggest. About fifteen minutes later I got a reply with an alternative package. When I accepted this offer they sent me an invoice describing it as the “Goldilocks Special” account. A few minutes later I received another invoice with a more sensible name – but I much prefer the original!

Nearly Forgotten!

The finished Dorset Horn yarn didn’t get included in yesterday’s stock taking! It’s made a lovely squishy 3-ply yarn, that’s slightly heavier than Double Knitting weight and is very lofty.

I spun it on my Haldane Lewis which has two spinning bobbins and one plying bobbin. So, to enable enough bobbin space I re-wound the singles onto other bobbins (the third bobbin was rewound for consistency).

singles

This is a trick that you can do with double drive wheels. A full bobbin is put on a lazy kate, with an empty one on the wheel. Both parts of the driveband are transferred to the bobbin grove, and an arm of the flyer is tied to the mother-of-all to stop the flyer moving. The single comes onto the bobbin on the wheel from the side (not through the wheel orifice). The wheel is treadled as normal, and the single is guided by hand onto the bobbin, so that it fills up evenly. It’s surprisingly quick^* to re-wind the bobbins and helps to make plying easier as the bobbins unwind evenly.

$fractal$

$fractal-close$

I had initially intended a hat with this yarn, but I really want to show off the colour changes, so I may have something else in mind.

* Usually it’s quick. However, for my final single the end fell off the bobbin I was winding onto, so I had to reverse the process, re-glue the bobbin, then start again!

Taking Stock

January is a good time to take stock. In my case it’s my handspun yarn. I seem to be developing a bit of a stash. Small lengths, longer lengths, different fibres, thicknesses and techniques.

So, my January crafting resolution is to use my handspun! I need to catalogue my yarns (work out their thicknesses and lengths) and then find suitable projects for them.

I don’t think I’m going to manage to stop spinning, but I’ll aim to use more handspun than I’m actually creating!

At the end of the year I’ll review my progress (and hopefully have a few finished objects to show!)