Today, I ordered a sign for the door of my craft room:
So now I really CAN go there!
That was the theme of #teamwow’s challenge today – spin what makes you happy. So I continued with my big orange batt, spinning 3 sections:
Happy shiny
And then, because it was appropriate, I broke open one of the Tubs of Joy from World of Wool. This one made me yell with delight when I saw it – it’s black, with some greenish-yellow shiny fibre (maybe silk?) through it. A bubbling witch’s cauldron of a blend. Amazeballs.
I put on a playlist of beginner’s spinning videos by Tiny Fibre Studio, and started spinning. For a change, I wasn’t fully focussed on the spinning because of the videos, and after reading some of the TdF posts on Facebook I was treadling barefoot. I’m not sure if either or both affected things, but I suddenly realised that I was treadling like the hammers of hell, and whipping out fibre from the draft. Suddenly, because I’d watched 2 or 3 vids by then, and there was no sign of any yarn on the bobbin.
Because it was so tiny and skinny that it couldn’t be seen from my viewpoint.
And it was the most sublime green:
This is my favourite green!
It took AGES to fill it this far! There are short runs of barber-pole black and green, but isn’t it sublime? Like one of those poisonous Amazonian tree-frogs! So shiny!
Sadly, it must have been a discontinued colour, as there’s nothing like it on the website. Boo. Still, there’s 50g in a Tub of Joy… what could I make with that?
Somehow I’ve lost a day – this is supposed to be the French breed challenge day, which I did yesterday. Or did I count the Rest Day as a Stage? That’s more like it. I have no interest in watching sports (playing sports, yes, watching, no) so I amn’t familiar with how the Tour de France works…
So, with a day in hand, I’d like to introduce my 3rd wheel! Peigín is a Rappard Wee Peggy which I also picked up soooo cheap as an unsold lot in a local auction house.
Peigín
Like my Blaise, I’m not sure how a New Zealand wheel came to Fermanagh, but the Wee Peggys were posted all over the world – in part because they break apart for easy packaging. There’s a possible serial number, 295680, under the table:
and a very faded handwritten date under the treadle above the printed maker’s mark, of which I can only make out “4/7”:
The wheel joints tell me this Wee Peggy was made after 1976:
This saw-tooth joint appears on Peggys from 1976
So, April 1976, 7, 8 or 9?
Peigín is complete apart from the brake band, which seems never to have been installed – no hooks on the mother-of-all to run the filament through, or even screw holes. Even the orifice hook is in its assigned place on the table! There’s a little damage to the wood in places, and the bobbin in the flyer has clearly struck something with force at one time, as it’s missing a chunk of flange. I have ordered a brake band kit, however, even if it arrives in time, I doubt I’ll be spinning on it during this TdF. Some of the joints are coming apart, especially on the three-part flyer. I’m going to have to carefully take it apart, clean it, feed the wood, and perhaps glue it back together where the joints have shrunk too much.
The plied black alpaca is skeined up and in the wash:
But I do have a tiny amount – 20g or so – of fibre from a sheep with a French name:
Valais Blacknose sheep. Okay they’re Swiss, but they’re French Swiss.
I got this even after hearing things about this sheepiest of sheepy sheep. Specifically that this paragon of sheepdom, this avatar of sheepiness, this apotheosis of Ovidae*, has, well, shit fleece. Despite appearing to be the Living Epitome of Fluff on Earth, its wool is coarse, abrasive and frankly worthless for anything but pot-scourers, though you’d probably want something that was kinder to your hands…
20g of Valais Blacknose raw fleece, washed and split into sections for spinning
Knowing all this, I still went ahead and bought some. I do not have a pic of it when it arrived in the post, but, take it from me – I know whereof I speak – it came out of the envelope looking like the hair from the end of a cow’s tail:
Like this, but slightly less smelly
On first touch, it was rougher than a cow’s tail. Washing did nothing to improve the feel, it just made the individual hairs sprout out of the locks. I even tried my intensive moisturising hair conditioner on it – nada. The locks do have a bit of a curl to them, but it’s really just the last inch or so that curls. The rest is straight, inelastic, and utterly lacking in crimp. It looks, feels, acts like … hair. I don’t get how a sheep breed developed for the Alps has fleece so lacking in downy goodness.
Nevertheless, I spun that sucker. It spun surprisingly easily, without trying to tangle or felt in the hands. The individual hairs are quite thick: I tend to spin finer singles, but this is the first occasion where I’ve been able to count the individual hairs in one of my singles:
EIGHT hairs. Count them.
I would not use it for anything that gets closer to your skin than a hat-veil – it’s quite stiff and unyielding, so it may have suitable sculptural qualities. Spun thicker, it might have uses in some housewares (net curtains?), cordage, or basket-weaving. I plan to try Irish lace crocheting with it.
One positive from the experience – this could be a good fibre for teaching spinning. The fibre moved very smoothly through my hands without tangling or bunching or sticking to itself like normal wool does (or is that just me??!), and there was no problem keeping the twist out of the fibre supply. As a result, I got to practice a few different drafting techniques, including the dreaded long-draw that I messed up a few days ago. These would make Valais Blacknose a good practice fibre for a novice spinner, even if it’s overall a disappointing spinning experience.
Aside from that, I plied the two bobbins of black alpaca I worked on earlier, and started spinning a crazy batt that I think I got at Yarnfolk. It’s huge – about 50cm wide and 70cm long! I had a long think about how I wanted to spin it, looked at loads of tutorials, and finally decided to tear more-or-less uniformly coloured sections off it. There’s still substantial quantities of other colours in each section, so it’s not just going to be long runs of boring stripes. I finished one section today, basically orange, but transitioning through gold, brass, red and brown – and it’s so pretty on the bobbin! I’ll probably 2-ply each section to maintain the basic colour, then maybe make a basic shawl like Revontuli with it. Pics tomorrow!
Allons-y!
*: yes, yes, it’s Bovidae, but that calls to mind cattle, not sheep.
I wasn’t going to bring this out til near the end, but #teamwow’s challenge today is to spin a plant fibre. Bonus points if it’s a fibre from your garden. Soooo…
Carded rolags – I use the hair picks in pairs for combing fibre
Can you guess what it is?
Thread on my Takhli spindle, Tosh.
Does this help?
The Wild Swans
It’s nettle fibre!! Picked, de-foliated, stripped, bashed, dried, scutched, hackled, boiled in washing soda, dried again, and finally carded all by yours truly. I have been following experimental archaeologist Sally Pointer for a while now, finding out the many ways to process bast fibre (the outer ‘skin’ on the stem) from a variety of plants including nettle. This fibre is about 1/5 of the crop from about 100 dried green-stemmed nettles from the clump at the top of my garden (well, it’s really a field, just with some flowers in one part). The rest is soaking in washing soda for a week and will then be divided into combed-only and carded-only, to see if that makes a difference. I also have another 100 red-stemmed nettles from the bottom of the garden, which were processed differently – I stripped the bast off when the nettles were fresh, not dried – and are still drying. I plan to do a few other experiments this year to see what works best for my purposes.
And what are my purposes? I have become a wee bit obsessed with producing the finest possible fibre from my nettles – the kind used in expensive textiles known as ‘Nordic silk‘.
Nordic silk curtains found in Fossesholm Manor, Buskerud, Norway (Photo: Nina Kristiansen)Nettle wedding dress, National Museum of Denmark.
No, I’m not planning a wedding dress. But a little lace scarf would be nice.
This experiment was not very successful. The boiling was probably too harsh, breaking down most of the fibres to fluff, leaving just enough whole bast fibres to spin into a rather thick twine. Still, plenty more nettles in the garden!
FAQs
Yes, they do sting. But, like rambunctious dogs and snotty teenagers, they are best handled firmly. Grab the nettle at the base in one hand, clamp your other hand firmly on the bottom of the stem and pull the stalk through. At a pinch, you can use something to cover your hands for protection, e.g., kitchen gloves, plastic shopping bag, etc.
No, you shouldn’t make soup/tea/beer with the leaves you’ve removed. Older leaves have tummy-upsetting chemicals – but they can be added to your compost. If you wish to consume your nettles, get them early in the season, before they’ve flowered. Don’t throw away the seeds! They’re very nutritious – if you don’t eat them, leave them out on your bird table.
Nettles are best harvested for fibre after flowering and when the lowest leaves begin to turn yellow. However, useable fibre can be harvested from dead nettles that have over-wintered. Choose tall nettles with no side-shoots.
The fully-cleaned fibre is white – I was just in a bit of a rush!
Today’s #teamwow challenge is to spin a dark natural fibre, so I’ve dug out a black alpaca roving I purchased at my first-ever Woolfest in… 2014? I don’t know why, as I had little intention of spinning then but it was the first time I’d even touched alpaca so maybe that was it. My intention after another day of grey Herdygurdy yesterday was to spin something colourful a wild orange-gold-black-grey-neppy* batt I picked up at the inaugural (and so far only) Yarnfolk festival in Whitehead, Co Antrim, just up the road from my first alma mater, the University of Ulster at Jordanstown (the old Ulster Polytechnic). I was slightly nervous about spinning alpaca, as I’ve heard it’s slippery and hard to handle, but so far so good.
In today’s post, I received a new spindle from Innoxia Crafts in Canada! If u don’t know about these spindles, they are 3D-printed using a plant-based plastic and feature removable bobbins on the shaft. I ordered the June 2023 Limited Edition Raspberry Cream spindle, with 4 matching bobbins:
The open construction of this spindle reminds me of Victorian ironwork and fairground carousels, so her name is Caro(usel)
The bobbins click into the whorl and are held in place with tiny rubber bands. They also fit nicely onto my lazy kate for easier plying! They also only have one flange (which is what Wikiwand informs me is the name for the disks at the ends of the bobbin shaft that stops the thread falling off). This is presumably to cut down on weight as the spindle is 39g, which is toward the upper end of my experience with spindles. The flange is not grooved as a whorl, so they won’t be of any use on my spinning wheels, but no matter – I can ply from them on the lazy kate onto a wheel bobbin. Isn’t she pretty?!
This is today’s effort – 55g of Herdwick/bio-nylon 2-ply, and 39g of black alpaca singles:
Allons-y!
*: This, of course, demonstrates my hypocrisy towards clown barf yarns…
As if. I said I’d spin every day, so every day it is.
While out in the rain this morning, I spotted something odd on one of the rose bushes I inherited from my mother:
Same rose bush, different-coloured roses!
I’m pretty sure it didn’t do this for my mother, or she’d have shown me. Hopefully it’s not a problem, like lack of feeding or something.
Today, I finished up the 3rd of my Poppy Fields rolags. It’s went rather smoother than the other two, mainly because I relented on using it to learn long-draw and am instead spinning it as it comes. The sari silk is in no way blended into the rolags, it’s just randomly distributed lumps, so I just stop spinning when I come to one and winkle the silk fibres apart as much as possible to lie parallel along the single. I don’t always succeed, but the single is more consistent now and the silk slubs aren’t as huge. The drafting is a kind of short backward draw, between slubs, and not spun too tightly.
I also did some plying, weighing and measuring the length of what I’ve spun so far:
Donegal Tweed, 2 ply, approx 12wpi, 33.6m.
Mystery wool top, 2 ply, approx 20wpi, 33.4m.
Shetland moorit top, 2 ply, approx 20wpi, 54.5m.
I also tired of faffing about with crochet hooks and made myself a new orifice hook with 10ga brass jewellery wire. My hands hurt after making those spirals, lemmetellya. I need to invest in some sturdier jewellery pliers.
I suspect this gaudy object will be harder to lose.
And so to bed, with a final pic of my first 2 bobbins of Herdwick/bio-nylon singles, where they’ll rest for da or so until they’re plied:
Herdygurdy and the 3rd Poppy Fields rolag awaiting plying.
Between injury and family stuff, I have not done much spinning, but I have spun something every day so I’m still meeting my TdF goal.
D+7 challenge: Glitter. And wouldn’t you know it, another delivery from WoW*, including two glittery tops from their recent Fibre Friday offerings:
GL13, Glitter White/RedGL18, Glitter White/Multi
Both are 70:30 merino-stellina (polyester-nylon) blends, where the merino is white and the stellina provides the colour. What I find interesting is the overall colour of each: the red stellina results in an overall deep pink hue, and the multi-coloured stellina a soft grey.
Salvador Dali’s The Eye (1945)
I decided to spin the white-red blend on a spalted beech drop spindle from Thomas Wood & Wool. One part of the spalting resembles Salvador Dali’s The Eye, so the spindle’s name is Dali. I remember reading somewhere that roving? top? is created by combining 3 pencil rovings into one, and that the 3 parts can quite easily be separated. I unfolded the blend and lo! it was so! Not terribly obvious, but I broke a hand-length off and divided it in 3 for spinning. Out of concern for the single getting too thin and ending up spinning just stellina, I made the effort to spin a wee bit thicker than I normally do. I also twirled the spindle slower – which meant it spun for shorter runs – and allowed it to “un-spin” until the single was only slightly twisted, just beyond the point of falling apart. The result looks like a woollen-spun single, and the 2-ply will likely be somewhere between sportweight and DK.
Glitter Red/White on Dali – you can see the “eye” just below the reflection.
D+8 challenge: Fractal spinning. Sorry, no. Not only do I not have any suitable fibre, I have almost zero interested in the effect, having opinions about multi-coloured yarn. I do a fair amount of colourwork, but generally I want my colours to be solid or at most heathered (I am also a hypocrite and love more random multis – see above). I did go and look at some fractal spinning tutorials, but that’s as far as I care to go. Instead, I continued with my Herdwick/bio-nylon spinning.
Other round-ups: I finished spinning the angora bunny sample on Enola the micro Turk. I will probably follow this white rabbit down a warren of textile physics at some point, because it. took. forever. to spin, not because of the difficulty of doing so (though it was tricksy) but because the single is sooooo long. Angora fibre must be very lightweight compared to other fibres, because I swear the meterage from this teaspoon-sized sample must be comparable to that from the 25g of Shetland I spun the other day. It might even be longer. I do spin these samples extremely finely, but neither of the other two I’ve done have produced so much:
The Angora rabbit sample – I think if it was 2-plied, it would come in around 40wpi or higher (lace- or cobweb-weight)
I doubt I’d be able to spin this on my wheel, certainly not at my level of what I laughingly call ‘skill’, but I wonder if I could spin a blend of Angora with something else? Where the Angora is there just to be fluff, not fibre? Possibly with a longwool?
Anyway. I also worked a wee bit more on the Seacell on my new Enid Ashcroft spindle, Enda. I’m consciously spinning it a bit thicker, around 20wpi, but keeping it worsted:
Seacell on Enda
It’s quite lustrous and silky, though more like Tussah silk than the posh stuff as it has a grabbier handle. There’s a little of the feel of synthetic silks which normally have me scrubbing my hands raw, but overall it’s silky rather than squeaky. The colour is rather like the yellowing you see in vintage linens, so this would be a nice choice for an instant heirloom, woven, knit or crocheted. I’m seeing a lovely baptismal shawl, though given my track record it ain’t gonna happen!
Allons-y, there, and everywhere…
*: Including a gorgeous black and lime-ish gold Tub of Joy, 50g Angora bunny fibre, 300g scoured Wensleydale (I think my finger slipped when ordering – I meant to get the carded top…), some crystal Angelina, and a Beginner’s Dyeing Kit.
Today’s challenge was to spin something watery or blue.
If you know me, or have read any of my blog, you know that the one colour I just can’t be doing with is blue – or bleurgh, as I call it. It is true that sometimes I have knit with blue – usually baby jumpers or the like for baby boys, of which I once had one – but it does not feature greatly in my stash, and there’s not a sausage of blue in my admittedly quite small spinning stash.
But I do have some Seacell fibre… and Enda needs a run in.
Whether I’ll do much depends on how the rest of the day goes. I hurt my back somehow during my energy-crash nap yesterday.
And I’m significantly older than 30, so I’m pretty much crippled…
After yesterday’s Day of Grey, I felt like a bit of sunshine – which is today’s #teamwow challenge, to spin outside. A glance outside revealed fog, so not doing that! Still, it’s only 8am, and misty summer mornings in Ireland often turn to blistering blue skies by around 10, so I will possess my soul in patience till then.
But I still don’t feel like continuing with the Herdwick, at least not immediately. So I am going to attempt to spin a set of rolags I got from Etsy seller, DorIdeas, called Poppy Fields:
Gradient/Fractal Merino & Sari silk Rolags
Poppies are my favourite flower. There’s something in their rush towards the sun, their translucent vividness, and their brevity that grabs me. Can’t grow them to save my life, but at least I now live in a house where a previous occupant dotted big clumps of these wonderful flowers around the garden, so I get to admire them. If I’m quick!
This will be a challenge for me. Most of my spinning to date has been worsted-spun, or worsted-adjacent – I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’ve mostly produced thin, smooth singles. But rolags are a woollen prep, which I’ve never knowingly done. After viewing a couple of JillianEve Youtube videos, I think I’m supposed to do a long draw on a slow treadle… I’ll figure it out! But I have only 80g of this fibre and that makes me want to cry. I always have problems thinking what to do with multicoloured yarns, but so little? and woollen-spun? Even if I leave it as singles, that’s not enough for a pair of socks, assuming I can spin it as fingering…
10am.
Well phooey. Overcast, windy, and promising rain. That’s the thing about foggy Irish mornings – sometimes they LIE. All you can do is wait and see.
I have spun my first rolag, the darkest one at the top left of the pic. It has frequent flashes of green and fewer of red on a black base. I think the red and green are sari silk slubs because they are extremely shiny but don’t want to draft. My fumble-handedness doesn’t help, with sensation in only 6 out of 10 digits. I should really talk to my GP about this… Too late today, I’ll have to call tomorrow morning. My first woollen long draw was less than successful. I don’t think I got beyond about 10cm/4in “long” before the draft started falling apart, and the result is thick-and-thin even where there are no slubs. I’ve also decided to spin each rolag separately, with a view to making a pair of 2-at-a-time gloves/mitts using the start of the yarn for one glove and the end for the other, IYSWIM. I think a pair of poppy gloves would be very pretty, don’t you??
Now I’m going to put contact lenses in, I’ve had enough of these stupid varifocals for today.
8pm.
I spun a second rolag, during which An Caitín Deasa came to berate me for not sitting on the sofa, where she likes to snuggle round my bum:
Outraged, so she was. And now my wheel belongs to her.
Fortunately, she didn’t discover all the lovely soft floofy wool or it would now be hers, too – though given her fondness for rolling around on my son’s sweaty socks, I don’t think any of the floof here is stinky enough for her.
Shortly afterwards I had one of my energy crashes, and just about stayed awake long enough to fall into bed. I woke around 6pm, but I haven’t the energy to do much, and I appear to have pulled a muscle in my back whilst asleep… So this is the sum total of what I’ve achieved today:
It’s lumpy and bumpy, sewing-thread thin in parts and super-bulky slubs in others, so I don’t know how it would average out or if it’s worth plying. Ho hum…
Today’s #teamwow challenge is to create a blend. Not only do I not have a way of blending – no drum carder, no blending board – but blending fibres… isn’t really where I’m at. I prefer my fibre and yarn 100% pure, and I’m not a fan of the clown barf. I’ll put up with some nylon in my sock yarn, or a blend for fragile/expensive fibres, and I have been known to work with multicoloured yarn, but it’s not where my heart is. So this challenge is a BIG challenge for me.
But, but, but. What if it is a blend that I have caused to be created? I didn’t mix it up myself, but it wouldn’t exist without me? Okay, the latter is pushing it, I’m pretty sure this blend exists and is available to anyone, but this precise bag of blended fibre within my arm’s reach certainly wouldn’t have existed without me. Ta-da! It’s my Herdygurdy blend of 75% dark grey Herdwick and 25% bio-nylon from World of Wool! I got this, and another blend of black Hebridean and bio-nylon, to knit socks. Here is how far I’ve got so far:
Herdygurdy on the bobbin
My first thoughts are that some of what I’m assuming is the bio-nylon is falling out during drafting, and, while what’s left goes into the orifice smoothly enough, it doesn’t want to wrap around the bobbin with the Herdwick, instead sticking out. I’m not going to panic just yet, as it might settle down when it’s plied, washed, thwacked and balled, but I’m going to be a bit careful how I handle it.
I’ve also put Enola back in harness to spin my next 5g sample, which is angora. It’s not the easiest thing I’ve ever spun. The fibres are teeny, and my hands are not as reliable these days with cubital inflammation numbing the ring and little finger of my left hand and whatever it is that’s causing the numbness in both thumbs, but I think I’ve got the trick of it now. However, I’ve only managed to spin about a third of the sample, so no pics yet.
I did get a parcel in the post today, and I’m so excited! It’s an Enid Ashcroft spindle in oak burr with an African Padauk shaft! These spindles are like hens’ teeth – they no sooner appear on Etsy than they are gone. I could not believe when I clicked through from her Insta and there were 3 -3! – left, so I snaffled this one up straightaway. I haven’t tried it out yet, but I think I will call it Enda. No, that’s not a mis-spelling, it’s an Irish boy’s name, a saint’s name (Saint Enda of Aran – yes, those Aran Islands!), and the name of a former Taoiseach (Irish prime minister), Enda Kenny, who had quite the burr (get it? oak burr…). This is Enda:
thornmaiden.com 