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 All The Sheep, have you any wool?

...Yes ma'am, yes ma'am, three bags full.

Took a trip to the Farm for Canada Day / my BIL's birthday and skirted three more fleeces the next morning.

 Empty barns/animal shelters on the way to the shed.

 Sack is still very full. Will I ever empty it?

 This fleece was shaved funny - it's somehow inside out!

 I was much more aggressive in my skirting this time.  Experience has taught me that I really don't want to deal with ALL the fleece of all the fleeces.  I have enough to be choosy. Skirted more than a third of each fleece. That's the skirting from one fleece.

 Some of this fleece is very yellow!

Three bags of fleeces. One extra stuffed bag of garbage.

Dying (some of) All the Fleeces

While some folks might like the yellowed colour of these fleeces, I'm planning to dye most of it.
I've not had much luck in the past (once) with dying fleece (was white romni), so I've avoided dying it. Mostly, of course, I've been purchasing lovely roving/batts dyed by other talented fleece artists. This won't change.
However, I'm going to have to take my dying skills up a notch. I don't expect myself to spin all the yellowed fleeces into yarn and THEN dye it. That would be far too boring.
Plus, I might want to needle felt some of it.

Dying the fleece is a skill I need to learn.

I'm starting simple with what I know and what I have the tools for - food colouring and vinegar dying.  I'm going to need to collect other kitchen tools if I want to use not-food-safe methods. I'm sure I'll get there by the time I'm done with All The Fleeces.

I prepped a bucket of Fleece 1 - the fluffy fleece - by combing it. As usual, the middle where I hold the fleece locks remains quite sticky with lanolin, so I gave it all another hot wash along with some combed black fleece locks.
The black fleece has not been in hot water or soap yet and I found that when I combed this batch it definitely needs a hot wash if I want to spin this lace easily.

Ready for a bath.

 After a rinse, it was time to prep the dye water. A little orange Wiltons paste in a glass bowl with vinegar added goes a long way.  This is a large and deep bowl. Fortunately, we have a very large microwave. Yes, I chose the fastest heat-set method for this test.

Fluffy! Even when wet.

All soaked.

After several 2 minute rounds in the microwave (and then another set of rounds with more vinegar added because the dye didn't seem to be taking as well as I would like) it was time to spin dry. Oh, first I drained the dye water and rinsed the orange fleece back in the first rinse bath - which was clean enough.  I don't have  a salad spinner and I'm pretty certain it would be a bad idea to toss a recently dyed fleece into my washing machine to spin dry (orange spots on DH's white shirts?). Plus, that sounded like a waste of electricity for such a small amount of fluff.
I did it the manual way! Spin it in the sack!

 The "black" fleece locks are looking lovely. (I should stop calling them that, even if they were labelled as such.)

The orange fleece is looking scrumptious!

Ooops, a couple of small sections were hiding in the wash bags. They'll find their way into the next dye bath once I have confirmed that I didn't create a matted mess. So far it looks fine. I'm excited for it to dry. Right now.

JULY 4 UPDATE:
Spun up as 120m of squishy, worsted-weight-ish yarn. About 15m of it is a beaded 3-ply using a very finely spun portion of the wool to hold the size 8/0 beads.  The first 22m section was plied with some of the natural yarn (same fleece) that was sitting around on a bobbin.

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.