I wanted to weave some samples with the yarn I had spun up, but I found out halfway through the warping of my 4″ Weave-it loom that I wasn’t going to have enough to make a complete square. Fortunately, I had just read this fun post on eLoomanator (the blog of Jana, of eLoomanation fame) on weaving rectangles on regular Weave-it looms.

I wove each sample into a small rectangle, then proceeded to wash them gently in warm soapy water and lay them onto a hand towel that I rolled up and squeezed gently to remove extra water. The next morning, when they were dry, I scanned them into my computer.

The final result?

From left to right, we have tog, combined tog and thel, and thel.  There is a lot more detail in the scan, click here to visit the original full-size scan on Flickr.

My conclusions?  I absolutely adore the way that the thel spun up.  It’s lacy with a substantial drape and it would be a perfect addition for my freeform shawl that I’m working on making out of naturally colored fibers.  The tog is also gorgeous, but in a more rustic way.  I’m thinking that it would lend a nice strength and body to a sock batt.

And I must admit I really liked the way that the woven samples turned out.  Maybe a project with Weave-it squares is in my future.

In conclusion, please feel free to visit my Links page to see a variety of resources that I found useful in this exploration.

I’m very excited to announce that I will soon have a computer all my own, with a separate desk and organizational area as well. This should really help me out with organizing my thoughts and posts, as well as increase the frequency of my postings!

Up until now, I’ve been sharing with Jesse, but as he has been working on building his blog and tweaking his photography in Photoshop my time on the computer has been harder to get. One of my co-workers has offered me a free computer that he and his partner are no longer using. I got a used desk from a thrift store and replaced the drawer handles, and it’s looking great. I’m still waiting on the computer, but should be all set up within a week.

I also have been working on organizing my fiber area inside our small (18′x28′) but adorable little house in the rolling hills of southwestern Wisconsin. Since everything is open and there aren’t really any walls to divide the space into rooms, we have had to become a lot more creative about making areas into functional spaces. The lack of square footage has really forced me to become much more efficient about using space, too.

So here’s the latest version of Molly’s Fiber Area.

This is where I store frequently used prepared fibers, yarns, my carders, combs, and spindles, and knitting and crochet supplies. I have my wheels downstairs, conveniently located near the TV, and my drum carder and most of my wool stash out in the studio. And of course, the rabbits are outside too.

I’m particularly proud of the spindle storage I devised.

It allows me to see all of the projects I have in progress, and to admire the beautiful spindles as well. I store the fiber for the projects in progress directly beneath, in the top latching storage container.

The rest of the clear storage containers are for specific fibers. One is just for silk, one is for cotton, one for exotics, and so on.

In the adjacent corner, I have my old dresser and some rubbermaid containers.

This is the storage for all of my yarns and completed projects.

That’s all I have time to share for now.  As always, I would love to hear your comments on my thoughts!

Molly

Now, when we last checked in, I had spun up the thel (the soft undercoat), plied it and had wound it into a tiny skein. I had yet to spin up the two other groups of fleece, the tog (long outercoat) and the combined tog and thel.

I began with the tog. Because the ends had already been combed through when I removed the thel, I simply flicked the tips open lightly before spinning using an old wig brush that I got at a yard sale. Because the tog was a bit longer, I decided to try spinning it from the fold. It’s one of my favorite ways of drafting longer fibers, especially when spinning on a spindle. Unfortunately, it didn’t work very well with this fiber! I ended up drafting from a loose cloud instead.

I had some issues determining the right amount of twist for this yarn. I knew that if I put in too much twist it would become wiry and harsh, but I also wanted to make a stable singles that would ply into a balanced two-ply. This fiber, like the thel I spun in post 1, drafted very easily.

The weight of the 1.4 ounce Kundert spindle pulled the fiber apart as it was being twisted, so I ended up using the spindle in a supported spindle style. I set it spinning, and then as it spun on my lap in a little hollow of blanket, I drafted the fiber. It slowed the speed of rotation a bit but it also eliminated most of the weight of the spindle.

As I reached the end of the little cloud of fiber, it began to cling to itself a bit more. I’m thinking that even though I was holding it loosely, I may have started to felt it. Icelandic wool is a favorite of feltmakers! I’ll have to remember this when I start a project and make sure that I only hold a small amount of fiber in my hand while drafting.

The singles I ended up with measured 44 wraps per inch.

I handy plyed them to the point where they acted balanced. The resulting two-ply measures 24 wraps per inch.

I wound the tog yarn on my small niddy-noddy, and moved on to the last sample, the combined tog and thel.

I flicked the tips of the locks open, and thought about what I was trying to do. I had read here that if you drafted from the tip end, the tog would naturally pull the thel into the draft, but it just didn’t make sense to me to leave it to chance, especially for a sample. So I decided to predraft the locks out individually, and then combine them in an organized way that distributed the tog and thel evenly.

I took each lock and fanned out the butt end to eliminate the slight ‘clumping’ of the thel that had occurred during the washing process. I then pulled it in a diagonal motion, trying to stretch out the thel as far as possible.

Hopefully the process might be a little clearer after seeing this photo. The bottom lock is the ‘before’ and the top is the ‘after.’

I did the same thing with each of the remaining locks, and arraged them so that one would be butt end to the left, the next one would be the opposite. The idea was to distribute the tog and thel evenly throughout.

I took all of the pre-drafted locks and combined them into a single roving, which I again pre-drafted into a long strand which I wound into a small bird’s nest.

I again turned to my trusty spindle, and began spinning. I tried to capture the thel within the tog - it was a more woolen style of spinning, and I found it harder to spin a fine yarn. I tried to put only the minimal amount of twist in to hold the yarn together.

The singles measured 32 wraps per inch, and the handy-plied two-ply measures 16 wraps per inch.

All three groups of fiber, the thel, the tog, and the combined tog and thel have been spun! In my next post, I’ll show pictures of the finished yarns and give my thoughts on which is most suited to my project.

I still allow myself some creative time completely free of any requirements, but I have learned to appreciate how much I can gain from documenting my work and how much I can enjoy the process of consciously taking notes while working.

I hope to share that process with you as I document my sampling of an absolutely gorgeous naturally colored lamb fleece from Sheepsong Farm.

I received this stunning Icelandic lamb fleece in the mail yesterday, and carefully washed it and set it out to dry out in the studio. I couldn’t resist bringing in a handful of locks to dry by the stove in our little house.

This morning, they were nice and dry, and I decided to have some fun making some samples.

I decided to divide the handful of locks into two piles; one that I would separate into the softer undercoat (thel) and the longer outer fibers (tog), and one that I would spin the two fibers combined.

I began by separating the thel from the tog.

I took each individual lock, holding it just above the point where the soft downy thel ended - in a naturally colored fleece like this, it’s easy to see that point - and drew it gently through the teeth of a handcard.

The soft thel ended up in the tines of the card, and the tog came free in my hand.

I removed the thel from the handcard, and then repeated the process on the remaining locks in that pile. I sorted the tog and thel into separate piles, and then paused to take this picture:

I couldn’t resist spinning the super soft and silky thel first. I got out my trusty Clemes & Clemes fine wool handcards and carded up a nice lofty rolag. I use generally the same method that Spinning Spider Jenny explains on her blog, here, but I rolled up my fiber into a rolag instead of a cigar. I used one of my favorite spindles, a 1.4 ounce Kundert, to spin up the sample rolag.

The fiber drafted effortlessly, to the point of drifting apart. The few longer coarser dark fibers in the mix seemed to make it easier to spin, and I suspect they probably add some stability to the yarn. I drafted in a mixed method, using both hands and drafting against the twist.

After drafting out a good long length, I did one more flick of the spindle to add additional twist. In a spinning class with Patsy Zawistowski at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival we were taught that downy soft fibers require a little bit more twist. Since the soft thel resembles cashmere, I figured I might as well treat it like cashmere. The singles measured 44 wraps per inch.

I used the handy plying method (which I also learned as the ‘Miss America’ method from Patsy Z) to basically fold the single back on itself to create a nice two-ply yarn. I spun it in the opposite direction of original twist to just past the point where it was acting balanced. The final wraps per inch were 21.

One reason I love sampling is the fun tools; this cherry wood sample-size niddy-noddy is just perfect for skeining up samples. I used it to turn the small spindle cop into a skein.

Ding!
Round 1 completed.

So far, all I am going to say is that I can highly recommend fleeces from Sue. They’re beautifully skirted, soft and healthy, nearly free of any VM, and she even crosses over the border from Canada to ship them so that I don’t have to pay extra shipping.

She may even have some fleeces left, if you’re interested, let me know and I’ll pass on her contact information.

Thanks for sharing in the process with me in this post. Check back soon to see how the second and third rounds went, and to see the final results.

I do need to figure out how to add a link giving Ravelry credit, but that will have to wait for later. I have a sick boyfriend to take care of, dishes to do, and laundry up to my eyeballs! This website and Ravelring (what else do you call spending time on Ravelry?) have been all consuming lately.

For now, I leave you with a couple of pictures I took of some of our neighbors’ chickens’ eggs. I had lots of fun playing with Jesse’s new camera and taking pictures of them for the Yarnographers group - you guessed it! - on Ravelry.

I promise some ceramics pictures before too long. And I promise to take some great pictures in Korea, too!

My mother also had serious surgery last week - she’s home from the hospital now, and I was able to visit her a lot in the hospital, which was wonderful. It gave me a little bit of time to just breathe… and knit. I got 1/4 more of my sock knitted while I was waiting for her to wake up from the sedation after the surgery. Her health outlook is great - she had a spinal tumor in her cervical spine, right in her neck. It was putting pressure on her spinal cord, and she was starting to lose feeling/ability on her left side. The fantastic team at St. Mary’s hospital in Madison did a great job - her surgeon is an amazing guy. They removed most of the tumor, and it’s not cancerous. It is good news all around.

My very pregnant sister was here for the surgery, and it was great to see her, too. She lives in Kansas, as her husband is in the Army and is over in Afghanistan. She’s due with a baby boy in June. I crocheted a super-quick shellstitch afghan for the baby shower we held two weeks ago, and it turned out well. I would have liked to have added an embroidered initial or two, but oh well. I have had plenty on my plate.

As many of my readers probably know, the added stress of the trip, and the surgery, and life in general has made me want to knit, crochet, and spin like a crazy woman. I have even less time for it, of course, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

I had a great time re-visiting Debbie New’s Unexpected Knitting last night. Every single time I pick that book up I see something new, or I understand a technique in greater depth than the time before. I made a small little freeform knitted shape last night, and although I tore it out because I really didn’t care for the final result, the experience was amazing. I now feel like I can tackle knitting design from a logical, almost mathematical yet creative point of view.

I am thinking that I will use some of the NZ Romney I spun up from my handpainted rovings to make a really interesting sampler of techniques. The yarn looks like this:

It’s about 150 yards from 2 oz of roving. I spun it as a fairly fine single - I was originally thinking of making a pair of socks. I split the 4 oz of roving down the middle, predrafted it into this:

and then spun it on this:

One of my antique spinning wheels (I only have two, really!). I got it on Ebay about a year and a half ago for $75, and cleaned it up, it was so filthy and covered in dirt, but I could tell from the pictures that it was complete, except for the distaff. You can read more about that in the archives

I’ve moved three times since I bought it, and I am still not completely done restoring it - the legs really need some tung oil and the mother of all is still a tiny bit wobbly, but it does spin fine yarn beautifully, and it actually spins more smoothly than my Ashford traditional. This is the first real spinning project I’ve done on this wheel, and it was an amazing experience. The history and the love that is inside this wheel is really inspiring.

Of course, that’s not even the beginning of my list of spinning/knitting projects. I have a super-fine merino/soysilk/baby alpaca blend from some batts I made up on the drumcarder a couple of weeks ago that I’m spinning into laceweight singles. I love the natural colors, and the spinning is very soothing.

I discovered Bloglines a couple of days ago and now I find myself spending a little bit more time on the computer, but I feel like it’s so much more productive time. I get so inspired reading and seeing what others are doing!

Oh, if you’re interested, I’m selling some wool roving and gorgeous wool locks I painted, and some hand-blended batts, in order to raise a bit more money for Korea. The page should be up by the end of the day today, at http://spinsales2molly.blogspot.com/

I’d love to write more - I have so many ideas swirling around in my head right now, but I must go… 8 days and counting, after all!

My sister’s bunny, a french angora named Spike, was also fixed on Thursday. He was the driving force behind it all, in fact. He came to live with us for a couple of weeks while my sister moved into her new house. As soon as he got into our house, he smelled girl bunnies, and he started getting very hormonal…. even though he was on the main floor of the house, and the girls were upstairs in my room. Because I apparently smelled like the girls, I became his favorite person, which meant that he would spray pungent urine at me from inside of his cage, and he is a pretty good shot. He managed to hit my from 3 feet away!

He’s a sweetheart, and I really felt bad not being able to take him out of his house to play, for fear of being sprayed. And my mom was less than happy about the ring of bunny urine surrounding his house. I finally got around to calling the HRS recommended vets in Wisconsin, and I found a vet in our area. And I figured, why not do all three, if you’re gonna do one? All three rabbits are about the same age, from 7-8 months old, so they were all sexually mature.

I look at it like this, a rabbit is a fairly inexpensive pet to have. They don’t require any vaccinations, any regular heartworm checks, any flea/tick collars, or any of that stuff that dogs or cats do. They don’t even really need regular checkups, as long as they’re healthy. So a one-time cost of around $120 to spay or neuter is very reasonable.

The middle ball is a 1.9 oz ball of kid mohair, hand-dyed and absolutely beautiful. I got it as a bonus with some ebay order, and I didnt’ know what to do with it. So it just sits in my finished basket, looking gorgeous.

The skein on the top-right is the end result of the Blue/Purple batts that I bought along with the Rainbow batts. It’s just beautiful. I need to take some pictures during the daytime, or outside, because these pics don’t begin to show off the shinyness and color of the skeins.

Purple Merino Lamb, Soy Silk, Silk Noil, Ramie, and Glitz project:

I started this the longest time ago, must have been this spring. I planned on spinning this into yarn that I would knit or crochet into a lacy poncho for my sister’s 15th birthday on October 4th. I planned on making this a 3-ply yarn, and I divided the yarn “ingredients” into three piles, one dark, one middle, and one light violet/lavender. I didn’t weigh it out, but I think it’s probably just about 10 ounces all together. That’s a LOT of handcarding! I have carded and spun up the medium batch, and it’s just beautiful. I have carded the dark stuff into rolags, and it’s waiting to be spun. The lightest stuff, I haven’t even started to card. It’s buried somewhere in my stash.

Blue Mist Boucle Project

In my earlier stages of Ebaying, I bought some very pretty Brown Sheep mill ends in a beautiful dark blue wool with white mohair colorway. I have about a pound of the stuff altogether, and it’s fairly nice to spin, although I have noticed that it does have some dusty dirt in it that smells like a factory. I have a bobbin full of mostly white wool and mohair spun fairly fine, and a bobbin of the blue spun fairly thickly. I span it (spin, span, spun…. whatever) after I got my copy of Spinning Designer Yarns by Diane Varney. I planned to make a boucle yarn with some fine sewing thread as the third ply. I wanted to spin up all of it before I started plying though, as my Ashford traditional came with a bulky flyer, and that bobbin holds an absolute ton of yarn.

Super-Fine Targhee Lamb Lace

My latest project. I bought some absolutely wonderful targhee lamb from Laurie at Frene Creek Farm a couple of months ago. It seemed a little bit dirty, so I clipped off the dirtiest tips carefully, going through each lock and clipping off any weak tips. I ended up with a staple length of about 2.5 inches. It washed up beautifully, into the softest white fiber I’ve ever touched. It has such great crimp, too, it’s almost hard to see because the crimps are so tiny. I can take a handful of this washed fiber and make an armful of rolags! I can’t bear to dye it, as it’s so incredibly beautiful on it’s own. It even has a little bit of luster, which is only evident when it’s been plied.

After I got my S’getti string drive band in the mail, through my trade with Sande Francis, I set up my improvised small flyer whorl on my flyer and started spinning super-super-fine. I used the targhee because it seemed logical, and it’s beautiful. It’s thinner than machine sewing thread, and it’s still stretchy and I know I could go thinner. I have noticed however, that this is going to be a very time-intensive spinning project. I can spend two hours spinning and hardly notice the buildup on the bobbin.

I have about a pound and a half of the Targhee, of which I plan to devote about 3-4 ounces for this project. Probably just one bobbin full, then I’ll ply it back on itself, and maybe make a knitted lace shawl or something small. This is the project that’s on my wheel right now.

I should add that I’ve been preparing the Targhee by hand combing it with my dog combs. I have a pair of smaller two-pitch combs for most everything else, but I find that the short staple length is better suited to the dog combs. The combed prep makes a super-smooth yarn, and adds to the luster. Plus, I love sitting down and combing wool into roving. I pull it into roving with my improvised diz, a large brown button from my grandmother’s button box and a size 6 steel crochet hook. It works wonderfully for the pencil roving I like to spin from.

From the Beginning White Alpaca

I bought a pound and a half of white alpaca on Ebay a while back this semester, and I have been slowly but surely starting to work on it. It’s from somewhere in Canada, and it’s obviously from a part of Canada where there is a silty black soil. I can tell by the silty black mud that’s left in the laundry tub after I wash it!

When I first got it in the mail, I was pretty disappointed. It didn’t look anything like the picture, in my opinion. I let it sit in a corner, while I explored my other new additions. I came back to it a bit later, and washed some in the laundry sink. It’s pretty dusty, and I would prefer to work with it outside before washing it. It’s beautiful fiber, once it’s washed up. It has a great staple length, and it has this adorable crimp. It’s not very severe, more like –^—^—^ than -^-^-^, if you get what I mean… *L*

I’ve found that after I have washed it, it wants to turn into a static electricity demonstration, which isn’t really convenient for my purposes. I’ve only washed about 4 ounces of it, and I sprayed it down with a 50/50 mixture of water and olive oil. That helped a lot. I have combed some into some sliver, which I have spun on my wheel. It’s so soft and so silky, it feels cool to the touch and I know it’ll be great yarn when I get done.

Rainbow Batt Spinning Experiment

I bought a beautiful batch of Romney batts on Ebay. (notice a pattern in my buying habits?) They were hand dyed and blended into these small 1/2 oz or so batts. I couldn’t resist, especially because there were some gorgeous blue batts thrown in with the rainbow mix. When they arrived, I couldn’t believe the quality. They were fantastic. I split them lengthwise into strips, and spun a small little sample on my drop spindle. I plied it back on itself, and I was so disappointed with the results. It looked like a clown wig. Some of the colors were so bright and so vibrant that they totally took over the whole yarn.

I decided that all was not lost. I had a box full of the strips that I had split off (it’s beautiful to look at, I rolled the strips into little loose balls, and it looks like a rainbow spilled into the box), and I wasn’t going to give up that easily. I randomly grabbed a piece, split it in half, and spun half of it on my spindle. I grabbed another color, and I split that into three pieces. I blended one the pieces of the new color with the remaining of the first, and I spun that. I spun another piece of the new color without blending, and then continued the process. I love the result.

For every little strip that was split off of the batt, only 1/3 of it ends up in the yarn as the bright, clownish color it is. The other 2/3 are blended with other colors to mute and transition from one color to another. It’s beautiful. When I get some pictures I’ll make sure to post them. I think I’m going to try and spindle-spin this project.

Oh, and along with the Romney batts, I did get some blue/purple batts, about 5 oz, of a wool that’s a little coarser, but shiny. I am proud to say that I actually have spun all of that into a beautiful two-ply skein. Don’t know what I’m going to do with it, though.

Tiny Tiny Targhee Sari Silk Lace

I got 3 oz of sari silk waste on Ebay, and I have blended a bit of it into some of the Targhee lamb that I have. I only use a couple of strands of the waste for each rolag, so the end result is very subtle. I’m spinning it on my super tiny drop-spindle. I made it a couple of days ago, and I love it.

I parked in the middle of the lot, and walked to the first barn in sight. It turns out that there were two events going on this past weekend, a Llama/Alpaca show and a Rabbit show! It’s hard to tell which animals were cuter. After looking longingly at the velvety smooth and silky alpacas, I walked toward the building where the bunny show was being held. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of rabbits at the show. There were easily a thousand rabbits in one building! I wandered around, looking for a Jersey Wooley breeder. I found several breeders, but I was very impressed by Emily Waldmer.

She has her own rabbitry, Legacy Rabbitry, is still in high school, is on the swim team, and even finds time for showing horses. I was impressed by her website before I even met her, but now that I’ve met her and her bunnies, I am in awe! Her beautiful bunnies are sweet and well-behaved, and it’s obvious that they’re used to being handled. I asked her if she had any does for sale, and she showed me Baby Blue’s Salsa Dancer, a junior Siamese Sable small doe. She was so gorgeous, but a little bit shy. I loved her quiet manner and her beautiful big eyes. I asked how big she would get, and Emily said that she was actually not going to grow much more. Just perfect for me! I didn’t want to make a hasty decision though, and I wanted to see all of Emily’s beautiful bunnies, so I asked if there were any other does for sale Emily brought out Legacy’s Temptation, a junior Black Pointed White doe. She placed Temptation on the grooming table with Salsa Dancer, and they greeted each other with little bunny kisses and started grooming one another’s faces. My heart melted.

Emily told me that they had shared a cage when they were younger, and were still pretty close. I began to see how having two bunnies could be better than one. I ended up taking them both home in my pet taxi, thanks to Emily’s generous deal on the two of them! They’re just perfect for me. I renamed them, Temptation is now Ruby, and Salsa Dancer is Daphne. They’re sweet and small and everyone in my house has fallen in love with them. I haven’t taken any pictures of them at my house yet, but I have pictures from Emily’s site that I will post tomorrow, if I get Emily’s permission. In the meantime, you can go to her website (linked above) and visit her for sale page.