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Sit and Spin DVD!

Originally uploaded by insubordiknit

I  just got Jacey Boggs new video in the mail, Sit And Spin.  She produces the Insubordiknit podcast (hint hint Jacey…we want MORE of them!) along with homeschooling her kids and spinning art yarns.

First of all, this video is nothing like Judith MacKenzie McCuin’s Spinning Exotic Fibers and Novelty Yarns video.  Some techniques overlap, but the types of yarns Jacey shows are quite different.  As a result these videos compliment each other well.  One thing about Jacey’s video that I adore is she states right off the bat that if you are wanting to learn to spin this isn’t the video for you, go somewhere else and learn to spin a good, stable plied yarn.  I will add, you will also need to know how to draft while spinning.  The music is well done and well produced and her young son is delightful.  Art yarn decorates the musicians and the props.  Now the music is not for everyone I will be the first to admit even though it’s pretty close to the genre I listen to every day.

She covers five major topics Puffs, Coils, Wraps, Loops and everyone’s favorite Foreign Objects.   These topics build on each other.  For example, you will need to know how to make cocoons before attempting some of the yarns in the Wraps section.  Many of the techniques use layered batts and merino roving in her examples, both easy to find to buy or to create yourself if you have a drum carder.  She is spinning on a Lendrum with the bulky flyer in the video, but one of her companions is using an Ashford Joy which has a much smaller orifice.  Having a large orifice is an advantage when spinning these types of yarns.  Wheels such as the Lendrum, some of the Louet wheels, and the Majacraft with either the delta orifice or the wild flyer will be the easiest to produce these yarns with.  But having a small orifice should not stop you from trying this, just keep in mind that a big old felted bead will not probably not fit through.  Each technique can be run in such a way that it loops just that particular technique over and over so you can work on it with the DVD running the the background.  In the extras portion of the DVD she has a part where she lists her sources for the fibers and yarns shown in the DVD.

At the end she talks about how important it is not to weight the yarn when you finish it and let it dry  so that it doesn’t show a false balance (YES!).  In a few cases her terms are slightly different than others spinners.  One example is “halos”.  Her halos are loops make using the cocoon singles which end up looking like little angelic halos.  My biggest gripe about the video, it will not run on my Polaroid Portable DVD player.  It will play on everything else in the house, but not the portable DVD player.  My husband, who has worked in the VHS/DVD duplication industry, suspects its the type of DVD it was recorded on.  Not a big deal, it just means I can’t lay in bed and watch the DVD.  (No we do not have a TV in the bedroom, but we also do not have a spinning wheel in there either.)  Overall this is a great addition to the spinners technique library.  I am happy I ordered it and will be trying out some of the yarn types on my trusty Louet S-10.

The Lincoln is still AWOL, which means I need to get on the ball and re-make the samples.  I also managed to ship out a couple of promised packages and a big box of fleece to Stonehedge Fiber Mill.  But there are some fleeces I’m not sure what to do yet.  I don’t have enough to have it combed by Zeilingers so I just  may have to bite the bullet and send it to Morro Fleece Works who do fabulous things with fine fleeces.

I have managed to put one coat of lemon oil on my new rigid heddle loom so far.  Obviously I’m not in a hurry to warp it.  I’m now finished  with one of the two alpaca scarves on Lupe….hope I can finish soon so I move on to other projects.

The Patches project has gotten a bit more attention.  I’ve taken another two ounces and test spun with a supported long draw.  It drafted much nicer for me, but the test will be in the knitted swatch.  I’m hoping it will give me a fabric that has some drape to it despite it being garter stitch.  Can this project be finished before SOAR????

Oh and remember this.

I need to frog this sucker…I’m finally pulling my head out of the sand and admitting that the foot is way too long! Ahem…  I can at least wait a while to allow the pain to subside.

Now, back to spinning…I have some sampling to do!

Taking Account And Looking Around

Life has been interesting around here.   But what it means is that I’m starting to work on things again like spinning, weaving and dog training.  The only thing I seriously seem to have been doing is knitting.

This is the first installment of the Tsock Flock Club called “Fearful Symmetry.”

Check out the tail.  Why are they not done?  Um, I ran out of yarn…  So I decided to start this project.

Bloom mittens!  The first stranded knitting I’ve done in a long long time.  Very successful and whoa does that finnish landrace yarn feel good.  I bought it from RIIHIVILLA.  Along with the mitten yarn I bought some sock yarn and undyed yarn.  Stay tuned for more projects with this stuff.  I’m in love!  Oh and mittens in May you ask, Elizabeth Zimmermann encouraged people to make mittens in May so that you are not making them at the last minute.

Now that the mittens are done its on to the second Tsock kit, Daughter of the Regiment.  This one is easier than the first pattern with the exception of one small area…ahem…and guess where I am!  Yup, I’m there.  So when the going gets tough, the tough casts on another sock!  So I now have 2 sets of socks in progress.  The Tsock and a pair of basic socks in Mountain Colors Bearfoot.  Until I get past this small section on the Tsock I can’t knit it on the train.  And I must have knitting on the train…hence the Bearfoot socks…

I now am the proud owner of a small tapestry loom from Grafton Fibers and a 16″ Ashford rigid heddle loom.  I’m looking forward to warping both of them.

See this, it’s wool, its wool I’m not going to process myself.  I’m shipping it out!  See freedom from a hot stove   Freedom from the sinking feeling that I have so much to do.  I need to reclaim my basement from the wool because we need to focus on training some dogs.

I need one or two more sets of foam squares and then I’ll be D-O-N-E.  As it is now I can set up Danny for a good broad jump.  Danny says the footing is much better.   We need to pull it all together, but then we will be able to start showing in Open again.  Daisy managed to earn her AKC Rally Excellent this past weekend.  Now I need to decide, do we play more in AKC or just in APDT and UKC rally?  Masi is still cute and still a pain in the butt like any one year old aussie is.  He needs training, badly.

I’ve decided that if I don’t find my Lincoln samples in the next week I’ll make up a new set of samples so I can then find the originals.  Wish me luck!

A Quick Update

Just want to put up a quick update. I’ve had a rough month and finally things are starting to look up again. Jer’s fine, and the dogs are fine, I’m just dealing with some personal stuff that’s come back to roost. I have plenty of fibery goodness to share once I get my head straightened out and my Lincoln samples unearthed from the “safe place” I put them.

Lincoln-Father Of Many Breeds

Curly haired rams

Originally uploaded by baalands

As I go through and look at many of my favorite breeds, I find that Lincoln was one of the original parent breeds used to develop it. That should be no surprise since many of today’s breeds owe its roots to Lincoln.
Lincoln (also called the “improved” Lincoln) itself is believed to have been developed from crosses of Leicester and sheep native to Lincolnshire (called “old“ Lincoln) at the end of the seventeenth century. This produced a sheep with a large, meaty frame and long wool well suited to be combed. In the US Lincolns were imported during the late eighteenth century, but the breed organization did not form until 1891.

During the late 1800’s the value of Lincoln for cross breeding was starting to be explored. Breeds such as Corriedale, Polworth, Bond, Columbia and Targhee are breeds that are either the result of a direct cross with Lincoln or a second generation cross.

Lincolns are among the largest breeds of sheep with ewes ranging in weight between 2oo and 25o pounds while mature rams range from 250 to 350 pounds. Their wool clips average 12 to 20 pounds with a low amount of lanolin and the wool itself is very coarse. Micron counts can range from 33 to 41 microns, and it carries a bright luster.. Uses for the wool include carpets, tapestry, and upholstery.

Lincoln is well worth exploring. Dye a bit and spin up for some small tapestry exploration, letting the luster shine.

The Dog Has Left The Loom

YAHOO!!!!

Remember this?

That was the Romney blankets going on the loom back in January 2008.  It is now officially OFF the loom!  No it’s not finished yet.  Right now it is just a collection of interlocked threads, it needs to be fulled and I’ll be doing that tomorrow.  But for today it is cut off the loom and the errors I could find repaired.  Pictures will come later, after finishing.

What’s next?  Well, a baby blanket in cotton for the 2 year old niece…oh well, I’m not fast that is sure!

What about the socks?

Socks, what socks?

Oh these socks!  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I finally decided that The Niagara Falls pattern by Janel Laidman.  I had done the pattern before with commercial yarn, but the blue of the Snow Moon batts begged me to knit them again.    It took me about a month to knit them in my spare time and on the train.  I’m happy to say they are done.  I am a very loose knitter and knit these on size zero dpns.  The foot looks short, but that’s because my foot is short!

My next handspun project?  Well, I have the Patches Memory Shawl I just sampled for.   I hope to swatch it and also get the rest of the batts I’ll need carded.   So I’ll get a few more details later.

Nothing much happening with the dogs, but last weekend I went to The Fold and took an indigo dyeing class with Toni.  I took fiber and yarn and learned to control an indigo dyepot to dye protein fibers.  It was facinating, a lot of chemistry happening in a dynamic system.  And yes, it does smell like an outhouse…and it lingers.  It wasn’t on my clothes, it was stuck in my sinuses!  I also helped someone fall down the rabbit hole of spinning   I am always happy to enable!

A Weekend To Remember…If Only I Could!

For some reason I didn’t feel like pulling out my camera.  I’m not sure why.  I think it was partially because I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself than I already was going to.

It started on Friday, when I packed up wheel, spindles, dog, fiber and knitting and headed north to Columbus Wisconsin for Crazy Susan’s Retreat with Judith McKenzie McCuin.  I arrived in time and was able to spend the day working on worsted yarns and worsted sock yarn.  Once again, I managed to solidify some things in my mind about the relationships between ratios and drafting zones.  Things I knew from experience, but never had put it into words.  Greg from Iowa who I met at Beth’s last year was there as well as Jim from Brooklyn, NY.  Jim got to meet Luke even though Lukey was playing shy sheltie.  Luke did take a couple treats from Jim despite his fears.

Too soon I had to pack up and head to go do flyball!

Lukey, seen here barking at another team racing, loves flyball.  He is only 1800 points away from his ONYX title.  After this weekend’s racing I’m hoping it is less than that…but then again, for some unknown reason the team captains decided that running 3 teams on Friday night was a GOOD THING. Um, NOT!  The next day we only ran two teams.

Mad City Dog Training did not look like this!  The snow that had pelted us in December was almost gone and this weekend we were in swampsville from the ever present rain coming down that was melting what snow was left.  No flyball team members were hurt despite random acts of stupidity and falling that happens to someone at every tournament.  Some one once described if obedience is a formal dinner, and agility is a wine and cheese party, then flyball is a kegger.  It isn’t as physically demanding on the human partner as agility, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to run.

Here is a video from the same location we were running at this past weekend.  This will give you a sense to the insanity of racing from the handlers point of view.

So, after two days of this my husband, bless his heart, comes up to meet me in Madison to pick up Luke to take him home so I could go back to the retreat.  It was a win all around.  I got to go back to the retreat and only had to worry about myself, Luke got to go home where he was more comfortable and Jerry got to have dinner with me.

Saturday night was a too short lesson on dyeing with weak acid dyes.  Judith showed us two methods, immersion and painting with dyes.  Most of which I already was familiar with.  However, since I was tired and let my guard down I started asking rather pointed questions about indigo, natural dyes and synthetic dyes.

Sunday was a blur…I had missed the lessons on boucle yarn on Saturday and missed a lot of what she said about novelty yarns.  I spent some time spinning woolen and then plying that and then took my singles from Friday and plied and cabled them, ending up missing more of what she said.  I think the worsening weather had a lot to do with it.  I was trying to calculate when to leave to avoid the worst of the weather, and ended up leaving during the worst part of the snow.  But after a short stop at Susan’s shop to pick up a few needed things I found the weather a good bit better and it only improved as I headed south.  I did get some advice from her about going to SOAR though.  And one of my first choices of a workshop was also one of the two she recommended.  And she also confirmed my suspicions that originally Shetland Sheep were double coated, not single coated.  Also, that most of the so called Shetland wool yarn sold is actually a down breed.

All in all it was a good weekend, I just wish I could remember more of what Judith said.

Romney-A Great Way To Start Spinning

It’s almost cliche, those of us who learned during 80’s can often remember being handed a heavy bottom whorl spindle, a set of hand carders, and a bag of greasy, yellowish wool.  Often this wool was Romney.  Oh how far we have come in all those years.

This lovely lock is a fine Romney, silvery gray in color and has a wonderful springy hand.  I believe it was a coated fleece, which I do not often see with Romney.  Let’s put it through its paces.

Here is a carded rolag of the Romney.  Not much to look at however it was easy to spin into this yarn.

It has a springy hand and a supple but crisp feel.  It makes me think of making mittens or a winter hat with.

The combed fiber looks even more uniformly gray.

The combing gives a chance for the sheen of the Romney to come through.  This wool could be used for weaving suiting material or a lightweight blanket.  If I was knitting it I might be tempted to make a lace scarf that can show off the sheen.  This is a fairly fine Romney fleece so some might not mind a scarf made from it.  Tender flowers like me would prefer it not to be next to my skin.

Depending upon the fleece, Romney can be used for everything from rugs to lace.  So don’t fear, take it for a test spin and maybe you will fall in love with this versatile fiber.

It’s been more than a bit crazy at work, in a good way that is.  So that is keeping me busy, but far from out of trouble.  Next weekend I’m doing something a bit crazy even for me, I’m combining a spinning retreat and a flyball tournament in Madison, Wisconsin.  Why yes, I’m certifiable.  Well, I’m going to see Judith McKenzie McCuin.  The flyball tournament is smack dab in the middle of the retreat.  I have Crazy Susan’s blessing to come and go as I need to.

Oh he is soo worth it.  Luke is now 10.5 years old.  He is still on course for his ONYX title.  If I can get myself out to the tournaments this year we can possibly earn it.  Of course then I need to train my other dogs for flyball.

So I first go to the retreat.  Hopefully I can leave Luke out in the van where he will be happiest, then Friday afternoon go to the tournament on Friday and Saturday.  Lukes knight in shining armor will be my husband coming up to Madison to meet us and take him home Saturday while I spend the rest of the weekend at the retreat.

Yes there will be pictures, I promise.  It will be funny to see how much Susan can multi-task for an entire weekend.

The Projects-Handspun At Work

I’ve been writing and making samples for a while now.  And I’ve mentioned my projects from time to time, but nothing real in depth.  I’d like to present a bit more of my planning and progress using different fibers and blends of fibers.  If you follow me on Ravelry, you will see I make a lot of quick projects, but also have some projects that take me a long time.  I’m going to present a mix of projects, my plans, and how I executed them and what challenges they presented.

A short while ago I opened my mouth on Ravelry and cast my hat in on the Enchanted Knoll Farm group and joined the EKF Sock Spin/Knit Along.  Well, my original plans was to finish the socks I am knitting for my rally obedience instructor  and  start on a Tsarina of Tsocks kit Cookies Garden.  I am sorely behind on my club spinning.  Currently I’m in two fiber clubs, committed to a third AND considering a fiber CSA from a farm out in Iowa!   Yeah, right…I need more fiber like a hole in the head…ANYWAY!  I pulled the sparkling Snow Moon Batts out of my stash.

The Snow Moon Batts from Enchanted Knoll Farm are a blend of superwash merino, sari silk, and glitz.  Layered, but not stark clear layers.  It’s hard to describe her batts, they are lovely that’s all I can say.   I got the merino singles off the wheel that I tested for a different project and spun these with a supported long draw.

Did I mention I really love my Will Taylor Lazy Kate?  I thank Abby every time I use it.  I tightly three plied it and once I get the current pair of socks done I can start on these.  I have over 300 yards so I’m in good shape for most socks that will fit me.  I’m still searching Ravelry for a pattern.  Wish me luck.

By next installment I plan to have close ups of the yarn and a pattern chosen.   I hope you will enjoy this information as I try an expand upon the building blocks laid so far.

On the dog front, Daisy did very well at her last rally obedience trial!  I’ve decided to go ahead and try for the RAE and her APDT ARCH.  I am also introducing her to the APDT Level Three so let’s see what happens.  Roo, bless his fuzzy little heart, finally qualified for his third Level Three to finish his title.  It has taken him over a year to finish thanks to him not really understanding both the directed jumping and signals signs.  I’m sure he can earn his ARCHEX, but until he can figure out that even though he cannot see the jump, it is out there.

Daisy is a very special girl.  At one point early in her life she reacted to everything.  We’ve been down a long road together and she has improved sooo much over years.  She’s a very cool dog, but very intense with a high prey drive but also very fearful of some of the strangest things.  Gotta love shelties!

Romney-The Staple Of New Zealand

Romney sheep

Originally uploaded by Peter Nijenhuis

The other day I bought some lamb chops. Since it was just listed as New Zealand lamb I cannot say for sure, but likely the breed was Romney. The estimates I was able to locate are over 10 years old, but I would venture that it is safe to say that over 50% of the sheep in New Zealand today are Romney.

The Romney breed originates in the Romney Marshes of Kent, England. The breed is noted in its resistance to hoof rot, liver flukes, and having a fleece that is not damaged by wet weather. Traditionally it is a dual purpose breed producing one of the finer and shorter longwools as well as having a good carcass. The wool is a major player in the New Zealand carpet industry as well as many household fabrics. New Zealand lamb has been exported since the late nineteenth century and has a long history of shipping both fresh chilled and frozen meat worldwide.

The first Romney was first brought into the US in 1904 and the American Romney Breeders Association was established in 1912. It never gained the popularity other breeds did as much of the best range-land is in the dry western US, but it had one thing that made it very popular and continues to be important for handspinners, naturally colored individuals. Romney has proved to be popular to cross breed to introduce both the good meat traits and the natural colored wool. Genopalette is one farm that has done just this crossing Merinos and Romney’s to produce a beautiful kaleidoscope of colors. In addition, this wool is very kind to beginning spinners. Not too slick and not too fine it is grabby enough to hold together but not so grabby that it is difficult to draft. It is also easy to process. The fleece does not have a high amount of lanolin. Add to this all the gorgeous colors it comes in and it becomes attractive to the handspinner to not only start out their spinning career, but to continue spinning it time and time again.

Wow!

The new Spindlicity is out and I have not one, but two articles in it.  One on sampling and a second on Cheviot sheep.  I’m very excited about it as you can tell.

And as long as I’m bragging, Danny held a 3 minute out of sight sit stay the first in several years. Now he’s been on some new medication for arthritis he’s developed (thanks to his bout of lyme disease) and I know that helped.  I’m now hopeful that he can earn his CDX this year.