What To Do With Polypay

Polypay is a breed I hadn’t spun before.  So all of this was new to me.

 

Following washing I took a good hard look at the fleece.  For a non coated fleece from the Midwest this was pretty clean.  The structure of the lock is rather disorganized and the hand is what I call “crisp”.  To me crisp means it is very springy and bounces back well.   This I attribute to the strong influence of the Dorset on this breed.  The tips are not as yellow as this photo shows, sigh, the blue background was probably not the best choice to photograph this wool on.  The staple length of this particular fleece was about 3″.

Carding this fiber was a joy, in fact I went a bit overboard and carded more than my sample needed.  If I was going to do more than sample, I would first flick the tips then card it.  Carding is for organizing the fiber not to clean it!  Flicking helps open the locks for further teasing which will help some of the vegetable matter (vm) to fall out.

 

This is how the carded fiber spun up.   Blessedly the photo doesn’t show the trapped vm.  I spun this up on a drop spindle using a modified long draw.  It behaved itself well.

Combing this fiber, on the other hand, did clean out the short bits and some of the debris.  But once again, this is not the same as flicking and teasing.  Though with combing you probably don’t need to the tease the fiber.

But it sure looks pretty sitting there in those little bundles.

 

Spinning it was a different story.  It was more difficult.  With the short staple length you had to be careful while drafting.  While it created a smoother yarn, you lost some of the bounce that this fiber has.

 

The top sample is the combed fiber, and the bottom is the carded fiber.  Both samples were somewhat over-spun, but not extremely.  After handling these I’ve decided to flick the ends then drum card the rest of this fiber.  I imagine this becoming a three ply sock yarn.  Did I hear you gasp?  Yes, sock yarn.  Merino is not a good sock yarn for long term wear.  This stuff should remain springy, resist felting and wear for a good long time.

Meet Olga

For Christmas 2002 I received a wonderful present.

A 150 cm 10 harness Ulla Cyrus Vertical Countermarche Loomaka Olga the Oxaback. Imported with the help and generous hand holding by my friend Sara of The Woolgatherers.

I decided on a countermarche loom after realizing that treadling my 4 harness Herald jack loom irritated my left knee which was damaged as a result of agility training. What attracted me to this one rather than a Toika or Glimakra was the unique way that the treadles are attached to the lams.

Picking up the loom in late February of 2003 proved to be a challenge as Sara was not a dealer for them like she is now. Jer and I ended up picking up the loom from O’Hare and going through customs ourselves. Lesson learned, hire someone to do the customs paperwork for you. Surprisingly, I only had to pay duty on a few shuttles. I could import the huge loom duty free. Also the box the main parts are shipped in is a HEAVY wooden crate. Jer and I barely managed to get it in the house.

The above photo shows the first project in process after the loom was put together. A simple log cabin pattern in 8/2 cotton with 4 harnesses hung.

Now its been over a year since Olga has had a warp on her. The warp has been ready for a while, but something always kept me from warping it.

Yeah, probably missing Patches.

Something about this loom is very connected to her. She was my original “loom dog” even though she wasn’t as handy as Roo. She never retrieved very well preferring to pick things up and throwing them at me. She was comfortable anywhere she could be in my way it seemed, behind the bench, under the treadles. As she got older she would get stuck and I or Jer would have to carefully extract her from some place under the warp or beside the lamms.

Anyhow, I’m finally made some progress I can share with everyone in warping Olga with some romney I purchased a while back.

Yes that’s it, 332 ends to be warped at about 6 ends per inch. First job is to get the lease sticks in the back cross and attached to the loom next to the backbeam.

Then I spread the warp in a raddle. Now I’ve calculated this warp to be 140 cm wide so I need to separate threads into groups in the raddle.

After that I put the apron rod through the loops in the warp. HA! That’s easier said than done. Last time I attempted to lash a slat threaded through the warp ends. Can you say broken slat and loss of a bit of warp.

Now the fun begins. I hang onto the the warp while the husbands cranks the warp onto the back beam. We insert slats as we go so the warp goes on smoothly and evenly with only problems being warp slipping off the slats. And after warping together for the past four years we are still married. I now realize I should have split this warp into four sections rather than two.

Of course we have “extra help”. What would I do without my loom dog? Silly prick eared aussie. The shelties wander in an out, but they don’t like the noise the loom makes.

Once the warp is on the back beam, then I move up front so I can thread the heddles. This is fairly easy as it is straight 2/2 twill. 

After threading the heddles I hang my reed at a comfortable height and thread it. This particular reed is 7.5 ends per inch aka (30 ends per 10 cm) so it should work perfectly with one thread per dent.  If I wasn’t using twill I would not be setting it this close.  This is when a trained dog comes in real handy.  If I drop my reed hook, I just send the dog to go pick it up.  Oh and don’t forget to keep a container of dog cookies nearby to reward the good aussie with!

With everything threaded I place the beater back on the loom and place the reed in it. Then its time to tie to the front apron. And adjust and fiddle, and adjust some more.

Its tedious, yes, but the results make it worth it.

 Now the hard part, getting everything in balance so I have equal pull and all the treadles working as they should.   Treadles are tied up, holders are removed and the pin slowly eased out of place.  Wow…this one is almost right on.  I only need to adjust the height of the beater.

Now I’m good to go. Once this is finished I will be fulling it. As Laura Fry says, nothing is finished until it is wet finished! This is the first wool blanket project on this loom, but not the last. I mean, why else am I spinning up 10 lbs of Shetland wool!   If you look carefully you can see my one threading error that I found and fixed with a string heddle.

On another note of obsession, the color bug has bit, and bit hard. When I say bugs I mean bugs.

Cochineal bugs that is! Here is my cooling dyepot of roving and cochineal and the resulting roving. Obvious the pH was on the alkaline side as it is almost purple. Sorry about the one picture being out of focus, but I thought the color was more important to show you than the amorphous roving in a pot. I also need to learn to NOT felt the roving until after I spin it. The other pictures colors are off, the roving is closer to fuchsia.

Here is some mordanted yarn . It was used on the exhaust of the dye from the bugs. Then after the dyeing. From left to right I used merino, suri alpaca, mohair and naturally colored corriedale.  And this yarn is pale fuchsia as well, not salmon colored.

 Oh there is more where those colors came from. I have some chamomile and weld to play with as well. And a few Earthhues extracts. Most of the stuff I bought were New World dyes. I’m trying to limit myself somewhat, but its hard when you have the whole world to stick in a dyepot. The indigo will wait until spring. It is a vat dye, and one that smells like an old outhouse to be exact. I’ll be doing that outside when the weather is nicer.

The roving is some seconds from Brown Sheep. I’ll be carding them on my drum carder to blend them in different ways, at least the ones that are not felted into a solid rope.

Washing Merino (or Other Fine Wools)

Well, its about time I introduce you to how I wash greasy wool. Originally I planned to do this all with pictures. But since my kitchen is in a perpetual state of clutter I thought it best not to take pictures.

First of all examine your fleece you want to wash. Take it out of its bag, roll out on a sheet and examine it. This is the opportune time to remove large pieces of vegetable matter (vm), second cuts and any stuff that really not worth washing.

I then take 6-8 oz worth of fiber and place it in small drawstring top lingerie bag and close tightly. I then take a large stockpot that is dedicated to washing wool and fill it up about 2/3’s full with the hottest water I can get from our tap. It comes out about 120-140 degrees. I then place it on my stove with the burner on low. Just low enough to keep the water at 140-150 degrees. If the water at your house doesn’t come out of the tap that hot, allow the water to heat up to at least 140 degrees.

I use Dawn dishwashing liquid to wash my wool. With hard water I find that it does the best job. I have tried Orvus paste in the past, but it is better as a wetting agent and not for actually removing grease at least with my water situation. You will need to experiment how much Dawn to use, once again the hardness and pH of your water is going to affect how well how well it works. About 4 seconds worth of squirting is what I use. I then mix it up and check my water temperature.

Once it is hot enough and the detergent is well mixed in the water I drop my bag of wool in. I try and let the wool sink into the water on its own, but will push the last little bit and start my timer for 10 minutes.

After the time has elapsed, I then dump the entire pot into my top loading washer, set it to spin. While the wool spins out I start filling the pot for the second wash. Most every wool I wash needs two washes, some will take more though. Repeat this process for the second wash and then check the wool. Is it still greasy or dirty? Then a third wash will be needed.

Once the wool is clean then you will want to rinse the batch. I simply fill the stockpot with hot water from the tap, push the wool down into it and then spin in the washer. Once again, rinse twice and check. If there is still some soap residue then rinse again. On the final rinse you will want to set your washer for a full spin only cycle. You are only using the washer to remove water from the wool.

After washing all the wool, I then take it to my basement where I have a screen set up for the wool to dry on. Spread it out and allow it to dry. After it is dry you will want to shake it out over the screen to allow more of the vm to fall out.

That’s it! It takes time and those pots get heavy so if you have a bad back it might not be such a good idea to use a large stockpot, but you will need to cut down on the amount of wool you wash at one time if you use a smaller one. Maybe a better idea is to send it out to someone else to process. Personally, I prefer to wash most of my fleeces myself, even if I later send them out to be made into roving. By doing that I run the risk that the processor will re-wash the fleece if I don’t wash it well enough, but that hasn’t happened very often.

I spared myself holiday knitting and weaving. My niece was the only one to get anything handknitted and that’s been done for over 6 months. It was a baby surprise jacket that I had bought and promptly lost 2 sets of buttons for. I decided that the jacket was not meant to have buttons on it and gave it to her before she outgrew it.

I finally ran out of yarn for the main body of the Falling Leaves scarf. I now have started the edging and have finished the first short side and the corner heading up the long side.

The PI shawl with the Shetland/Shetland blend also got some progress done on. I’m up the 96 row stage! That means I will work about 50 rows and then start the edging. I did move it over to a 47″ circular needle out of self preservation. Elizabeth Zimmerman may have been happy to work it on a 29″ needle, but I certainly am not! At least not yarn as thick as I’m working with.

Happy New Year everyone and may it bring you joy and promise. The dogs and I have a lot of work ahead of us this coming year. Agility, obedience, rally and flyball. We have goals, but nothing is set in stone, we will have to see how training progresses.

As you can see, I have my work cut out for myself.