Twisp of Fate

I have been doing a lot more spinning lately, and got into the box of rovings from Taylored Fibers in Quilcene, WA (which I last blogged about here in March 2014 when we visited Barry and saw his big carder in action).  I quickly realized that I didn’t have enough of each roving to do a sweater quantity, and wasn’t sure that was what I wanted to spin for anyway.  I am gearing up to weave new work for a fiber-arts show at Confluence Gallery in the spring, and want to do some small blankets or throws.  So I thought, why not create handspun yarn for wefts using various combinations of these rovings?  It would be similar to some twill shawls I did a few years back using handspun wefts, so I already have an idea of how much yarn I will need for a small blanket.

Here are the rovings:

Roving A – 50% BFL (blue-faced leicester wool), 30% silk, 20% alpaca.  I have a total of just under 1 lb.  This one has a lot of VM (vegetable matter) and some other hard bits, I think from the silk noils, so I am having to pick out quite a bit of that and the singles still turn out a little prickly.  I think it will be better combined with other fibers anyway, to tame this a bit.  It is a lovely warm honey color, though.

Roving A

Roving B – 45% lambswool, 35% alpaca, 10% angora.  I have 15 oz and it is light gray.

Roving B

Roving C – 45% merino. 30% alpaca, 10% kid mohair, 15% silk.  I have 18-1/2 oz and it almost black with some white streaks, presumably from the kid mohair and silk.

Roving C

Roving D – 65% Shetland lamb, 35% alpaca.  I have 2 rovings, each about 1 lb, and it is a medium gray, somewhat darker than B when spun up.  Since I have 2 lbs I can use 1/2 lb in a combo yarn and the rest of it as a solid 3-ply all by itself.

Roving D

Roving E – 1/3 each of merino, alpaca and BFL.  I have 17 oz and it is a dark blue.

Roving E

I have spun up some of this into singles and begun sampling 3-ply combinations, all about worsted weight (if I was knitting it).  For blanket warps, I have cones of Jaggerspun Green Line organic wool in a number of colors, which should be about the right weight.  I also have ecru (undyed) yarns from Ashland Bay that might work well, for example, the “Argentina” which is Polwarth wool and silk.

I figure I will need about 1-1/2 lbs of each yarn for a small blanket and have come up with a plan for combining my singles in different ways to achieve this.

Here is a 3-ply made from A, B and C above, with some colors in Green Line that I may use for warp:

3-ply using rovings A, B & C

Here is another one made from A, B & D with the same warp colors, but I think it would also work well on plain ecru yarn warp:

3-ply made from rovings A, B & D

I also have some teal handspun which is 2/3 BFL and 1/3 alpaca (dyed and blended for me at Taylored Fibers a number of years ago).  I started a sweater but it is languishing, so it may turn into a blanket or two instead:

I am also going to spin up roving E and plan to sample a yarn with one ply of C (the black) and 2 plies of E (the dark blue).  I have Green Line in some nice blue colors so that should work.

I am having a lot of fun with this, and have a lot of spinning to do!

Hansencrafts mini-spinner at work

I also have finished a couple more of my Mosaic Mojo hats.  This is the time of year when they sell well at the Winthrop Gallery, the only place I have them for sale.  So I need to replenish my stock!  A friend of mine gave me some yarn from Knit Picks to try for these.  The solid evergreen is their “Wool of the Andes” and the variegated a new yarn, called “Galerie” that is supposed to be Noro-like with color transitions.  Both are nice quality wool and inexpensive.  I used a fine kid mohair held with the Galerie.  The second one turned out better (in my opinion) when I made more conscious choices about how to use the Galerie, pulling apart the ball and selecting certain colors.

hat 1769

hat 1770

and this one is using good old Cascade 220 and a Noro yarn called Shinryuoko which is wool and silk:

hat 1771

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It’s been about a month since I went to the spinning retreat/workshop on Orcas Island with 2 friends from the valley.  I had missed the last 2 years so it was great to be back with Judith MacKenzie as our excellent teacher and mentor, and an interesting group of women.  There were some familiar faces, and some new ones as well – one group of 4 came all the way from Indiana!

The theme this year was “Wit, Wisdom & Wool” but basically it was trip around the world to explore  various fibers.  A lot of these were fine fibers such as yak, silk, camel, etc. and my friend Jacquie, who is a new spinner, really was thrown in the deep end.   It was a good review for me for things I had encountered in previous spinning retreats, especially since worsted draw isn’t my strong suit.

Here is a general view of the room – spinners, fiber and Judith!

We started with 100% yak (Himalayas, Tibet, Mongolia) and were shown several ways of spinning the top.  Later I also tried a yak/silk blend that is yummy.  The yak fiber is a soft gray color.  On day 2 we went on to a camel/merino/silk blend and then some 100% baby white camel, plus what Judith said was “adolescent” camel – not truly baby.  Of course, all of this is accompanied by many wonderful and informative stories about the nature of the animals, their history, and how important they are to the lives of the people who live with them and use all of their products.  This was definitely the “wit & wisdom” part of the week.

Then we moved on to silk – 5 different kinds, to be exact.  Eri is a wild silk from Tussar, India and is gotten from spent cocoons (that is, the fibers are shorter because they allow the worms to hatch and eat their way out of the cocoon, which breaks the continuous thread).  This is a rare and hard to get silk- it was white.  Muga silk is a wild silk from India and also very rare – it was a lovely honey color and has a lustrous, reflective surface.  I found it easier to spin than the eri and some of the others.  There was a dyed black tussah silk from India which was kind of coarse, I didn’t care for it.  White bombyx silk (cultivated) was finer than any of the others and a challenge to spin.  There was a natural color tussah (wild) that was quite nice, and finally some dyed bombyx that Judith had dyed an indigo blue.

On the third day we had a diversion into a color gradient exercise.  We used cotton hand cards to open up and prepare a solid color dyed merino top (the hue).  The hue was blended on the hand cards with white (for a tint), gray (for a tone) and black (for a shade).  These were spun into singles, and then we made all the possible 2-ply combinations of each to see what different yarns could be achieved.  It was fun!

Next was a trip to the Shetland Islands.  We spun up different natural colors of Shetland from rovings, and learned the different ways to spin it depending on its intended use.  Also we had a visitor in the form of a Shetland sheep:

By the fourth day they were getting the dye cabin going.  People brought all kinds of things to dye – ugly yarn to made beautiful, spinning rovings, sweaters than needed a change of color, you name it.  This is always a part of camp.  I brought some Corriedale roving from home – it came out a little felted and I need to figure out how to disturb it less if I continue with this at home.  I also dyed some Polwarth/Silk top and that turned out pretty well!  They also had three electric drum carders set up so we could make mixed fiber and color batts to spin.

The next stop was Australia and a chance to try Polwarth, a Lincoln x Merino cross.  Lovely, long & silky fiber but with plenty of crimp too.  I am in love.  Then we moved to South America and alpaca fiber.  Judith brought a whole haucaya alpaca fleece that we could sort through, and also an alpaca/silk blend in roving form.

Here are some things I spun and finished at home:

yak, silk, camel spun in class, then made into a random 2-ply to become – something!

Polwarth/Silk roving dyed at camp. one finished and one yet to be spun

Judith’s own dyed merino/silk – enough to make this shawl pattern

And here is our Methow Valley contingent, with Judith MacKenzie:

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