Completed – Page 2 – Hazel Purls

Saddle Sore

I’m not really saddle sore – I don’t think I actually did any cycling while participating in the Tour de Fleece at all. But the tour has ended and now it’s time to look back and review the experience. Before the tour started I set out some aims:

Spin everyday!

I did this! I managed to do some spinning (or spinning preparation) everyday that there was a cycling stage in the Tour de France, and I even spun a little on one of the rest days! Sometimes it was just a few minutes before bed, but sometimes I did a few hours.

Do some spinning on all of my wheels!

I also managed this. I started the tour with six wheels and acquired a new one somewhere in the middle – which did complicate things a little. I’ve spun a lot on some wheels (my oldest Ashford with both jumbo and standard sliding hook flyer has seen a lot of use) and just a little on others (both Haldanes have only been used a little, which is a shame as I like both wheels). Here’s what’s on, or been on, my wheels during the tour.

Completing the singles of the Soybean and Sheltand on my Traditional with lace flyer:

And starting to ply on my oldest Traditional:

Juno dyed Falkland fibre on my Dryad:

BFL dyed with food colour on my Queen Bee:

Continuing to spin some unspun yarn on my Hebridean:

Making singles for the middle of the bowties on my Lewis:

Learning to core-spin on my oldest Traditional with jumbo flyer and on my Pipy Poly:

Spin a fun Doctor Who inspired art yarn.

When I put this as an aim I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do. Part way through the tour I started playing with core-spun yarns. Then I started to think that the structure of the core-spun (with the fibres wrapping around rather than running along the length of the yarn) was a bit like the Time Vortex, add in some bowties…

I decided to make bowties with felt, and wrap singles around the middle to turn the rectangles of felt into bows. I wanted two colours of bowtie, blue and aubergine. Sadly, the first blue felt piece I made didn’t work for two reasons. The Angelina didn’t bond into the wool properly and then when I rolled it, the colour of the Angelina wore off and I was left with bronze and silver sparkle instead of just the bronze. I successfully redid the blue with smaller amounts of pink sparkle (which is the same colour I used in the aubergine felt and looks much better anyway).

I had a very late night on Saturday cutting up felt and then making up bowties.

On Sunday morning I prepared some core yarn by spinning it anti-clockwise to reduce the amount of unbalancing twist there would be in the finished yarn. I then packed everything up and took it to an open farm day, where I spun on the Poly wheel, which I’ve only used once before, using a technique I am still learning and adding the bows to the yarn in a way I’ve never attempted before. I even had to make up more bows using fairly active singles as I’d only had time to make aubergine bows the night before.

I spun some more when I got home and ended up with 80 yarns on the biggest bobbin of yarn I’ve ever spun:

Wound into a skein, washed and tied with yellow ribbons:

I still have about two-thirds of the batts left over so I hope to make another skein with the same number of bowties and a final skein with just a few bowties.

Finish off any languishing projects.

I have not finished any projects that I did not start during the tour, though I have made progress on some. I’m particularly pleased to be finally plying the Soybean and Shetland!

Overall I’ve really enjoyed the experience of participating in the Tour de Fleece. I’ve loved the focus on the spinning, the chance it’s given me to explore new techniques and the opportunity to share with other spinners in the UK and abroad. I will definitely do this again!

Day 8, Tour de Fleece

Today I spun some of this (BFL on my Queen Bee):

And core-spun the batt from yesterday into this:

On this lovely wheel:

What do you mean, you don’t think you’ve seen that wheel before in my “collection”?

giggle

Days 5 (continued), 6 and 7 of the Tour de Fleece

When I left you last on day 5 of the TdF I was off to do some spinning. I did (sort of). I prepared some mill-spun yarn for core-spinning by running it through the wheel to put some S-twist in, prior to my using it to core-spin Z-twist.

Yesterday was day 6 and I carded up a batt with a variety of wool and trilobal nylon and then core-spun it. I also added an auto-wrap thread. Here it is this morning, finished and tied with some matching ribbon:

The yarn is both heavier and shorter than the previous one I core-spun. The batt I used was thicker but less fluffy, so I think I applied the fibre more heavily to the core. I shall have to experiment until I’m able to consistently get the results I want.

Today has been a busy day with the children, and being a Friday I’m quite tired. However, this evening I’ve carded up another batt. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to core-spin this tomorrow. Here it is in a deep hat-box, which is just the right size (I’ve had to re-home the fabric scraps I was storing in here):

So, that’s the first week of the TdF completed. I’ve thought constantly about spinning, fibre, and things I can add to the spinning. Earlier this week I went shopping for a curtain pole. I managed to find one but I also came back with these beads, perfect in their own little storage boxes and ideal to add to my spinning!

The fabric scraps from the hat-box? I found myself wondering if they could be spun into a yarn or added to some yarn. So, what will week 2 of the TdF bring and how much further am I going to stray from my original goals?

Locks and Labels

I’ve crammed lots of spinning and knitting into the last few weeks. But first a mystery!

I was away for a few days and took my portable wheel and a small selection of tops to spin. I eventually decided on an pink/orange top that I’d dyed. After dyeing it I remember thinking that I would know what it was when I used it and so didn’t add a label. However, for the entire time I was spinning I wasn’t sure of the fibre. It was humbug tops but that’s all I knew. Was it Shetland or BFL? I didn’t have a clue! When I got back from my trip I checked my blog and thought that maybe it was some BFL humbug tops that I’d dyed. But apparently I’ve already started spinning that into a crepe yarn!

I’m going to have to start making notes on the dyeing that I do and also adding labels to both my dyed tops and to the finished yarns. However, I Navaho plied this mystery into a lovely yarn of about 190 yards.

I’ve also continued with the Wild and Independent yarn that started as a response to the suggestion I should downsize my spinning wheel collection. I had enormous fun spinning this big yarn and plying in the locks. I also really enjoyed knitting it up into a crazy scarf.

I took advice from my friends at Creating Space and settled on making a two-ply yarn with the locks trapped between the plies. I did try tail-spinning the locks during the plying but I couldn’t quite get that to work. In the end the locks are partially tail-spun and partially encapsulated by the plies.

I then proceeded to knit a huge scarf in just a few evenings.

I plan to wear my wild and independent scarf at every opportunity. During the summer I’ll wear it when spinning in public (I’ve never got enough layers on when spinning in a field) and during the winter I’ll wear it with my military style wool coat (military and wild – a great combination).

I have plans to make more wild yarn – for my next one I have some locks in pink, yellow and orange ready to use!

Finish, start, start!

Sometime ago I dyed some Blue Faced Leicester, hung it up to dry, made the tops into a chain and then started to spin it. It’s finally finished. I decided to Navaho ply this and created two skeins. In total there are about 490 yards:

As I’ve finished lots of projects recently, it’s time to start some new ones. First I’ve started to spin the last batch of BFL I dyed – this is the pinky-orange tops as a single:

I’ve also started to knit a Moebius cowl:

This final project is being knitted in some Rico Poems yarn. I bought the yarn because it was in a lovely range of colours and then put it in my stash until I found a project worthy of the lovely yarn. At least I thought the yarn was lovely until I got it out and tried to use it.

I tried Tunisian crochet with it, worked a few stitches and noticed that the yarn was twisting up, so decided that knitting it would be best. I rewound the ball and put it into my work-basket.

A few days later I realised that this was a mistake, the ball was starting to come apart. I tried to rewind it, then put it into a plastic zip bag for sorting out later. Later came while staying at my Mum’s. I fished the yarn out and asked to borrow the ball winder.

At this stage the ball decided it was going to be two balls, with random loops of yarn in between and twisting around. It took two knitter’s about half an hour to tame the run-away ball into two neat re-wound balls.

I decided that the new project would be a Moebius cowl. I found the instructions and a long cord for my needles and cast on (and on). The cast on was lovely and easy, but the next row was hard work. However, after a very long time I got through it (though noticed that the yarn was fluffing up from the work, which was surprising for a sock yarn). Undaunted I’ve carried on and now it’s starting to look rather lovely However, I did notice I had managed to knit two stitches together at one stage, now fixed by dropping the stitches down a few rows and re-working them back up. The yarn is also still twisting up really badly and periodically I hang the loop of knitting down and gently untwist it (one time I untwisted a little too far and the yarn drafted apart).

I’ve decided after all these problems that this cowl is going to have to look gorgeous. In addition to the colour I think it needs something glittery, so I’m going to add beads. What could possibly go wrong (it’s the first time I’ve added beads to knitting)?

Last but not least

A little while ago I said my bamboo shawl was finally finished and off the loom. It took another week or two, but I eventually tackled trimming the fringe (I can thoroughly recommend checked table-cloths for this activity, with a towel on the item to hold it still while cutting).

I then asked my Mum to be my photographer (thank you Mum!) while we stood outside in the surprisingly mild January sunshine. As you can see in the first picture, the start and the end of the shawl are at a very different gauge. However, I’ll never wear it like this. As you can see in the second picture, the difference doesn’t matter.

I really like the way that the fabric drapes. It’s lovely and soft. However, the bamboo is very slippery and for a future project I would like to combine it with wool for a more stable fabric.

I know that you are now in shock – three finished objects all in a row (ok, I know one wasn’t really mine)! Don’t worry, normal service will be resumed with only WIPs and UFOs for quite a while!

Sparrow Wings

I’m lucky with the spinning; if I finish a yarn I don’t want to use, then I know plenty of people the yarn can be passed onto.

When I finished my BFL I knew that I didn’t want to make anything for me with it. The yarn was lovely and everyone else loved the colour. So I gave it my mum. In no time at all she’d knitted a mini-wingspan with it:

She cast-on half the number of stitches specified in the pattern and worked until the yarn had almost run out. She then worked an i-cord cast-off on the neck-edge of the resulting shawlette.

We love the way the pattern shows off the subtle colour variations in the yarn.

Rare, very rare and a couple of firsts!

If you look at the categories for this blog and find “Projects – Completed” there are, at the time of writing this, exactly 7 (and one of those is an Almost Finished Object, and some others are skeins of yarn). So an actual finished garment or accessory is a rare thing.

Even more rare is that this took me only 10 days to make! Most projects take me years.

And the firsts? It’s something for me to wear (I’m wearing it now in my study while I type this)! I have made things for me to wear in the past – but they predate this blog by years and are also very rare. The other first is that I’m modelling it:

Now you’re recovered from the shock, here’s a close up of the Tunisian crochet:

I really love the way the basic Tunisian stitch makes the colours of the variegated yarn work. It allows the colours to mesh together in the same way that weaving does, and therefore makes them more complex.

The stitch itself is quite strange. If you look closely at the fabric you’ll find that it’s a knitted fabric with a chain stitch wrapped around each knit stitch. The bars you can see in the picture above are one leg of the knit stitch, the other leg is wrapped within the chain stitch. (So the chain goes both through and round the knit stitch).

On the back of the fabric (not shown here) you’ll see the classic bumps of reverse stocking stitch, but between each pair of rows there bumps from the back of the chain.

Working Tunisian crochet requires a hook that is much larger than you would normally use for knitting or crochet. To work this chunky yarn I used a 10mm hook – even though the ball band recommended a 6mm needle.

I enjoyed working on this. I enjoyed the speed and simplicity of the project. I also love the feel of the finished fabric. I think there will be more Tunisian crochet projects in the future.

A finished object

Now here’s a rarity on here. A finished object. Well, at the moment it’s an almost finished object as I need to trim the fringe, but close enough!

Last night I did the last few picks, hemstitched and removed from the loom a shawl made from bamboo sock yarn. Today I tided up some ends and washed/finished it. This is the first proper project I’ve made on my 16” rigid heddle loom. And as a first project here are some things I’ve learnt:

Don’t be too ambitious. A first project should be quite short, a scarf or a cushion cover perhaps. As a first project it’s likely that the gauge of the weaving will change (on this shawl there’s a noticeable difference in the number of picks I was working at the start of the piece and the number at the end). I, however, ignored this advice (it’s in all the books) and put a warp on for a long shawl. When I removed the shawl from the loom, I was shocked just how long it is.
Despite the fact that weaving is fairly quick, I can still take well over a year to finish a piece.
I should place markers as I go, so I know how long the piece is and can make a sensible decision on when to start the end border design (if that’s what I’m doing). In the end I sort of guessed at how much was still on the back roller (knowing the length of the paper wound onto the roller helped a bit here).
Placing paper into the front roller (as the finished weaving is wound on) really improves the tension and makes subsequent weaving easier. However, once the weaving is finished (i.e. washed), there’s no noticeable difference – but it does look better on the loom.
Sampling is a good idea. If I’d sampled the pattern I was planning, I may have chosen to work the leno in a different way (there are some very long threads in the leno section that are quite likely to catch).
A dessert spoon is just the right weight to use when repairing a broken warp end. It’s also the perfect shape!
Make better notes. In fact make much, much better notes and also take lots of photos, just in case. Here are my notes, written in my weaving book (yes, that’s really all I wrote down):

Some things I should have written down:
1. Length of warp
2. How many ends of warp
3. The DPI of the reed/heddle
4. Notes on the yarns (including composition and washing instructions – keeping the ball band would do)
5. Which yarn I’d used for the hemstitching (e.g. warp or weft)
6. Both the number of picks and ends that the hemstitching is over (a photo would also be helpful here)
7. How long the section of weaving was before the first leno section (at least I’d noted the number of picks)
8. Kept a photo of the leno work (and printed it out for easy reference).

I’m sure there are other things I have learnt and more things I should have written down, I may add to the list later.

In the meantime I bet you’d like to see a picture of my shawl? Well, as soon as I’ve finished the ends, found some sunshine (hmmm, it’s 4 days to the shortest day of the year…) and made a decision on whether to drape the shawl gracefully over a chair or model it myself (which will require finding a photographer) I’ll post up a photo…

Spindle spun Blue-Faced Leicester

Firstly a quick update. In my last post I mentioned that my phone was languishing in a bag of rice. I don’t know if it made a difference, but my phone survived. Hurray! Here’s the stash:

Now, onto the Blue-faced-Leicester. I dyed the tops at the start of this year. You can see me starting to spin it in January. So, after months and months of spindle spinning (not constant spinning, only occasional spinning) I’ve plied together two spindles worth and have a lovely skein of yarn.

The singles:

I made a box lazy-kate. It’s “designed” to take the spindle or knitting needles (I slid the first spun cob onto a knitting needle). The spindle occasionally fell out as the cob was unwound, but the knitting needle worked brilliantly. I’m keeping my free lazy-kate for future plying projects.

I plied over a couple of evenings on my Dryad wheel. The second cob had a lot more yarn (by length, not necessarily by weight) so I finished off by Andean plying (I didn’t get into too much of a tangle and at one point discovered that the bed-knob at the bottom of the bed was a great holder for the resulting bracelets of yarn).

Sadly, it’s November. It gets vaguely lighter at about 8am and is dark again by about 4pm. The last few days have been ones where the lights have stayed on all day in the house. Even at noon. So in the end I bowed to the inevitable, and photographed the final skein in the warm glow of artificial light:

I may be a little quiet for a week or two – as paid work will take priority. If I do post tell me to stop procrastinating and get on with my proper job Smile . I’ll be back soon…