Opalised gradient spin

A little over a year ago, I spun this yarn and wrote it up here: https://montjoyeblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/15/opalised-yarn/

Much more recently, about 6 weeks ago, I gave this to a friend for her birthday and offered to spin some more yarn to go with it, her choice of which source fleece, or combination thereof. These are the two kinds of fleece. Rose grey alpaca and a merino/silk blend from Ashford.

My friend asked for two blends. One with a bit less of the blue mix and one with more than the original yarn. I took that thought, went a bit crazy and made 5 more balls to get a full gradient from one to the other. I had made the less blue ball, then slipped and bought another spinning wheel. To try out the new wheel, I wanted a simple spin. So I did some plain rosy alpaca plus some blue mix by itself. Then I went back to my lovely Suzie Pro and made the slightly more blue yarn. This gave 5 skeins and was the intended finish point, but I thought there was too big a colour jump between full blue and the next one. These are straight off the wheel except the original skein in the centre.

So, well, I was having fun anyway and proceed to make another blend to fill that gap.

Much better. This is post wet finishing. You can tell if you look closely that my spinning has become more even in the last year. Original yarn is just right of centre. I’ve also got better at blending multiple kinds of fibre during spinning. This original yarn was my first attempt at that. I’ve done a bunch more since.

I wound them all into cakes for easier handling. Right to left we have: full alpaca, 1/8th blue blended during spinning, 1/4 blue blended during spinning (the original yarn), 1/2 blue- one ply each of full alpaca and full blue, 3/4 blue- one ply full blue, one ply 50:50 blended, and finishing with full blue.

Here is a nicer photo of the finished set, given away as intended this morning. I’m really rather pleased with these.

Doubling Spun Colour

I’ve written before about craving colour in winter. Well I ordered 100g of this lovely stuff as a sheer impulse purchase. DHG 19 micron merino in “Champs-Élysées” colourway. Yes I know it’s spring! but i ordered this in the depths of winter, i just didn’t get around to spinning it until now.

Buying based on only computer screen colours is a bit dangerous. It turned out to be more autumnal than I had thought.

I thought I’d like it better if it had a bit more blue in it, and I had coordinating merino tops left over from previous projects. I was also pleased to extend the quantity. There is a limit to how many 100g projects one can make use of.

I came up with these two singles, both 50g, or half the original tops

These plied together came out nicely but felt like I had pushed too far to the blue.

So I thought I’d try something different for the second half extension and hope I could work both in together. “Thought” she wrote. SO much thinking. So many options. I thought I’d use just the blue and green with a mixed colour tops from stash to mimic the orange of the original.

Then I thought that including a little grey would come closer:

I spun this up and the second half of the original mix but with the intention of plying some of the original with itself for part of this skein. Original mix on the left, extension mix on the right. I then spun the last of the original mix on top of the extension stuff so I would get a little of the original mix plied with itself, having belatedly decided I actually do like those colours. Argh.

These two plied together gave the middle bobbin in the pic below. Big success. I rather wish I’d done all of it like this. I then went even madder and decided to try to produce yarn that would coordinate with the two bobbins made so far without using any of the original mix, hampered by running low on the blue and green tops.

Fun with multicoloured spinning from stash.

Here are the three finished plied bobbins. Confusingly, the first is in the middle, second on the right showing a bit of the original mix at the bottom, third on the left.

and as skeins. Overall I ended up with 210g, or approximately 650 metres of 4-5ply yarn:

and with the third bobbin shifted to the middle

this last pic shows the colours best I think. My camera really doesn’t cope well with blues. They don’t quite match but I reckon I could manage a pleasing sort of gradient using them all.

I am thinking I might try to use these as the front of a vest like garment in some way. Maybe. The point was really to enjoy spinning colours and I so did, but I’d like to use the yarn too eventually.

Little custom spin rescue

Remember the Midnight Forest Hat? https://montjoyeblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/14/midnight-forest-hat/. It turned out that AdventuresInFelt was right and despite feeling wonderful in my fingers, it turned out to be too prickly for my forehead. I’m blaming the corriedale content. So, in order to be able to wear it I needed to make it a new edge in something non-itchy.

I’m in another phase of trying not to buy any materials, I have so much! I knew I didn’t have an exact match for the colour but I wanted to get as close as I could. I had some dyed black merino and some brown alpaca/merino tops that I thought might come close if I spun them together.

I’m really pleased with how it came out. If you squint, they almost look the same colour. The new spin is a bit thicker, which isn’t ideal but still workable.

It works nicely I think. Reads as the ground in the picture. Obviously I also changed the style of the edge. I wanted to use a bit more of the new yarn without adding length. I spun about 40g and used about 20g.

Another pic with it opened out. It does feel better on, though the weather hasn’t been cold enough to wear it for long. It’s ready for next winter.

Glad Rag

I tend to crave colour in winter and Covid lockdown intensified this. I really wanted something madly multicoloured to spin, but I didn’t have anything that answered and couldn’t find the colour combination I wanted in anything orderable. Then I made the Cabbage Coat  instead, which filled the need for colour for a while. Eventually I decided to order individual colours and make my own madly coloured yarn. All of this is from the recently renamed “Fibre Arts Shed”. Feltfine as it was when I ordered. Granite alpaca/merino and dyed merino in scarlet, denim, mustard, and mallard

This thought evolved into trying for increasing intensity of bright colours after starting with a neutral. Much, much thought, planning and spinning delivered this delightful madness. I’m pleased it worked pretty much the way I hoped except that the grey bloomed on wet finishing and ended up bulkier than I hoped.

I had always intended to knit this up in the pattern “Turbinado” by Sharyn Anhalt. I made one of those earlier this year but gave it away to a friend as a birthday present. The knitting started with the grey and I wasn’t loving it until I got to the fully coloured yarn. Suddenly I was having much more fun.

I was worried that the coloured yarn, being finer, would be too wibbly and not drape well. So I had my first go at adding beads to knitting. Happily the only beads I had of almost the right size were also a useful colour. I didn’t have a tiny enough crochet hook but I did have a tambour hook that was previously barely used.

I put two rows of beads a couple of rows apart from each other and the cast off edge. I also beaded the tips of the picots in the cast off. So cute. They look like little creatures. Ducklings one friend said. The beads are not obvious in the finished garment but they do deliver the drape I wanted.

Knitting finished and blocked, in time to use the last hour of sun on the back of my house.

A detail showing the increasing intensity of colour

Dry, and draped on the ironing board so I could sew in the loose ends. So pretty

The colours themselves were chosen to go with the Cabbage coat, though I think the styles clash rather. Never mind, I like them both, whether I end up wearing them together or not.

and on. It was so hard to manage the right light to show off the colours without overexposure at the same time as a picture of me I was willing to publish. This doesn’t do either really well but is the best I managed.

repeatery for linkage

Midnight Forest Hat

I’ve had this lovely natural coloured alpaca/merino/corriedale yarn for a couple of years. It was Aussie Bale Project tops spun by Sharon Bowman and bought from her at the Bendigo wool show. I’ve been patting it for a couple of years. Time to see if there is enough for a hat.

I used the same stitch count and basic plan as the recent red hat but dropped the needle size to 3.75mm. I wanted some kind of interest in it so I went searching through my books and settled on a cabled tree pattern. This has the bonus of giving me a little cable practice, it’s something I’ve done very little of. I messed with it though and made trees of three different sizes and graduated the tops to make them look more natural.

After I was finished and found I had enough yarn left, pulled back the brim and reknitted it on 3.25mm needles to reduce the frillyness and improve the structure.

Then I blocked it. I might not have bothered but I had to wash the hat anyway as there was enough sheepiness left in the yarn to set off my allergies. I’m often amused by the strange assemblages of things I use for blocking. In this case, a poly hat blank base, built up to be taller with cut down file folders, the top filled in with an old tshirt and the lot in a plastic yarn bag.

Here it is basking in what little sun we had

Then I steamed it to soften that corner, and embroidered a crescent moon for accent. The camera really struggled with the very dark hat and the not as pale as it looks embroidery.

I like it and now I can both pat it and wear it.

One for me

Last year, as the culmination of my Alpaca goodness project I knitted a version of Joji Locatelli’s “3-colour cashmere cowl”, written up here. That was a gift for friends and I wanted one of my very own. I’ve loved the look of this pattern for ages.

I’d been fancying these colours together:

The off white is 50:50 extra fine merino and baby alpaca. I can’t remember the seller but it was bought at a fibre muster in I think Gerringong a few years ago. The blue is this yarn bought as an absolute bargain from Skeinz factory outlet in Napier NZ, which i had to figure out how to wind into a workable form and then dyed with indigo.

The caramel is left over from the Alpaca goodness project, though the small hank pictured turned out to be too thick to work with the other two but I gleaned little bits of other leftovers from mostly the same creature. I think I ended up with five different little sections of yarn spliced together to make up barely enough of the caramel element, and then had a win with the last one running out just after the end of a round and the end of a pattern repeat! Yarn chicken win!

Here is the finished cowl straight off the needles

and then blocked

and here are a couple of pics of it on. Soft and warm and interesting.

Sensible Spinning?

I have this aim to keep my spinning stash under better control than my fabric stash. However, I’ve hooked into this lovely thing called the “Aussie Bale Project”. It’s small scale production. All the fleece is from Australian small farmers, with an emphasis on coloured sheep, and the processing is done locally. Every so often, there is a release. I already had a kilo of wool tops from two different bales, plus a bunch of other fluff. Another bale is due out this week, but do I want any of it? Good question. I decided it would be sensible to spin a little of the two I already have to help me make that decision.

One is fawn coloured, a mix of corriedale and merino. It’s a fairly easy spin and makes a nice enough yarn but not quite wearable against the skin, at least for me. I’m a bit meh about the colour but it would overdye well. The new bale is supposed to be similar but greyer, which I would prefer I think, but I already have this. Hmmm.

The other I was very excited about. It’s a blend of corriedale and suri alpaca. It has turned out coarser than I hoped for though. Very easy to spin but a little bit scratchy. It does have something of that lovely limpid drape from the suri that I was looking for. I should knit a sample and see how it behaves. I wonder if it will soften with wear? I have a desire for a jumper made from variagated indigo dyed yarn. I hope that this is the fluff to make it from. I have small quantities of some softer things in stash, I wonder if including a little would have good effect? or would that be a waste?

Straight off the wheel:

and washed. I’ve started labeling skeins, realising that I’m going to get confused if I don’t. There is quite a collection of spun yarn now. Eep.

I was a bit confused that I was getting so much spin into the singles and tried to treadle slower, which I find difficult. I thought I’d dropped back to a slower ratio. Eventually I realised I’d shifted the drive band on the drive wheel, but not on the flyer. Argh, silly me. These ended up almost balanced though.

 

Bonus yarn inspired skein winder

My second hand Susie-pro wheel came with a bunch of wool and alpaca top used as packing. It also came with lots of bobbins, some of which already had yarn on. The smaller ones held singles. Those huge bobbins had plied yarn (I have since learned that these are sold as plying bobbins). There was some evidence of moth damage so all this largesse was quickly bagged up with anti-moth papers and has been sitting for a few months. I wanted to get the yarn skeined off to both have the bobbins free and allow everything to be cleaned properly.

All this to skein off, and I knew how tiring it is to deal with just one or two full smaller bobbins using a niddy-noddy. So I looked about for skein winder options. The one that is sold to go on the Susie-pro looked pretty simple. I thought I could maybe manage to make my own version. So I did.

It looks pretty much the same, but the attachment method is a little different. Mine just has the right sized nut set into the middle.

It attaches to the wheel easily and spins nicely. It can be pedal driven by itself but the band slips if there is back pressure, such as when drawing from a bobbin. Oh well. It works just fine wound by hand and that is still much easier and quicker than the niddy noddy. I was well pleased. There was about 400g of the fawn, 200g on the biggest bobbin.

I plied the yellow and white singles together, then the white with itself after the yellow ran out.

All that fawn seemed to be the same stuff. So I plied the single with itself, trying to match the loose nature of the pre-plied stuff.  Both the yellow and the fawn had breaks in the fibre. I’m assuming moth attack. I ditched the worst sections but there are still a few knots in the finished yarn. Here is some of it freshly skeined. So neat but it didn’t stay that way!

It felted rather a lot when washed. Grr. I had thought it might be alpaca, but this easy of felting suggests sheep wool I think? Here is the whole lot washed and dried. This is after I spent a fair bit of time pulling the damp strands apart as best I could. Oh well, it was bonus yarn and the bobbins are now empty and clean.

Then I had a thought. If that fawn stuff felts so easily, maybe it would be good to make historical felted hats from? In it’s current state, the length to weight ratio even suggests it might knit up as worsted, which would be brilliant as all the patterns I have for such hats call for that kind of yarn. Something to investigate later when there is room in the project schedule.

More yarn tidying

This is the other lot of “thread waste” bought recently that needed rewinding before I could reasonably do anything with it. That’s a rather sweet price for such nice fibre. Any dye marks were no more than slight colour variation. Barely noticeable.

This cross wound remnant did not unwind easily unless it could rotate along it’s long axis. This set up worked reasonably well:

Until it became clear that I had not managed to stab it quite through the middle.  The last bit was more laborious to unwind, but I managed it without much tangling.

All on the niddy noddy. I’m not very practiced at wielding this. There is one bit where I must have got confused and reversed direction or something. I’ve tried to catch that in the tying up.

Now it’s a fairly neat skein. I might dye it before winding into a ball. Maybe in the next indigo adventure.

Success! Severally

Long time no post. Much due to Flickr changes and new charges. The need to sort out new photo hosting stalled me. I’ve only just figured out that WP will store pictures in-blog! I don’t know what sort of count or size limit yet, but here I am experimenting with the feature.

This below is 385g of Skeinz “Sockmaticion” yarn, in a pleasant charcoal colour, bought cheaply because of some cuts in the skein. It didn’t look too bad and was a good price for a nice soft 4ply wool yarn with 10% possum content. I had hopes of just using my normal swift, possibly after separating the skein into sections. However, there is a lot of yarn here, about 4x as much as my little swift can handle. Also, the skein would not be separated, it seemed to be cross wound over the whole height. Industrial scale! Not domestic.

So I came up with a Macgyvery kind of solution involving two chairs, tilted to make the backs more vertical over the relevant area. See, it really is a LOT of yarn.

The winding off went better than I feared. I stopped the cakes at near 50g or when a cut end turned up, whichever came first, and ended up with this lovely lot:

I call that worth doing, even though the winding did take me several hours. I am confused though as to why Skeinz has made a yarn called “Sockmatician” and then says it isn’t intended as sock yarn?