How The West Was Spun

Spinning Friday: Grey Room

The other thing I did during my stay-vacation was treat myself to a new spinning project.  I dug through the stash, in a merino sort of mood, and pulled out 4 ounces of merino top from the Funky Carolina Fiber Club, November 2008.  Yah - I know.  That's a whole year ago.  About time it was spun up, doncha think?

The colorway is "Grey Room" and has soft purples and chocolate browns and dove grays in it.  Here's the original roving braid:

Here's my first bobbin of singles:

And my finished, 2-ply yarn:

I spun this semi-worsted.  I had to put a fair amount of twist into the singles, because the fiber has a LOT of crimp in it, but it is so soft, it didn't affect the finished yarn in terms of being coarse or harsh-feeling.  Out of the 3.8 ounces I plied, I got 350 yards at approximately 14-15 wpi, which is a nice sportweight.  I think I'll probably work up a neck cowl out of this, and maybe some fingerless mitts if I have enough yardage.

This is possibly one of my favoristist colorways ever!

 
 All for now......
 

Spinning Friday: Spirit Takes Flight

Nothing like a few days off recuperating to get some fiber projects tackled, eh?

I started and finished the Coopworth that Lori had sent for last month's OceanWind Knits Fibre Club offering.  Remember the roving from last week?

The colorway this time was quite muted, as it was overdyed on a natural brown-colored wool, but still quite complex.  I decided to tackle this project trying to stick to more of a woolen style of spinning.  It's been quite a few years since I had last spun Coopworth, and it's a medium fiber, similar in a lot of ways to Romney, although more bouncy and less sleek-looking (although I've also found both Romney and Coopworth fiber that completely blur the lines of what I think of these two fibers in my brain database).  I knew I was going to use this for something fairly hard-wearing and not necessarily next-to-skin.

I divided the roving in half, and then fluffed and opened up the roving, which was a little bit compacted, and then put a low twist and a lot of air into my singles.

I then plied the singles together in a 2-ply, adding a little more twist than I had to the singles, and came up with a 2-ply worsted weight at about 11-12 wpi.  The total yardage was 134 yards.

 

I like how all the earthy tones combine in this yarn!  I didn't worry too much about a perfectly spun yarn, as I was sort of going for a "rustic" homespun look, which I think will be perfect for these elven mittens (Robin Melanson's Aethelwyne) for the winter. 

 I may knit these a little large and felt them down for extra warmth and durability. I'll add it to the to-knit list!

All for now......

Spinning Friday: October 16, 2009

Alas, while busy working on my knitting projects this week, I've had no real time to spin.  Luckily, my September kit from the Oceanwind Knits Fibre Club arrived this week, so I've got that to show you!

Continuing on with the artist theme, Lori chose American artist Bev Doolittle for this month's club offering.  The work (and the roving) is named The Spirit Takes Flight.  Can you see the hidden face within the painting?

I think this is my favorite colorway Lori's sent out so far this year.  It's 4 ounces of NZ Coopworth, which is a natural brown color, and which helps create the muted colorway you see.

I'm betting this will be a fun one to spin too!

All for now.... 

Stash Rehousing Project

I am doing a small destash via my Stash Page on Ravelry right now. Mostly sock yarns, but a few other weights of yarn as well. 

I'm also selling one of my two electric skeiners.  If you have any interest in that, shoot me a quick email and I will be happy to set you up with a good deal on that. 

Spinning Friday coming up!

All for now...

Spinning Friday: Waterlilies Yarn

I finished up the second 2 ounces of roving that made up the Waterlilies roving from my Oceanwind Knits club kit for August.  You saw the first half of it last week, the pretty yellow and orange and salmon superwash merino that I spun up as a 2-ply fingering weight.

This week, I got the Seacell/superwash merino blend in the cool blues and greens, with hints of pink and periwinkle on the wheel, and spun the singles, and then plied those also into a 2-ply fingering weight yarn.

Yarn Specs:
A total of 4 ounces of superwash merino wool (the warm colors) and Seacell/superwash merino wool (the cool colors), 2 ounces of each, spun using a supported backward draft technique into a 2-ply fingering weight yarn.  Approximately 15-16 wpi.  I got 192 yards of the first 2 ounces (the warm colors), and 178 yards of the second 2 ounces (the cool colors - and I lost a little bit of the singles due to a weird wheel thing where I had twist going in both Z and S for a while, and which I just pulled off and threw out, rather than trying to salvage).

I'm still leaning towards using this for the Joni hat that calls for 2 colors of fingering weight yarn, as I think the slip-stitch pattern will blend these colors nicely together.  I plan to use the blue for the main colorway, which will also be the section of "plain" color near my face, as yellows and I aren't really good friends with the blonde hair thing I've got going.

This was actually a really easy spin, once I just sat down and did it.  The preparation, as usual with Lori's fibers, was excellent, and the colorways are beautiful.  I didn't think I'd necessarily like the one with the yellows in it (but that's the beauty of clubs - you get to expand your horizons with things you wouldn't normally pick), but I'm actually quite fond of the colors in it.

Next week, I'm moving on to sock batts.

All for now....

Spinning Friday: Waterlilies

This past week, having finished up the sock yarn, I decided to get the pretty, 2-colored, August fiber club offering from Oceanwind Knits on the wheel.  Y'all may remember (or not) that this month's theme was the beautiful waterlily paintings by French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet.

I decided to tackle the 2-ounce braid of warm colors on the superwash merino first.  I had decided I would really like these two colors blended in the Joni hat, designed by Kirsten Kapur. (I should also add that Kirsten is having a bundle sale through Ravelry on her hats (2 different bundles) and hand-wear (also 2 different bundles), if you decide you want to purchase several of her patterns.)  Knowing that I wanted a fingering-weight/sockweight yarn, I thinned down my normal heavy fingering/sportweight go-to yarn weight a bit for the singles, and wound up with 192 yards from the first 2 ounces.  This is a 2-ply, which I spun using a supported backward draft.

I am currently working on the cooler blue SW merino/Seacell roving, but I'm hoping to have that finished up over the weekend at the same grist, using the same spinning techniques at the warmer SW merino 2-ply as above.

After that, I've got a 4-ounce batch of SW merino and SW BFL blended batts in a sock blend on deck in the "Kung Fu!" colorway from the Funky Carolina shop.

Spinning Friday: Days of Wine and Roses Sock Yarn

First off, this has been a bear of a week at work.  After a quietish summer, we have now been slammed and this has seriously cut into the knitting/spinning time around here, hence my lack of posts.  However, I DO have some finished yarn to show y'all today!

Since last Friday, I put in some concerted effort on getting the SW merino/nylon roving from Zen Yarn Garden spun up and I finished all the singles for this yarn.  Here they are, divided up, from right to left, with the roving I spun without splitting, the roving I split into quarters, and the roving I split into twelfths.

I then plied these onto each other, for a 3-ply yarn.  I put a fair amount of twist into the singles and spun them worsted, smoothing the yarn as I went, and then also put in an equally generous amount of twist into the singles for a hard, smooth, tightly spun yarn that hopefully will hold up really nicely for socks.

Yarn Specs:

Original Roving:  From Zen Yarn Garden, 75% superwash merin and 25% nylon, hand-painted roving.
Colorway:  Originally #103001, but I renamed it Days of Wine and Roses.  Lots of really pretty burgundies, russets, and burnt-red colors throughout.
Spin Technique:  Short draw and worsted, 3-ply.
Weight/Yardage:  4.8 ounces of finished yarn, yielding 450 yards.

I have to come clean and say this didn't turn out like I expected.  I'm not unhappy with it, by any means, but wow - the colors surprised me. 

I am hopeful, however, the Mim will be happy with it.  This one is headed off to her in SLC as a possible handspun candidate for a project in her upcoming book.  (Do be sure to pop over to her blog to read about the details if you haven't already!)  Looking forward to seeing this one knit up.

Next up on deck, my Waterlilies roving from Lori at Oceanwind Knits - this month's club installment will be here before I know it, and I'd like to at least get started on spinning August's.

All for now....

Spinning Friday: More Wine, More Roses

Still working on the superwash merino/nylon sock blend, although I have actually done some spinning on it since 2 Fridays ago, when I got started on it.

The first bobbin (approximately one-third of the fiber) is done, as far as the singles are concerned, and I started the second bobbin's worth.

I've decided to try a little something different with this 3-ply and we'll see how it goes.  Bobbin #1, other than fluffing the fibers a bit to un-compact them from shipping and storage, I spun all in one piece.  Meaning, there are looonnggg color stripes in it.  Bobbin #2, I stripped the fiber lengthwise into 4 mostly equal parts, so the color runs will be shorter.  For bobbin #3, I plan to strip the fiber into either 16 or 20 mostly equal parts, breaking up the color runs even more.  When I divided the original roving by weight, I just folded it in thirds, vaguely weighed it to be sure it was close, and tore the original long roving strip into thirds.  The dye technique was not one of even repeats, so each third has slightly different color patterns in it anyway.

The plan is that this will help break up the finished yarn so there aren't large stripey bits in it.  We'll see if that actually plays out once I've got it finished.  It's half the fun, for me anyway, finding out the surprise.

All for now....

Friday Spinning: Some Eye Candy

I have nothing new to show you in terms of spinning progress (It's been one of those weeks - D left the house for work at 7 a.m. Wednesday and got home a bit after midnight - yeesh.), but I am hoping to distract you with some pretties that came in the mail this week.

First up, my August installment from Lori's Oceanwind Knits Fibre Club.  You might remember from July that the club theme is painters/artists.  This month's installment focused on Claude Monet, and his beautiful water lily paintings.  Lori sent two 2-ounce braids, one highlighting the colors of the flowers themselves (superwash merino), and the other highlighting the colors of the water (merino/seacell).

 

I have had a sneak peek of the 2-ply yarn Lori is spinning from this, using 1 ply of each colorway, which beautifully fragments all those colors (just like the paintings!), but I think I'm going to attack these in a different way.  My plan is to spin each of the braids up individually as a 2-ply fingering weight yarn, and then knit Joni by Kirsten Kapur, which will serve to blend some of the colors in the knit process in the slip-stitch sections. This will be up as my next/secondary project on the wheels behind the sock yarn I'm working on.

Next!  Carrie at Funky Carolina, in addition to her normal addictive roving club and batt clubs offered a very limited number of openings in what she was calling her "Pure Inspiration" club.  The jist of this one is that she gives group members a choice of fiber selections, and then we send her a picture or a song or a poem, or something that is special to us, and she creates an inspired colorway from that. For my first inspiration club, I had been trolling the Flick photos looking at pictures of fall foliage in Vermont.  (Some of you might remember D and I had a place in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont before we moved to Salt Lake 5 years ago.  I still miss it, especially in the fall.)

I found a great picture of a Vermont Road, which reminded me a LOT of our little road, and sent that to her.  In return, she sent me back 4 ounces of merino and silk that is her interpretation of the colors in that photo.

 

I think this is one of my favorite colorways of all time.  I love all the oak leaf colors, the hint of sky, and the gray-brown of the country lane all mixed together.  No immediate plans for this one, but I think something special will be in order for it. 

We are off to Santa Fe to ride this weekend, so no spinning progress until next week when we are back. Hopefully I can sneak in an afternoon or two before next Friday on the wheel.

All for now.....

Almost There.......

I am so very very close to having Aphrodite finished.  Just the bind-off and blocking, and she is done.  Maybe pictures of that for Thursday, if the weather here cooperates (which would be a nice change, but I am not holding my breath either).

At the end of last week, I got my yarn for the next lace project.  If you have spent any time at all wandering through my Ravelry stash page, you'll notice I have a lot of roving from Carrie at Funky Carolina. Carrie has a great color sense and I really love her colorways.  So, when she mentioned that she was going to be adding yarns to her permanent store lineup, I jumped at the chance to knit a sample for her, and while I was happy to work with anything, I was really glad she sent me her new laceweight.

 

This is the colorway Seafoam.  It's a lovely herby-green, a bit less blue than the photo shows, with 1200 yards as shown above.  I mulled over what I wanted to make with this, to be sure to do this pretty colorway justice.  I had thought maybe the Laminaria shawl from Knitty, but I decided on an Evelyn Clark pattern, her Icelandic Poppy Shawl (Ravelry link).  I have plenty of yarn to expand the size and play around with the gauge, if I need to, this way.

This will be added into the WIP Wednesday rotation after I get thru this rather hectic week, so look for it next Wednesday.

All for now.....