What’s Happened Here?

So much time has gone by….so much that I can’t summarize it all. Let’s just say not quitting my day job, my brief venture into Amazon was a financial flop. It is now time to get back to the root of things. Fiberarts, what I’m passionate about.

I’m currently watching fellow fiber vendors turn to additional ventures or retiring. What happened? The economy is booming is a large part of it. Does that mean people are not spinning or weaving? Absolutely not!!!!

On a different topic, I sold my Hansen and my Haldane and bought The Device. I have also sold my Lendrum and three looms, including my Baby Wolf. Eventually I’ll replace the Baby Wolf with a narrow counterbalance loom, maybe a Glimakra Julia. But first I need to clear out my spinning room.

Confession du jour: I cannot close the door I also have so much in that room I cannot get to the back where my drum carder is. So either I spend all the spare minutes of my day spinning for the next 50 years or sell something soooo I’m still deciding. I have stuff from Southern Cross fibers and Enchanted Knoll when she was still dyeing. Plus some dyed cotton, some alpaca, mohair locks, and mystery wool. I think Ravelry will be the best way to go that way it can go in the stash with photos. So if you are on Ravelry my userid is ellenspn. I’ll be adding things for days I’m sure!

I think this is still available I’ll have to check.

Yes I’ve had it that long. And we are dog friendly here.

Speaking of dogs last July we lost Grady to cancer. He was sweet as the day was long though and always a good boy.

Before we lost Grady this character came into our lives. Introducing Smokey who I may show in conformation. Still unsure about that.

Also both Ribbon and Shiloh earned their NW3 Elite titles. Ribbon in 5 and Shiloh in 6 shows. Masi is now retired to countersurfing and fence running and he’s much happier not being dragged around strange dogs.

Hopefully we will get back to our regular scheduled series again. But in the mean time check out my current offerings on Etsy at http://www.emsketsfiberworks.com

Woolen? Worsted? What the???

  

So you are sitting at your wheel and you have a hank of fiber in front of you. Do you just start spinning?  Let me ask you to wait and think about a few things first. 

What is your goal for this fiber? Are you looking for warm hat, hard wearing socks or are you just spinning to spin?

Spinning just to spin is fine. It gives you a chance to play with techniques and relieve the stress of everyday life. 

But if you have a project in mind then your choice of spinning will affect your results. 

Let’s first talk about what woolen and worsted spinning is.   Think about them like they are two end points on a line. 

With woolen spinning your preparation needs to be either random order or semi random like a rolag and your drafting zone is longer than the length of the fiber. This produces a ply with more bounce and a structure that helps trap air. 

Worsted spinning uses combed top that is very ordered and uniform length for the individual fibers.  The drafting zone is less than the length of the fibers. This produces a smooth, compact yarn that incorporates little air in its structure. 

 

Now those are two extremes. Between these is what people call semi-woolen and semi-worsted. Most fiber preps are not truly uniform or random. Cotton spinning is a great example. Cotton is spun woolen but the fiber prep is usually a sliver which is closer to worsted than woolen prep. 

I would not fuss too much about if you are spinning just to spin and relax. However if you are spinning for a project you need to pay greater attention. 

Some examples of projects that are better suited to worsted spun yarn include socks, woven suiting and lace. Woolen spun for hats, some scarves, and woven blankets that are fulled. 

Of course there are exceptions to the rules such as my woolen spun Shetland/Shetland blend shawl and warm bed socks made of alpaca. 

  

 

Once again, these are not hard and fast rules, and when you are outside the sphere of europeon influence these constructs are not discussed as such. But I find them a useful guide to making the right yarn for the right project.  

Dollclothes, what Dollclothes?

Well, that was a farce…I never even made one outfit.  I got sucked in by some slick marketing speak and almost spent a ton of money on stuff that I can’t use.  I’ll still make some clothes for my niece, but nothing fancy like what I was trying to do.

Sigh….

So I’m sticking to fiberarts and dog training, what I’m good at.  Right now my concern is with Danny.  He is weak and fragile.  I don’t know how much longer he will be with us, but I’m trying to make the best of every day.

Tomorrow I’m going to Wisconsin Sheep and Wool.  I hope to see Beth Smith and some friends from Ravelry.

Loom Music With A Bit Of Ribbon

My looms have been more active than my wheels.

I used some Wollmeise lace yarn to weave a stole.

The jury is still out on how I feel about weaving with Wollmeise. It acts like nothing else I’ve woven other than really coarse rayon.
I’m waiting for a painted warp to show up to make some presents even though I’ve wound this warp.

It’s to weave part of the massive amount of Shetland yarn I spun over several years. Nothing fancy planned just a goose eye twill.

On other news. Shiloh continues to demand one on one training. I’m trying to train all the dogs, well except for Danny who gets cookies for just breathing. As a result Ribbon is getting some serious training.

Since she has been a tiny puppy we have been working on K9 Nosework. What this has created is a bold puppy who has no qualms about counter surfing and grabbing stuff and running amok. It’s also trained in her persistence and work ethic. Now I need to train a proper tucked sit. Yeah I know she’s how old and I don’t have sit on cue.

Isn’t she cute bouncing around there 🙂

Luckily she is cute and I haven’t strangled her yet. I have registered her with APDT Rally but don’t expect to show her in the puppy classes. She’s at my least favorite phase right now. This too shall pass and be just a fond memory. Much like Adam taking off with the 18 micron alpaca roving when he was a puppy.

So as as we steam ahead to the holidays we with everyone a peaceful holiday season. Merry Christmas from the herding crew, Jerry and I. I can be found either behind the loom or in the basement, training dogs what else!

Santa Cruz-A Rare Breed Among Rare Breeds

Santa Cruz Sheep

Originally uploaded by tall2night

I first encountered the Santa Cruz through the pages of Spin Off Magazine. Deb Robson wrote an article about these sheep who had been fending for themselves on the small islands off the coast of California. It is uncertain where these sheep originally came from. There is certainly merino blood in them. Possibly Rambouillet and Spanish Churro in there as well.

In 1978 The Nature Conservancy (TNC) purchased the islands and in 1980 because of the restoration needed, started removing and eliminating the sheep from them. The American Livestock Breed Conservancy (ALBC) convinced TNC of the importance of these sheep and some were spared. These ended up and have slowly trickled into the hands of concerned shepherds. Best estimate I can find, there is about 200 breeding age sheep scattered around the US and on the island, not all were eliminated.

Recently I have seen Santa Cruz fiber for sale so who knows what the future will hold for this island breed.

The Window Is Open

To put it bluntly, I’m looking for a new job.  This is not a bad thing, I tried to hang on and be a good employee, whatever that means.  The truth is, I should have left a couple years ago.  But sometimes reality has to hit you like a 2 x 4 before you notice.  And the economy is not exactly great, but better than two years ago, or even 6 months ago.

Luckily, my job is not my career.  My fiber and my dogs are here waiting for me to straighten out my mind.

Then again I had commitments I already paid for.  Like Abby Franquemont’s Andean Backstrap Weaving workshop at The Spinning Loft.

I didn’t take many photos as I was too busy WEAVING.

Beth kindly took the above photo for me.  She played her many hats over the weekend, weaver, shop owner, mother, consultant.  I honestly don’t know how she does it.

We got a chance to wind our own warp.  In many parts of Peru two weavers generally wind the warps such as in this video.  It is a  short section at about 30 seconds into the video.

Since Beth’s shop doesn’t have a dirt floor, Abby brought a board with some dowels we could use.  My warping partner was an experienced weaver so warping went smoothly for both of us.

And I walked away with a warp that is now has heddles and is ready to start the pattern I was sent home with.  After a while you get really good at tying heddles, you don’t have much choice if you want to keep weaving and not fighting with the warp.

I have now finished my first band.

I by no means am ready to move on, but none of my current supply of 8/2 cotton is tightly twisted enough to deal with the abrasion that happens while weaving these.  Luckily I still have two more warps to finish.

On the way home, my mind was not on my sock, I was now looking over the patterns again in Nilda’s book discovering I was beginning to read them.  That is a powerful tool.

Sad to say, my spinning has lagged.  I’ve been spinning on the same bobbin of Bond for way too long now. I’m almost filled the first one, but I need a lot more if I’m going to be making the Elizabeth Zimmermann Nether Garments.  Of course everything has lagged over the past several months.

Luckily I can put it all behind and forge forward.  Onward!

Just Another Winter In The Midwest

Last weekend it was raining and melting everything, this weekend it is much more like a normal winter weekend….cold cold cold.

But in the past month we have found 28 geocaches, which is a personal record for January.  I’m still shaking my head as most of them were found on a local cache run and we broke our finds in a single day at 21.  Okay we are not into number runs, we like taking our time and enjoy the journey.   We still haven’t decided what our goals are for the upcoming year.

Currently I’m gearing up for the Ravelympics 2010.  I currently have 2 projects set up, spinning merino for the Elizabeth Zimmermann Nether Garments.  I’ve made a pair before so I’m looking forward to making a handspun pair for myself.  And my on the road knitting project will be Madrid Fingerless Mitts with some absolutely beautiful yarn spun by my swap partner from Enchanted Knoll Treasure Chest Batts.

That’s the bottom skein.  I have some lovely ruby colored beads to go with them.  I still need to swatch before the event start to make sure that the colors don’t clash.

Since I’m going to be spinning plain, white yarn I’m desperately spinning very colorful yarn until the Ravelympics starts

The top yarn is Patches Memory blend that I run out of  edging my shawl last fall and the bottom bit of lusciousness is also from Enchanted Knoll.  It is Pumpkin Juice Wildcards.  Oh my much prettiness coming to a sock near me!

I have also have used more than just the 30″ Reeves recently.

The Majacraft Alpaca wheel has been dusted off and I’m spinning some serious worsted with it.  I’m finding while my lovely Reeves handles very fine yarns well and long draw well, I have an easier time with worsted on a scotch tension wheel.  Notice I’m using the wild flyer and the regular bobbins.  I also spun some super bulky finn singles on my Louet S10 and plied them using the wild flyer and the large bobbins simply because the S10’s orifice barely handled the singles.

The fiber on the Alpaca you ask.

You mean this fiber?

Pygora/Fine wool punis from Rainbow Yarns Northwest that I bought at SOAR.  I fell down hard at Terry’s booth there and brought home lots of drool-worthy pygora fiber.

I’m also hoping to spin up this lovely batt from Dyakcraft before the opening ceremonies.  I traded some fiber with a friend for this batt.  Wow is all I can say right now.

So I’ll be spinning colorful items or weaving on this.

Yeah, not done yet…still working…

Bond-As Versatile As It Is Beautiful

The Bond samples were finished at SOAR, but could I find them…NOOOOOOO….  Finally they were located, in a bag that contains all my spare knitting needles.  Why they were in that bag I have no idea except those needles were with me at SOAR (don’t ask).

Here is a sample of a lock.  This particular sample had a very distinct crimp and a bi-colored lock.  Usually when I find locks with two different colors they break where the two colors meet.  Not so with this sample.  The tips were a bit tender but not bad at all.

Even after being stored in a bag for months the carded rolag came out and with a slight bit of fluffing came out looking good.  I can’t say that for all the rolags I stuff in plastic bags.  The crimp gives it loft and resilience that I love.  Think about mittens and socks.

Here is how it spins up.  Okay, it looks like I had too much swill when spinning this, but honestly it is high in squish factor and will wear well for those before mentioned mittens and socks as well as a comfortable cardigan.

Bond works equally well when combed.  Here are a couple tiny puffs of combed top.

I could see this either knit into a fine and open lace or woven into a warm shawl.  It isn’t apparent in the picture, but the yarn here has a subtle shine to it.  Perhaps a twill pattern to show off the shine?

Bond is certainly one of my favorite wools and I hope you will take the opportunity to take it for a spin.  Even if it isn’t moorit I believe you will find a col0r that will take your breath away.  Gleason’s Fine Woolies is where this Bond originally came from.  I bought the washed locks from an Etsy shop called Woolslinger who is currently taking a break from selling.

It’s been cold here in the swamps, and snowy.  We have something like 12″ of snow on the ground right now.  So I’ve been working on my weaving a good bit.

The handtowels are off the loom and that includes the extra special one woven with my own handspun tow linen!

And it actually looks good!  Much better than the crappy cell phone picture shows.  A little short, but hey, that’s what ends of warps are for!  But I still need to hem the ends of all the towels I made.

I’m weaving a rug on the rigid heddle loom.  What you see are rya knots made with Icelandic locks.  Yes the same fleece I did the review of the Icelandic wool.  I also took the Lincoln locks I had left and are using them as well.  It’s quite the contrast with the longer and matte Icelandic.  I’m really growing to like the rigid heddle loom for a quick and easy project.  Well, warping is much quicker anyway.  I’ll probably start playing with some pickup.

My knitting currently is focused on the Blessed Thistle Tsock pattern by Lisa Grossman.  I am currently much further than the above, but still not done with the ribbing and the little leaves before the main choke.  This pattern so far has been fun and I love lace so am itching to get into the main body of the pattern.  I also need to finally decide what fingerless glove pattern I’m going to knit using some of these yarns.

Bling bonanza here!  This is yarn from my Enchanted Knoll swap partners.  It’s sooo tempting to cast aside my sock and cast one one of these but patience is a virtue and I’m waiting until the socks are done.

And I’m also spinning Enchanted Knoll batts.  This is Pumpkin Juice Wildcard batts I’m spinning to knit more socks with.    I also have queued up some more batts for my Patches Memory Shawl.  I feel like I’m  almost done, but then again, no where near done.

As you can tell, dogs are not getting much training.  That was a bobbin for my Journey wheel.  Masi ate the rest of it.  Oh the joys of puppyhood.   I just keep reminding myself, slow to mature, slow to mature…

So I better go and train some dogs because in the words of Shirley Chong, “Management always fails.”

I SOARed

I’m back, well at least part of me is back.

A part of me is still wanting to be back in the mountains, but that’s a the geologist in me.  I have returned from SOAR 2009 that was held in Sunriver, Oregon.  I cannot say enough about the staff of Sunriver, especially the shuttle drivers!  Tireless they drove us all over the place, brought our to our rooms and generally were my salvation when I didn’t think I could make it another step with all the stuff I was dragging around.  And another thing,  I really debated with myself during the trip if I should have brought the Victoria or not.  Honestly, I would have been better off in so many ways if I had brought the much lighter Victoria, but I didn’t want to chance bringing a wheel that I would not be comfortable treadling in my cotton workshop and to be honest, the thought of borrowing a wheel never crossed my mind.

Ah my workshop with Stephanie Gaustad.  What can I say?  Early on I had narrowed my workshop choices down to three workshops, two of which I was having a hard time deciding between.  Then back in March I asked Judith MacKenzie McCuin what workshops she would recommend for someone like me.  The intersection of the sessions I wanted to take and what she recommended was cotton with Stephanie.

My goals were simple.  Spinning cotton on my Lendrum and making multiple ply yarns.  In no time at all on the first day she had many of us spinning cotton on our wheels.  We also got to do a lot more in her workshop.  Ginning cotton, willowing cotton, cotton biology, cotton economy and politics all interwoven during our spinning times.  Stephanie brought a lovely great wheel.

As well as charhas built by none other than Alden Amos.  Well, who else would they have been build by?

Our sessions were punctuated by bits of banter and well as some fabulous hot chocolate make by the resort.  Stephanie, bless her, will be getting copies of the video she allowed me to take.  Yarn handling skills I found I was weak in.  With wool it is so forgiving you can get away with a lot of sloppy handling, but cotton is a whole different beast.  Improving my  yarn handling skills will allow me to branch out.  Some of it is a lack of the right equipment.  But other is a problem I have locking myself into a list of items and not allowing myself the time to to learn skills, some of them quite basic.

Sigh

So what did I learn at SOAR?  That I have a lot more to learn!

The retreat was exhausting.  I found that after three days of staying in one place I resented flitting from room to room with the junk of doom in tow.  This one needed combs, this one needed five bobbins and a lazy kate, this one needed half my bag of stuff.  The sessions themselves was fine, just packing up and moving I found daunting.  Either I pare down my “stuff” or I invest in a cart to move my stuff around with!  Met many many lovely people including a woman from Perth, Australia who seems to have traveled the farthest.

My favorite of the retreat sessions was certainly reeling silk with Michael Cook.  Very cool to do and not as hard as one might imagine!

The marketplace was fun, especially when I walked around with a box of chocolate offering pieces to the vendors on Friday evening.  I had fun buying books, pygora (ah), pacu-vicuna (ah), batts (ah), yeah you get the idea.

I really enjoyed the gallery and attempted to document it as well as I could, until the batteries gave up the ghost in the camera.  I caught the rest of the gallery on video which is now posted on YouTube.  I also showed a couple items in the fashion show and both were well received, but the shetland/shetland shawl was fondled and admired all week long.

And no mention of SOAR is complete without  a mention of Dan and Phredde.  The two of them made my first SOAR memorable and delightful and yes a bit relaxing with a bit of swill.  Thank you for the cotton, the instruction, the rubber bands, and the talk!  Good to know other geologists out there in the fiber world.

Next year?  Certainly, it’s only an hour from home!

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!