Spinning and knitting in January

In further adventures of things that are not Tudor shirts, I present the two most boring projects I've ever made in the same month.

First, in an attempt to use up some of the random bits in my spinning stash, a hank of cashmere/silk, spun on a spindle and 2-plied using a plying bracelet. Still not keen on plying bracelets, but it's less effort than winding it off the spindle for something this small. About 25 yards of worsted-weight yarn.

Second, a completed pair of socks that I started over a year ago. Ringwood ribbing for the cuffs and a plain foot. In charcoal grey on 2.25mm needles. YAWN.

The good thing is that this was the oldest sock yarn in my stash. Now that it's finally used up, I've cast on the next-oldest sock yarn - something that isn't grey or white!

Sheep are disgusting.

(Normal people spend New Year's Eve washing fleece, right?)

The thing about sheep is, they're animals. They eat, they poo, they sweat, they step in stuff, they roll in stuff. When the fleece comes off it's pretty gross and needs to be washed before anyone plays with it.

There are a million ways to get the crap out of a fleece, both literally and figuratively. The two main schools are hot-water-and-dish-soap and fermented suint. Since I live in 3rd-floor apartment in central London, I generally use the former. Fill the bath with hot water and Fairy Liquid, swish around, drain, rewash if the water's really gross, then rinse and air-dry. I think my neighbours might complain if I started leaving buckets of fleece out in the communal garden.

I've been thinking a lot recently about whether this method in any way resembles the way people in the Middle Ages washed fleece, and my gut is telling me no. (Obviously I'm going to have to confirm this with research and documentation, but hear me out.)

1. The hot-water-and-soap method is really time-consuming, and I've got access to a hot water system that doesn't rely on chopping firewood and hauling buckets to make it go. It takes me about 6 hours of actual work per fleece to process, and that's not including drying time. If I had a whole flock and had to process all of the fleeces every single year AND comb and spin them AND weave (or otherwise clothify) all of them in order to have a new piece of clothing, I wouldn't want to waste so much time.
2. Firewood is expensive, either in terms of labour or in terms of money. Ditto soap. I go through about a quarter of an economy-sized bottle of the stuff per fleece, and it's concentrated.
3. Hot water melts the lanolin and soap does an excellent job of removing it. But lanolin is what makes wool waterproof, so if my goal was warm clothing that would survive all weathers, I wouldn't want to wash the lanolin out.
4. The fleece-to-garment process involves multiple stages of wet treatment, any of which could involve a hot soap wash.

So what my method does is take time and money to get an end result that isn't fit for purpose. That's not very helpful.

Access to water in the Middle Ages was primarily via surface water - rivers, lakes, ponds, things like that. There aren't any of those close to me, but I do have a cold tap and a bathtub. And I'm terribly fond of Scientific Experiments. Consequently, I'm going to do part of my current batch with my usual method and part with just a cold water "wash" and see how the results compare.

Here's the fleece:



The piece of paper is for contrast. The fleece is nominally white, but as you can see there are degrees of white. This is a pretty clean fleece. Minimal vegetable matter, hardly any dingleberries, no second cuts. It's still very yellow.



Not a huge difference, but there's already a clear difference after one wash with hot water and Fairy Liquid. This is the water after that rinse and the solid dirt left in the tub:



Urine, sweat, dirt, all kinds of delicious stuff. Also, this is what minimal vegetable matter looks like:



The second batch, just rinsed with cold water:


The water is less cloudy, which is what I'd expected since there's no melted lanolin in it. The fleece itself is still tacky to handle but is actually less discoloured than the stuff that's been washed with hot water and soapy liquid. The biggest difference is that the tips of the fleece haven't come clean - not a huge issue, since I'll be combing before I spin anyway.

Removing vegetable matter is about the same, and intriguingly the very few second cuts floated away in the cold rinse. They tend to stick in the hot wash. Also, rinsing in cold means having to be less careful about agitation - you need heat to full wool.

The side-by-side washed fleece:



Cold on the left, hot on the right. The dirty tips are visible, but you can see that they're visibly about as clean. Assuming that the tacky feeling isn't a problem when it comes to spinning, this has the potential to vastly speed up the processing.

Taking Fifi Touring

The Tour de France starts on Saturday, which means that the Tour de Fleece starts too! The point of it is to challenge oneself to spin as much as possible during the race, ideally doing something special on the day of the highest climb and taking rest days when the real Tour does. This year I've decided to participate (since I was busy WIPs-Wrestling last year!), and I'm setting myself a real challenge.

I'm going to spin Fifi.

Possibly* not the whole fleece, but as much as I possibly can. The skirted, unwashed fleece weighed 2.35kg. I have finished washing the whole fleece and divided it up into gallon-sized zip-top bags to keep bugs out. It takes up 20 bags, and each bag is crammed to capacity. Once carded, each bag trebles in volume.

Carding and other preparation is allowed before the start of the Tour, so I've been carding frantically for the last couple of days.** I've currently carded 2 bags, or 10% of the total fleece. My plan is to continue carding until the Tour starts. Then I'll spin my rolags until I run out, then I'll card more. I'll continue the card/spin cycle until I run out of bobbins, at which point I'll take a break to ply and wash what I've finished. I'll just keep repeating this cycle until I've done all of the fleece or until the Tour finishes. Wish me luck!

*Yeah, ok, probably, but I did take 4 days off next week so that I have more spinning time.

**Did I mention that I'd planned to spin something else entirely and only decided to do this the day before yesterday? I could have been carding for weeks!

Blue, da-ba-dee, da-ba-dai

I've had that song running through my head since I started spinning this stuff back in late January!

A fellow Posh Knitter was destashing, and I'd never tried Falkland fiber before. It drafts beautifully. And Spindlefrog's dye work is amazing, though a little internet searching tells me she's no longer selling fiber. A shame - I really enjoyed this!

Some stats:

100 grams
327 yards
n-plied

This is the finest 3-ply I've done yet. It actually beats a couple of commercial sock yarns (coughcoughJitterbugcoughcough) in the yards per 100g category, making this my first true sock yarn. I'm not going to use it for socks, of course - there's no nylon in it, and I don't think it's sufficiently tightly plied to withstand so much wear. But I'm getting there!

I think I'll probably knit a shawl with this. I know, don't all faint in shock. Me? Knitting a shawl? Surely not!

Tackling the fluff

My fiber stash is growing, inevitably. A friend emailed me a few days ago to say that she'd an entire fleece for me! So, on with some spinning to make room for what's coming in.

I'm in the middle of a batch of very fine blue laceweight, but I decided to take a break for a few days and quickly spin up some chunky art yarn. Chunky being relative, of course, as this stuff is somewhere in between a DK and an aran! I started out last autumn with an art batt blended by Rockpool Candy. It's a blend of fibers and has inclusions.

It was only 50g, so I planned to acquire something complementary to ply it with. Opportunity knocked when someone on one of my swap forums offered a custom 50g batt in the colours of one's choice, so I went with black and crimson to tone down the crazy a bit.

(The lady who did the batt sells her stuff under the name Jellypod - it was beautifully blended and a real pleasure to spin.)

Ended up with 160 yards of 2-ply. I shall probably save it for a gift at some point - goodness knows I've enough kooky friends to find someone who will love it!

And as a little bonus, a pair of mitts I knit up from some yarn I dyed last year. Perfect for the chilly London weather. :)

Long weekend

Despite having to work on Saturday, I still ended up having a long weekend thanks to Monday off and a half-day of classes on Tuesday. Although much of that time was taken up with a total time-suck of a wordgame, I spent a great deal of time knitting.

Ergo, new shawl:

It's made from the handspun I finished recently. I have about a yard of the stuff leftover, thanks to the joys of the modular pattern. It's the first heavy shawl I've made for myself, and came in handy today. It's getting warmer in London, but still jacket weather. It's also heavy shawl weather!

A few thoughts:

• Ruffles look great but are a total pain to knit and cast off. It took me four hours to finish the cast-off.
• Garter stitch doesn't need blocking if the yarn is squidgy enough.
• Garter stitch really doesn't need blocking if the ruffle contains half the total yarn. I predict that two weeks of wear will stretch it to double the current size, which is already bigger than any of my other shawls.
• Worsted weight shawls don't work as scarf alternatives unless I want to look like a linebacker under my jacket.
• There's a lot of room for variegation in a semi-solid fiber/yarn.
• Knitting with handspun is much more exciting than knitting with commercial yarn.
• I need to spin more.

Landmarks

It seems to be the season for landmark points in life right now. Today I renewed my Young Person's Railcard for the last time, because tomorrow is my birthday and I'll no longer qualify. I don't mind getting older, but I'm definitely going to miss the cheap train fares! Baby L isn't a baby anymore. I went to visit yesterday, and while S and I were having a lovely evening of knitting and gossip, Baby L has figured out whole sentences and can have conversations. Strange how she's gone from being a noisy little lump to being a small person with opinions and a wicked sense of humour in such a short time.

And of course there are spinnerly landmarks. There's the obvious one - spinning yarn that you can knit with for the first time. That one was pretty exciting. But not nearly as exciting as the one I just got to - spinning yarn you'd actually WANT to knit with! Over the course of a couple of months, I turned this:



into this:



which I'm now turning into one of these.

It's real yarn. Finally. It squidges and is soft. It's evenly plied. It's sproingy. I love it. I love it so much that all of my other projects have been dropped like hotcakes so that I can devote myself to knitting it. I cast on two days ago and am a quarter of the way through my yarn. And since I took the day off for my birthday, I could conceivably finish it this weekend!

Busy signal

I can't come to the blog right now. I've figured out how to use my spindle at long last. I expect to resurface when I run out of undesignated fiber to spin, or for my birthday, whichever happens first.

Ta-ta for now!

2009 round-up and 2010 plans

I decided to have a real holiday over Christmas with very little time spent on the computer, so this post is a few days late. Still, better late than never!

The scores:

38 finished projects, 9 less than 2008, broken down into
9 skeins of handspun yarn
5 pairs of socks
5 shawls
5 scarves
2 hats
1 pillow
2 hotpads
2 toys
2 crocheted blankets
3 pairs of mitts
1 wedding dress
1 pair of garters

2009 was the year in which I learned to spin. I made a wedding dress, something I'm probably never going to outdo. I didn't finish a single piece of embroidery or garb, but I made more gifts this year than I have in the entire time I've been knitting. This was also the year I learned to knit and crochet without looking at my hands, which led to much better conversation and tv-watching.

2010 is going to be all about me. I plan to finally get around to knitting all the lovely things I've been stashing for myself (okay, maybe not all of them...) and finally having enough handknit socks. I'm planning to do a lot more spinning, predominantly looking at the technical side of things. I'd like to be able to produce a wider range of yarns on my wheel, from cobweb to chunky. I'm also hoping to knit up a good chunk of my stash and buy as little as possible.

2010 is also going to be the year in which I take my first formal knitting and spinning classes. My mother and grandmother have generously bought me spaces at classes at Knit Nation in the summer, so I'll be learning about Baltic fancy stitches with Nancy Bush, funky cast-ons with JC Briar, and spinning yarn for socks with Judith Mackenzie McCuin. I've also indulged in a ticket to the evening preview shopping, since the Wollmeise is going to be in attendence. I'm hoping to get some yarn for a sweater!

Hurrah! Another gift gifted!

Which means more photos!

I've done all of my mailing for the year, so I can now show off the two things that have arrived thus far and been opened. My lovely knitty friend H, who moved to Bristol earlier this year, is a bit of a Studio Ghibli nut. And so ages ago (about two years!) I promised her that I would crochet a Totoro, since she doesn't really crochet. I finally finished it and sent it off, and I swear, you could hear the squee from London!

Yarn was some random DK-weight arylic that the spouse found when I sent him to buy "a ball of Totoro-coloured yarn", plus some white scraps I had left over from Christmas stockings two years ago. The eyes are little black beads. He's incredibly cute, so much so that spouse is now petitioning for one of his own.

H also got a couple of skeins of handspun yarn in her favourite colour. As a knitter and handspinner, I feel it is my duty to pass on a love of handspun to all my knitting friends, so how could I refrain from sending H her first ever handspun yarn?

A wee bit more shopping

Just realised I'd never posted my haul from the Knitting and Stiching Show! Or in fact blogged about it at all - oops!

I was unexpectedly able to attend this year, which meant that my shopping budget was rather limited. I think I did a good job of being restrained. Only three needlework things and the obligatory chocolate for my spouse. (It's his reward for cooing over yarn and FOs and not complaining about the shopping!)

Two kits were the main focus this year. First, a knitting kit that I've been lusting over ever since I laid eyes on it a few years ago - Sanquhar gloves. I've chosen mulberry as my colour and a pale grey for the neutral contrast. If you can't see from the photo, these are stranded laceweight gloves knitted on 1.5mm needles. I may be mad, but they will be gorgeous once they are made up!

Second, a beautiful kit to make a goldwork holiday ornament. I've wanted to learn goldwork for a long time, but the materials cost has always put me off - especially since I might end up not liking the technique. A small kit for something pretty is perfect. The designer does a range of goldwork kits, but this ornament series are designed as teaching tools. Thus, they've got small areas of most of the usual techniques used with precious metals. And the kits come in silver, too!

The weekend wasn't all shopping, though. A very dear Ravelry friend, SD, had come over from Iceland to visit the show and she came over to have dinner with us. It was lovely to get to meet her in person after years of online correspondence, and we had a fab evening of spinning and gossiping and delicious food. SD was after a spinning lesson, so I gathered my paltry skills and taught what I knew. It seems to have taken, as she's been spinning up a storm since returning home!

Generous soul that she is, SD also brought me some beautiful gifts. Bags of Icelandic fleece and yarn (hello, felted slipper-socks!), some mystery roving in stunning shades of sea glass green, and a treasure of a gift. This is handdyed spinning fiber done by another Posh Knitter, who has his own online fiber shop. SD gave me her double batch of one of his club offerings because it's my favourite colours. Needless to say, I was a bit blown away!

My eyes are square, I cannot see...

No, wait, it's just that I've been looking at squares too long. :)

The blanket is finally done. Done, done, done, up on Ravelry and packed safely away to wait for Christmas. My box of holiday gifts is getting quite full! I also finished the knitting of another project this morning, but it needs blocking to be truly done. And then it can go into the box of holding too...

In among the gifts, I have actually been knitting something for me. It's a very special something - a hat made out of my very first skein of handspun yarn.

It's particularly entertaining for me, because in it I see evidence of my spinnerly progress. The mauve stripe is my first skein. It's a 2-ply. The watermelon stripes on either side are later spinning, my first 3-ply to be precise. My singles were enough thinner at that point that the 2-ply and the 3-ply are exactly the same gauge. It's heavy, it's going to be warm, and it looks reasonable enough that one of my knitting buddies thought it was a commercial thick-and-thin yesterday. Why yes, I was pleased about that, why do you ask?!

Huzzah - progress!

This has been a fabulous weekend! Despite working yesterday, I've managed to get tons of things done. The flat is clean and getting ready for cooler weather, everything's tidy, and I've been doing a bit of finishing! Another gift is totally done, and the one batch of Christmas handspun I had planned is soaking in the basin ready to drip-dry overnight. I'm at a bit of a loss to know what to work on next! Sewing more blanket squares, I suppose. Off to go assemble my project bag for the week. :D

Mmmmm, sheepy

My flat smells like a sheep. Fortunately hubs and I both like the smell of lanolin, as do most of our friends. I've been washing it bit by bit, done three bags from approximately 20. I've rigged up an empty freestanding tapestry frame into an impromptu drying rack which seems to be working well. Of course, I'd somehow managed to forget that washing fleece drastically increases its volume, as does carding. It's just going to keep getting bigger until I get it spun up!


In knitting news, the first Christmas gift of the year is finished and drying out after its bath and blocking session. No pics, of course - you'll just have to take me at my word. I'm still hopeful that I'll get all of it done, although there is a shedload to be done. Including squillions of squares and all their ends. I sewed ends in last night after I finished the knitting on Gift One.

An introduction

My beloved grandmother seems to have taken on the role of my spinning patroness. I was sent on a shopping mission for tools and supplies, and am partway there. So, allow me to present Fifi.



Fifi is a chocolate brown Jacob/Suffolk/Texel cross. The fleece weighs 2.35kg, skirted but unwashed. It's currently in a bag in my living room. :D

I've started the process of scouring the fleece. Batch one turned the water a spectacular bright orange colour, so heavy was the coating of lanolin. The fleece is of course a Christmas present, as are the other bits purchased along with it, but I live in London. If I wait until December to start scouring, the washed fleece will never dry. So, I'm taking advantage of the hot August sunshine to wash it. Once it's thoroughly dry, I'll pack it away to play with in the new year.

(That's a pint glass in the photo, by the way. This thing is enormous!)

Ruined forever

My foot's feeling better, so I thought I'd get Roy out and spin up some packets of sample fibers this evening. I chose to start with a 5g bag of dehaired camel. Yum. And then I fished out a 5g bag of pure cashmere. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to spin anything else again. It was like spinning with butter. Or possibly the underbelly fur of the softest longhaired cat. Softer than angora. With practice I suspect I could get a really nice laceweight out of it, but it's insanely expensive!

Ah well. Fortunately for me, the friend who gave me lots of her yarn when she moved also gave me three big bags of fiber. One's a mystery, but there's one of merino/silk and one of merino/cashmere! Not much cashmere, but enough that it's still like spinning butter.

Garters and FOs, oh my!

Hubs was out at a wargaming club last night, so I settled in with a pizza, Civ IV, the Phantom of the Opera and went at it. The garters are finished, and I'll be delivering them to mum at the end of the month when I visit. And I managed to finish spinning all the powder-blue fiber into singles! I'm letting them rest on the bobbins for a couple of days. Then I plan to do the plying on Friday evening, followed by a wash-and-whack session on Saturday morning. Photo update on Sunday, if all goes well!

I'm thrilled at finishing the garters. They were my second oldest yarn WIP, beaten only by the ripple afghan. I now only have 3 projects that date from before 2009 - the afghan, the mittens and the crochet Totoro that's hibernating. With any luck, the mittens will be finished this month, along with a goodly chunk of the afghan. And then I'll hopefully finish the afghan in July!

Once the current Monkeys and the mittens are done, I'll cast on for another pair of practical socks. After that, Totoro will live in my bag until he's done. I'm really feeling pleased about all my needlework right now. It's great.

One down, one to go

Had a surprisingly productive weekend, given how busy it was. After work on Friday I'd planned to do a load of knitting, but after ending up doing a bunch of housework in my wheel's corner I got out Roy and did about three hours of spinning! The bag of fiber I thought would never end is looking decidedly depleted, so with any luck I'll finish the singles this week and get the plying done next weekend.

Various trips around London on Saturday gave me the chance to get a couple more inches of garter done. Who knows, I might finish that this week too. And although I went into Loop, I managed to not buy any yarn! I went for a second 100cm circular needle for Mum's shawl, and left with only that. Now I'll be able to actually finish it.

And thanks to an afternoon celebrating Swedish National Day with my half-Swedish best friend and long train journeys on Sunday, I finished the first Monkey sock and got halfway through the cuff of the second! The purpose of the trip was to give hub's Granny her birthday shawl. It fit perfectly, and I think she likes it. My in-laws seem to think I'm a bit mad for loving knitting. Ah well. I think they're all a bit mad too, so it balances out. :D

Busy weekend

It was a rather productive 3-day weekend too, especially since it rained and I stayed in! Granny's birthday shawl is well and truly started, despite a complete change of plans. The yarn/pattern combination just didn't work, so hub's granny will be getting a lovely burgundy drop-stitch number instead of the cerulean I'd planned. Ah well. The family tell me she'll like it, so on I go. If I do one repeat a day I'll finish it in a fortnight - and I managed 3 repeats yesterday!

I did do some 'work' on the purple hat over the weekend, inasmuch as I looked at it, decided the fabric was too stiff and ripped it out to restart on bigger needles. I'll pick that up again once the birthday shawl is done.

I did a little spinning and finished preparing the lump of fiber I'm working on. It's coming up as a fairly fine single, so I've got at least 5 hours of spinning left, probably more. And then it all needs to be plied!

The real progress of the weekend, though, was the work I did on the ripple bedspread and mum's heavy shawl. I've all but finished another stripe, which leaves me with only three left. Admittedly two of those stripes are great honking wide stripes, but still. I might even manage to finish the whole thing this month, just in time for summer! And I've finished the plain garter stitch section of mum's shawl, leaving the wide lace border.

I've run into an amusing snag with the shawl. It's currently on a circular needle that's 100cm long - and it's too short! I've run out of room for stitches! I think I've found a solution, though. While digging through my circular collection, I found another 100cm needle in the same size. I'm using it for granny's shawl right now, but once that's done I can stick point protectors on one end of each needle and use them as uber-long straights. That'll save me having to order a 150cm needle from Germany, at least to start with!

Socks for Boys!

Well, one Boy in particular. Here are the pale ankles and newest socks belonging to my dear spouse:

A pair of Thuja socks, knit with exactly one skein of Wool-Ease Worsted. I've said it before, I know, but this is my absolute favourite yarn for heavy socks. The wool content makes it warm and bearable to knit with, and the acrylic content makes it wear like rocks. I'm still not letting him wear the socks unless he's trimmed his nails, though!

This pattern is great fun. I was concerned it was going to be dull, but it really isn't. The seed-stitch rib livens things up a bit. It also makes it really easy to make the socks match - you just count the purl bumps in the ribs! It always pleases my inner obsessive when I can make the socks match perfectly. Spouse'd probably like slightly longer cuffs, but he says these are fine, so I can satisfy my love of using up all the yarn and only buy one ball. Now that I have these as a sample for foot length, I can just work from both ends at once and make future pairs toe-up.

There's a three-day weekend coming up for May Day. I plan to indulge in lots of fibery goodness, because although sunshine is predicted, it's the peak of hayfever season for me and I'll need to be indoors. Darn, all that spinning and knitting time. :D

One of the planned activities is working on my new hat. Ages ago I bought a single skein of chunky purple tweed because I loved the colour. I'd an hour before leaving for work and after finishing the socks this morning, so dug through my imminent stash bag for a new project. The purple just jumped out at me! It's going to be a very basic top-down hat and should work up in a few hours.

I'm also hoping to make good headway on the powder blue fiber I've been spinning for the last few weeks. It's the stuff I bought at iKnit Day last year - I'd like to knit something with the finished yarn to wear this year! I Navajo-plied a sample to see how it would look, and it came out as a lovely fingering weight. Perfect for yet another shoulder shawl, in other words. I hope I have enough yarn when it's spin up.