Magical Comb

Still no proper wool combs around here, but I'm making do with my little comb.
I remain entranced with how this little comb can transform a washed fleece with dirty tips into fluffy white stuff. The dry dirt falls right out and the short bits find their way into a mulch bucket.

It's slow work, but worth it (at least, that's how I feel about it today).

This current pile of fluffy stuff (from fleece 4 that's been through the FSM vat and one scour) is being carded together with black alpaca (Freya's fleece), rolled up and spun for a fluffy yarn that will be knit into mitten liners for hubby.

The carders were a gift from a friend who found she had extras. They just arrived and I had to try them out. I'm getting the hang of it.

As for the mittens...

I've moved on to liners because I'm not ready to deal with this:

I don't know how I managed this. I've been vacillating between two options: ripping out a thumb, grafting the hole closed, steeking a new hole, and re-knitting a new thumb OR buying more black Tuffy and knitting at least one more LEFT mitten (eventually, 2 left mittens). The problem with option 2 is that I dislike stranded knitting. I've recently tried my hand at steeking and it went well.  However, my practical-self reminds my "I hate this" self that I do have a few stranded projects in my queue, including a sweater kit, and so I should practice stranded knitting so that I don't hate it.

UPDATE:
I now have THIS:

I blame hubby for not exploding the Invader on the far left. I didn't make a mistake on the left mitten. Nope.

Alpaca

Who doesn't love alpaca?

At the MB Fibre Fest 2015 with one of several baby alpacas.

 
As a spinner and fibre-prepper (it's a word, now) I love that alpaca does not require scouring. Or, at least, I never bother to scour or wash it before spinning.  If I have raw alpaca fibre I comb locks/sections with my little dog comb (still no proper wool combs) and watch the dust coat the floor, then spin it. I prefer to spin from the fold, but sometimes I spin it from the end.  Alpaca roving is equally lovely to spin with even less of the prep work.

Some of my first spinning was alpaca on a support spindle.  That first attempt with the support spindle wasn't my best work.  I did well with the long draw, but I realized fairly soon that the alpaca staple length was a little long (it was a roving from the local fibre fest) and that was making it difficult for me to learn on the new spindle.  I slid that first spinning onto a straw and packed it away for years.

Until one day this year I spun/wound that first length onto a bobbin and finished spinning the remainder on my wheel. I decided to spin my first cable ply yarn for a fingering weight alpaca with decent stitch definition.

My skein-ing helpers

I tried knitting a pair of intricate cabled gloves, but after knitting the first cuff I had to concede that the alpaca was still a little too fluffy to do justice to the intricate work.  I needed a simpler cable.

The yarn went into Time Out again for a while until recently when I knit up these long fingerless mitts.  I was tempted to work them as fingerless gloves, but feared the alpaca would become floppy.  So far they've held their shape beautifully. I chose a pattern that doesn't rely on ribbing for stretchiness. These Can Can mitts are fitted with decreases and I made sure to work my top ribbing sections with twisted knit stitches.  I also knit mine with an extra repeat of the chart in the arm and another set of decreases.

Knit in time for the chilly autumn winds to hit.

Pajama Day and Naked Gardening

It's time to post about something other than All The Fleeces.
Something with colour.
Something knit!

How about how this gorgeous merino-silk (80/20) hand-dyed fibre from sdspin on Etsy (I bought it as a pick-me-up right after the twins were born in 2012).

became this fine single on my favourite support spindle (over a very long period of time; much of it was spun while nursing twins as I sat on the floor)

that was plied with some white louet merino-silk (plying singles were whipped up on the wheel where I also plied)

and later sections plied with some white-orange Falkland when I ran out of white

to be knit into this Naked Gardening shawl. [Design link provided]

The body and lace of the shawl was knit with the white-plied yarn while the ruffle was knit with the orange-white-plied yarn.  I used 6/0 iridescent beads that capture the colours of the yarn and provide a subtle shine.

Having been knit in some of my precious handspun lace (that took me over a year to finish! and actually is not yet complete as there is still some of the coloured single on the spindle waiting for something to ply it with - it's a never-ending thread! Many times I was certain I'd spun up enough to ply it with, only to discover I had much more remaining) this shawl is MINE.

I had already tested this MKAL design using white lace. That shawl was gifted in June.  Normally I don't reknit a pattern, but I knew this design would show off my beloved handspun delightfully.

Baa Baa Black Sheep

...have you any wool?
Yes, maam. One fleece in the sack of "all the fleeces".  Would you like to spin it?
Yes, yes I would, thank you.

The "black" fleece was the second of the fleeces to be cleaned in the FSM vat. You can read about how it was rinsed and left out to dry twice in the previous post.  Here is the fleece drying (first time around)

I ran out of room on my drying racks. Evidently I need more.

It's quite a lovely colour. I think of it as dark chocolate brown.  As with all the fleeces I inherited, there is plenty of VM and there was plenty to skirt.

Here's a little chunk I brought inside to test. I have my tools ready - comb and hands. Doesn't that colour just look delightful?

 These locks are about 18cm / 7" . Lovely.

A little combing of both ends (like brushing the tail of a My Little Pony while you hold on tight to the other end so you don't yank all the nylon out of the tail) et voila - FLUFFY STUFF

I decided that this time I would see if I could make some roving. Of course, I don't have a hackle. Nor do I have a diz.  But I do have this antique needle gauge (which is in neither metric nor US sizing so it's rather useless as a modern gauge).

Not too shabby. I admit, this would have worked much better with some sort of hackle to hold the fibre, but I managed with my hands.

Spun up a sample on my mini Turkish.  It feels a lot like the white Shetland I spun. Perhaps it is Shetland (or related) wool.  Regardless, since it seemed like Shetland, I decide to spin it as I had found that white Shetland preferred to be spun - as lace weight.

Then I grabbed both ends of my "turtle" off the spindle when I was done and proceeded to whip up a 2-ply.

 Washed and now I wait for these few meters to dry.

I believe I know what yarn I will use (after spinning more) to knit an edging on my Shetland Lace table runner.

Examining "all the fleeces"

This weekend we took an impromptu trip to my sister's farm. That's where "all the fleeces" are.  Finally it was warm enough to open the sack and take  look at some of the contents. As I rolled it to access the ties better I noticed some lines and writing on the other side. It turns out that closest to the end there was a black fleece. Then a section of bellies. Then the many, many white-ish fleeces.
I pulled out the black fleece and checked it out. I skirted it - the obvious ick parts. But it's hard to see the dirt on a dark fleece.
Dumped the bellies and pulled out a few more fleeces to look at. They're hard-packed inside, so I had to rely on 'natural' breaks and then it would turn out I had a couple of fleeces. It was all very exciting as I had no idea what to expect.
I forgot my camera.
I borrowed my sister's iPhone to capture a picture of the largest of the 5 fleeces I ended up pulling out. This one was the easiest to identify the different parts.

Needs a good cleaning.

Yep, the rear end was pretty obvious and on this fleece the neck came across, leaving a hole for the head.

After skirting the worst of the stuff, I packed each fleece into a large pillow case. (Picked up 8 for $2 at the thrift store and washed them in preparation.)

Back at home I had to wait a rainy day.
The next day (today) was sunny and warm, so I got to work. I managed to wash about half the fleece - 4 laundry wash bags of wool fleece.

 Getting the supplies ready. I forgot to get a picture of the largest fleece laid out again as I tore it into laundry-bag-sized chunks to wash. (Bags not stuffed full of course.) I filled 7 bags, but only washed 4 for now. I didn't want to overwhelm my wash bucket.

 Laundry bags of wool soaking in hot water with Dawn.  First rinse water waiting.

 Washed and drying.  Much cleaner than before. When they're dry I'm going to flick and pick out the worst of the remaining stuff.  I just didn't know what to work on when there was still mud on the ends holding the dirt in. (There's another drying rack not shown.)

Wash and rinse waters when I was done the last bag. Furthest large bucket was the wash, but I kept topping it up with rinse water. Second blue is the initial rinse - more hot water. The orange and red buckets were my last two rinses and I kept refreshing those buckets. You can see a bit of suds in the orange, but red was pretty much soap free. Still some dirty water run off, but I'd be rinsing forever I think if I expected a large bag of fleece to rinse clear at this stage. I'll clean out more dirt with flicking/combing first.
I'm letting the first bucket cool to see if the lanolin will glob on top and then I could purify it.
I should do something with the other buckets of water now...

It was my birthday. That's a good enough excuse.

I have a confession. I had another hiccup in the stashdown commitment. I can't even blame winning yarn or helping a friend out. Turns out this no-new-yarn thing is even more difficult than I expected.

Claire, the larger of my identical twins, had a favourite yellow sweater. She'll tell you with glee that yellow is her favourite colour. That yellow sweater is much too small for her, but it's her happy sweater.  Lucy, on the other hand, loves purple (and pink and green). We receive plenty of purple hand me downs and she can still fit into her favourite purple knit sweater (although I should probably crochet a longer bottom to it; but I won't because someone just offered us a similar sweater their daughters won't wear).  We don't receive much yellow.  Clearly the obvious solution is to knit her a new sweater.  Yellow is not a yarn colour I usually buy. There was nothing suitable in my stash. You see the conundrum.

On my birthday weekend I stopped by Wolseley Wools on our way home from dance class with the sole intention of supporting the MS Walk-a-thon and possibly winning a yarny gift bag. (I wouldn't have used the yarn yet!)  There was an ongoing sidewalk sale and from afar the girls caught sight of beautiful yarns - including hand-dyed yellow wool sweater yarn. It was half-price.  Clearly it was meant to come home with me. For Claire. Because I love my kids.

As I was checking out, staff threw a My Mountain hat kit into my bag. It's a gift from the LYS because we, their supportive customers, helped them to win a competition hosted by the yarn suppliers. I remember voting daily for a while. I promise I won't knit that yarn this year.

The yellow Secret Stash Sweater yarn, however, is going straight onto the needles. I've already started swatching. Yeah, it won't count towards my stashdown yardage, but that's okay.

Stashdown and the Stash

I suffered some Stashdown Sabotage in the last month - not that I'm really complaining.

First, I won 10 skeins of AMAZING yarn dyed by Julie Asselin and it arrived in the mail at the beginning of March.  It is gorgeous and squishy and everything good in yarn.

Maelstrom (blue) and Elephant (grey). But - it's not pre-2015 stash. This will be Jan 1 knitting.

It seems I was on a winning streak, because I also won this fabulous large project bag from Boho Knits for sharing a Wooly Wednesday retweet.

 It's large enough to stuff two large projects! That's a cardi and a t-shirt on the needles.

Next I helped out Waterloo Wools with her stock destash. I took some lace yarns off her hands.

Why yes, that is 2 skeins of Montague yarn in greens you see. On the right is a mohair lace mega skein - for some crazy fun.

Fortunately, for me, our illustrious Stashdown dictators issued a decree that recent destash purchases from Waterloo Wools and Trunk Sale purchases from Indigo Dragonfly were exempt if we CO this week and finished by the end of August.

There has also been spinning on the wheel. I finished up an old spinning project (started many years ago) of cable-plied alpaca that is now a light fingering weight yarn.

So many bobbins - more than I usually work with. More twist, more plying, more plying.

Twins helped me as I was making a hank to soak.

Already on the needles for cabled gloves.

Abi is helping me to spin the fibre stash too. It didn't take much for her to learn how to spin at the wheel after working her first ounce on a Turkish spindle.

Wheel-spun and spindle-spun to be plied together.