I've Got The Blues

For a better comparison of the new superwash merino fibre base with the old superwash merino fibre base, I've been sent a sample of the old base.

It arrived well-smooshed for shipping, but a little shake and it was fluffy again.

Visually, compared with the new base and the non-superwash, it looks the same - you know, fluffy and soft.

Superwash Merino

Super-saturated colour! Old base, new base, and not-superwash

It spun up as I remembered the grey superwash merino spinning - smooooooooth.  Soon I realized I had the blues. All the fibre blues. All the blue. It all happens to be dyed by the same two friends.

At the wheel - Earth Day batt finely spun on the left, superwash blues on a bobbin and the wheel, jewel-toned blue and purple waiting to be plied

Earth Day batts and recent superwash contain similar shades of blue, but in different blends.

The first half of the purple-blue is finished and a little over half of the superwash blues is done too. It was blue bath day in my sink.

A few follow ups

I promised a photo of the finished purple-garnet shawl that I was spinning for three posts ago.

This is Tulippa by Kristina Vilimaite (aka AnimaKnits on Ravelry).

Tulippa for two

As always, it was a pleasure to test knit (my project link) for Kristina as I adore her designs.

I'm spinning and testing for another of her new designs at the moment.

This is some locally dyed Finn fibre that I picked up at a knitter's frolic. I am making this a 2-ply, DK weight yarn.

I also finished spinning the multi-coloured merino as a singles yarn.

As a fellow geek, I appreciate how Cloud9 Fibreworks names yarns and fibres - such as this Elephant Trunk Nebula merino.
I initially started spinning this merino for the sake of comparing it with a new fibre base, but for better accuracy in comparison I'm being sent some of the former superwash base fibre so that I'm comparing like with like. More updates to follow.
The real question is, what will I knit with this lovely yarn? I think I'm going to use a second solid yarn with it.

Testing Fibre

When I spin, I decide the method using a combination of what I want and what the fibre does best.  There's not much point, I feel, in forcing fibre to do something it doesn't want to do. I know I won't be happy with the result.
When a friend asked me to test out a new superwash merino fibre base for her, I gracefully accepted the opportunity to spin lovely fibre.  When asked what colour I would like it dyed, I didn't make it easy - I chose jewel tones in amethyst and sapphire.  I received full, saturated colours. Gorgeous.

I wasn't intending to spin the next morning, but what's a girl to do when she opens her computer to work and it immediately reboots and begins a slow upgrade process?

This top is delightfully fluffy - no compression here and even with the saturated dark colours, there was very little tricky sections.  I don't do a lot of prep with my rovings - unless they are compressed and need a really good fluffin'.  For this top I tore the length in half and then split that half lengthwise so I would spin up a quarter of the fibre.  I pulled the fibre sideways a little, but otherwise I spun it as is.

Initially I spun fairly loose singles.  The fibre liked being a fluffy single.

Then I got to thinking that, being superwash (at least that's what I recall it is supposed to be, so I erred on the side of caution), I couldn't full a single and I didn't trust it to hold up to regular use as a single in merino.  Plied up, it was too loose for my taste, so I butterflied the yarn back on to my hand and added more twist before continuing.

It's probably difficult to see how much more twist is in the single thread above compared with the single on my fingers.

This ply-back provides a much better illustration of the higher twist compared with the first run.  I was quite happy with the higher twist result and carried on to finish the quarter of fibre.

Immediately following this quarter I popped in a new bobbin to spin up a sample of the fibre base my friend used to dye (because I happened to have some in my stash).

mmmmmm. Just look at those beautiful colours.

I wanted to see if the new fibre spun the same as the old.

The only difference is that this time I knew I was working with not-superwash merino, so I decided it was high time to practice spinning singles. I spun with lower twist.  It pretty much drafted the same as the new fibre.

All in all, I conclude the new fibre supply is equivalent to the former fibre supply. Test done. (Now to finish spinning the fibre! Oh the demands of testing.)

4-ply Chain

Fellow spinners, have you heard the chatter this past season about 4-ply chain-plied yarn? I did, and I thought I would try it out on the thin singles of alpaca-corn fibre (ingeo) I had spun up on the wheel.  It seemed like an interesting way to try and balance the evenness of the final yarn when my singles were not consistent (and I blame the fibre/roving/blend for some of that).

Spinning singles in progress

The basic process is straightforward if you've chain plied before. The only difference is that you work from two singles and alternate which single is chained.
In theory this could be done at the wheel. I've chain plied at the wheel (and on the fly with my spindles) many times using long chains.  However, I wasn't up to the task of trying to alternate chained singles as I plied.  I chose to work a plying ball in advance, and even then I wish I'd done things a little differently to keep the two bobbins separate. For example, I should have used two shoe boxes spread apart to make sure the two plies wouldn't start wrapping around each other.  I also wish I hadn't tried this with a yarn that already had a lot of twist in it. I was reminded that I should really find a way to keep tension on my bobbins (a brake band of sorts) when plying.  In short, I only prepared several meters of chained 4-plies before I decided I should take my sample to the wheel and test if I even liked the plied result before I continued with the full bobbins.

I did like the result of a nice fingering weight yarn. A multi-ply yarn certainly helps in balancing out uneven singles. However, I really did not enjoy the process of preparing the plying ball.  I decided to keep things simple for the rest of this yarn and whip up a couple bobbins of 2-ply instead so I could move on to other projects.  Other than making a more consistent finished yarn, there wasn't a lot of interesting benefit to using the technique with this yarn and it wasn't as simple as a 3-ply chained yarn.

Knit sample of the chained 4-ply, ball of 4-ply, and 2 full bobbins of 2-ply lace.

I'm quite happy with the lace yarn.

I'm still thinking of the chained 4-ply opportunities with colour work. The effort could certainly be worth it to play with colour, like a type of fractal yarn. I'd need to get more colours in my stash to try it out, although for a fractal I'm imagining you wouldn't want to alternate which thread is chained. I'd be interested, for example, in keeping one thread different and single while chaining the other.  Hmm, thoughts. I have some playing to do, even if it's with different fibres. Next time, however, I won't work with high-twist singles and I will keep my bobbins separated.

Spinning to Knit

Every now and then I find myself racing to spin a new yarn, even if I'm in the middle of another spinning project (or two or three).

Interrupted the blue batt spinning to spin up the alpaca blend light brown, but then I *had* to spin the purple.

This time it was because one of my favourite designers, AnimaKnits on Ravelry, had inquired if I'd want to test another of her amazing new shawls. Of course I do!  Alas, I didn't seem to have the appropriate yarn in my stash.  The obvious solution was to look in my other stash - the fibre stash - where I found 8oz of this gorgeous purple merino-silk top from several years ago.  The design features tulip flowers, so it seemed a great colour choice.  (The listed colourway on this purple is "garnet", which I think is a misnomer, except for the occasional red fluff in the top.)

Thus began the race to spin up two bobbins and ply them together on my quill so that I could cast on.  Then, as I was knitting (not simultaneously), I started on filling those bobbins again for a second skein which I finished just in time as the first ball of yarn ran out. Repeated this again for a third skein with the remaining fibre.

While I was spinning I decided it could be fun to record a video about this process, especially for my non-spinning friends who are interested in my hand-spun yarns.  In the video below I finish a second bobbin of singles and then switch to plying on my quill/wheel-spindle.  My spinning/tea room is quite cool (cold), which is why I am wearing a hat and cowl (also knit from hand-spun).  It took me far too long, I sheepishly admit, to realize that my foot on the floor would be much warmer if I placed the wheel on top of one of the blocking foam boards sitting right behind the shelving.  I'd been thinking of making a carpet for in front of the wheel. (I will, eventually.)  I also feel obliged to add that the wheel is not normally this noisy but my treadle doesn't like how I am repeatedly trying to start treadling from a near-stop while I'm talking/distracted and because I am twisting my body a lot while I talk my foot isn't resting in the correct position. One of my bobbins also just turned chatty in the cold dry weather as I started the project. I normally enjoy near-silent spinning.

Coming soon - finished shawl photos. (As soon as I finish, that is. There are a couple of bobbins being plied right now before I can wrap this project up.)

Blending

Having blended together some fibres (usually alpaca with wool) I decided that, with proper hand-carders to work with now, I should try my hand at blending different fibres.  There are a few braids of wool roving in my stash that I considered playing with, but since I'd clearly not started any of them it seemed what I needed to do was buy some wool with the intention of blending. Additionally, the wool I was thinking of is 8oz (which I'd rather keep for a single project) and is already brown/neutral - which would hide the additional fibres.  I want to be able to see my blending and have visual evidence in the yarn.

So, some of my Christmas yarn shopping included a braid of green BFL from Sweet Georgia.  I have silk noil (top) and yak down (bottom) in my stash from a destash purchase long ago that have been waiting for me to blend. I also thought it was time to blend in some angora (left).

(Yes, my home is dry. The angora tells you so.)

I experimented a little with how I wanted to layer, whether I wanted to use some or all of the fibres, and if I liked the spinning.  I settled on a thin layer of BFL followed by very thin amounts of the other 3, with a little more of the angora, and then another thin layer of BFL on top before carding into rolags.

The resulting singles are tweedy with the noil; I like the texture.  The yak down is blending in quite well and the luster of the BFL is complimented by the other fibres.  The natural, light colour of the other fibres is enhancing the lovely Botanical (colourway) green of the BFL.

I started spinning on my homemade top-whorl, but I found the speed was too fast and I didn't have the sort-of-long-draw control I wanted for this blend of short and long fibres. I wound on to a medium sized Turkish spindle and this is working well. I prefer my spindles for experimenting with smaller amounts of fibre, especially when my wheel bobbins are occupied with large lace projects (as usual). So far I have prepared 12 rolags. For the sake of testing I'll spin 6+6 and ply to see what yarn I achieve.
I also timed how long it took me to prepare 8 rolags. Or, more accurately, I tested to see how many rolags I could make while watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (a 55min episode, but only about 50min of rolag-making).  I made 8. That's roughly 6 minutes each (6 and a quarter, but my measurements of time in this case are all approximate so I'll stick with 6 min), which is 4 minutes faster than combing and carding fleece (from my previous post).  It takes a lot more carding to blend to my satisfaction whereas it's usually the combing that takes the most time with the fleece.

Final Yarn Update:

The remaining BFL, blended, yielded another 29 rolags. With all the fibre spun up I have about 250m of squishy worsted-aran weight yarn.

Time Investments

When *someone* asked if I could whip up a golden, bulky, knit skirt from All The Fleeces just before Christmas, I laughed.  I'd just finished spinning up some of the Fleece blended with alpaca to make mitten liners, so I was distinctly aware of spending a lot of time combing and carding before spinning, let alone knitting.  Actually, the spinning and knitting were perhaps the least of the time. Fibre prep for a bulky yarn would take even more time.

Recently, I decided to actually time the processes and here is what I found:

Time to comb and card fleece into a rolag: 10 minutes.
(I prepared 20 rolags = 200min)
This does not account for the previous time spent skirting, washing, scouring, and drying the fleece. Why comb AND card? Because I'm still working with dirty, VM-y, dusty fleece. "All The Fleeces" are from meat sheep and have been stored for I don't know how long. They are a down breed common to Manitoba, Canada.  Once cleaned, combed and carded they spin into a lovely yarn I have discovered, but it is a lot of work. OTOH, I have a huge sack of free fleeces and it turns out they're not garbage.

Time to spin 20 rolags onto one very full bobbin: 50min
(I learned that 16 rolags is probably ideal for my wheel/bobbins or 8+8 if I want to ply onto one of my bobbins. Maybe 18.)

Time to make an "Andean armwarmer" because I only have 1 bobbin available and I needed to ply: 12min

Time to ply onto my wheel quill because I knew I'd never get the 2ply onto one bobbin: 30min (plying onto a bobbin may have been a bit faster; plying from 2 bobbins certainly would have been faster that working from an Andean bracelet as I did have a few snags)

Time to skein: 4 min

Total time to create 67.5m/74yds of medium weight 2-ply: 296 min or about 5 hours.

If I imagine using 2 bobbins and spinning on to 1 bobbin rather than the quill, I could eliminate the 12min of Andean bracelet wrapping and probably cut 5 min from plying (to half the spinning -singles time or 25min) 296min-17min = 279min or 4hours 40min.
That's about 4min per meter of yarn.
(If I were to imagine needing about 600m of yarn for a skirt, that's about 40hrs of yarn-making. Yikes.)

Then I dyed the yarn using food colouring, vinegar, and the microwave since it's the fastest & easiest method and I'd have to wash to set the yarn anyhow. Microwave does most of the work, but of course there is some more time required here.

I made two skeins of yarn with 20 rolags each, so they took about the same amount of time. 10 hours or so of yarn.  I quickly whipped up some knit legwarmers (a few more hours), and gifted them immediately to said someone.  All that remains for me to photograph today is some yarn leftovers.  The colour is just what she was looking for. Eventually I'll prep more rolags and spin more and maybe next Yule there will be a skirt. (Uh, right after I finish that blanket...)