Another loom?!?

One of my fiber friends is a shopping genius, rarely pays full price for anything, frequents thrift shops and estate sales for bargains, etc. She spotted a Schacht Cricket on FB Marketplace and relayed the info to me. Not that I needed another rigid heddle loom, but it was such a deal I could not resist. So now I have three(!) rigid heddle looms.

It came with plenty of accessories: heddles (including a variable reed one), shuttles, pickup sticks, dividers, warping peg, a stand, plus a cute bag to carry everything in. My SO asked where I was going to put it. Somewhere....

I pre-ordered a book by Alexandra Brinck on mending: Knit Repair: A Comprehensive Guide to Invisible Mending for Knitwear. The ship date is not until November :-( but in the meantime I am subscribed to her Patreon account. Not that I have had time to look at that lately...

...because I have been dyeing with the indigo vat. Some of my results have been less than stellar, but I seem to be getting the hang of it. I have to remember to be careful and patient.

Dyeing: See above.
Fiber prep: I attended a mini wool washing workshop that the spinning guild sponsored; now I have some clean fiber to process.
Knitting: One sock is almost to the cuff, the other about halfway there.
Spinning: Still working on that murky fiber. I bought a telescoping stool for the e-spinner.

Weaving: For the rigid heddle study group, I demonstrated clasped weft weaving.

Whew! It was a busy fiber week. Summer is almost over, so things are going to pick up even more. It's both exciting and overwhelming.

A Fiber Fling

For several summers now, the spinning and weaving guilds have demonstrated fiber arts at the local county fair, something we call the Fiber Fling. The home ec club likes having us there, so much so that this year they asked us to come an additional day. So this past week we were there both Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.

Wednesday was a bit chaotic, as there were several other activities going on in the same building (including the pie auction). Saturday was much calmer. No matter - several interested passersby may actually show up at a guild meeting one of these months (which was my motivation for starting the Fiber Fling - new members!) We also had some interesting conversations with other fair-goers as well as amongst ourselves. A success.

Then there was the open exhibit to which I urge guild members to participate in by submitting entries. I was not particularly proud of my projects, but I wanted to set a good example. In past years, I provided the judges with guildlines, as they didn't seem to know their way around a knitting needle, but this year I forgot. Oh well!

Dyeing: I am still caught up on the indigo videos and reading, but I need to actually DO something, like add resists to some fiber and, oh, I don't know, CREATE A VAT.
Fiber prep: I took my drum carder to the Fiber Fling on Wednesday and worked on adding lighter, brighter color to some murky roving.
Knitting: I finished the Splash socks. Started another pair, from yarn called "Quirky". Also, cast on a second dishrag (although I think I have neglected to blog about the first one).
Spinning: On the second day of the Fiber Fling, I brought my wheel and spun some of the roving I carded. I also spindled a bit.
Weaving: I retensioned the log cabin towels, using a tensioning device (made from PVC pipe); now I need to double check the warp threads before beginning the weaving.

The Ideal rug loom is still in pieces, and it would be anyway, since I left behind some bolts and a crank, which my fellow guild member brought to me after he purchased the other loom. If my daughter and I can get the garage cleaned out a bit, maybe we can get the loom put back together. It needs some repair before it can be used. One step at a time.

A fiber-filled week

Sometimes I think I am not doing much with fiber, but then I write a post for this blog and realize, no, I am involved in a LOT of fiber related activities. I just don't get much of anything finished.

Dyeing: Yesterday a bunch of us visited the Wabash Woollen Works for a natural dye workshop - separate post to follow. After hearing Lisa at WWW comment that sometimes a dye bath looks like there is no dye in it when there is, I decided to give sunflowers another try. Right now 250g of fresh sunflower blossoms are steeping in the sunshine AFTER I poured boiling water over them.
Fiber prep: After reading the section on blending fibers on a drum carder in The Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs, I decided to give it a go on my drum carder. However, mine is rather small, and I discovered 15g is about the max I can card at one time on it. And I forgot to take pix. (Some of you may recall that I took a fiber blending class at PlyAway in 2018, so one would think I would know what I am doing, but my brain is a sieve.)
Knitting: I took the socks with me to WWW and am almost ready to turn the heels - yay! I've also been knitting the Lempi sweater and reached a point where I thought the pockets should go, but no. The sweater is MUCH longer than I thought. I compared it to another cardigan I have and debated whether to make the Lempi the same length or go all the way. Since one of my goals is to use up as much of the naturally dyed yarn as I can, I will keep going and make it longer.

Spinning: I really messed up the last attempt at core spinning, so I wrapped it in silk thread and called it a day.
Weaving: I warped the inkle again, this time with a less busy version of the previous strap; I think it will look better with the L-Bag.

And I attached the Freedom Roller to the 24" rigid heddle. Now I will probably have to detach it in order to add the warp, then reattach it to finish the warping. There will be more waste.

The weaving guild is in the home stretch of prepping for its exhibit at the Allen County Public Library. I submitted several pieces, but what gets displayed is up to the gallery director, so it will be a surprise. Actually, I will be surprised if *any* of my pieces make the cut, but I felt like I had to submit *something*. Gotta support the team.

Have a supportive week.

Simple scour

I have scoured one fleece in my lifetime, and it was a lot of work. Since then, I have attended a scouring workshop, listened to fiber friends describe their processes, read how-to's, etc. But it still seemed daunting... until now.

At the last spinning guild meeting, one of the co-presidents demonstrated her process, then provided us with a hands-on opportunity. First, we skirted a fleece, something I have never done and didn't really understand. But she explained that you simply remove the poopy bits, the mats, the second cuts, as much or as little as you want. Heavy skirters may reduce a four-pound fleece to one pound, whereas those who don't mind dealing with the riffraff are light skirters. It's not black and white, it's not a science or even an art, it's a do-what-suits-you kind of thing.

Then our fearless leader explained that she heats no water for scouring, using hot tap water instead. While most fleece scourers insist you need water to be at 140 degrees, tap water may run around 120 degrees. The advantage is, with a little help from Power Scour or Dawn, the dirt will come off just fine. And you can smoosh things around a bit without worrying about felting.

Three dishpans of water, one for the initial rinse, one with Power Scour, one for a final rinse, is all one needs. After this experience, I could not wait to try this out at home.

First, I laid out the Jacob ewe fleece I had purchased a while back. It had been well-skirted, barely any poop to be seen. I set up my "work station" in the utilty sink... and discovered the sink has a major leak, not in the drain, but in the input hose. So I moved the operation outside, which worked better anyway; I could pick out vegetable matter and toss it into the wind. I also discovered that my hot water tap registers at 120 degrees, until the hot water heater kicks in; then the temp rises to 130, barely tolerable despite rubber gloves.

With hotter temps and a fair amount of smooshing, felting became more of a concern. I decided to limit my first go round to a few handfuls of fleece. Once I have carded it, I'll decide whether the water was too hot and/or I smooshed too much.

With such a small amount, I was able to spin out the extra moisture using a salad spinner that has been designated as for fiber only. Then I laid the samples out on a plastic garbage bag and turned on the ceiling fan, my go-to method of drying fiber and fiber products.

Already I have some modifications to this method. For one, I plan to leave the fleece in the first bath to soak for a while, so less smooshing will be needed. I may also put the fleece in mesh bags so I can line up the locks. And I used WAY too much Power Scour, which doesn't hurt, but is a waste.

Fiber prep: See above.
Knitting: I finished the second cowl; separate post to follow.
Weaving: I finished the gray wall hanging; it still needs a rod to hang from. The waffle weave towels are washed; separate post to follow. And I worked some on the skyline sample.

The tapestry workshop is next weekend. Gulp! I keep rehearsing my part in my head, but I know once I get in front of people, I will babble a bit. Hopefully, I will make enough sense.

Foiled (I hope)

Ordinarily, my cats leave fiber alone. However. Beau the Feline Destroyer of All Things Nice sometimes eats roving. Not just any roving - he does have his standards - but this habit has interfered with my desire to move a spinning wheel to the den. I came up with this idea, though.

The roving is protected by a gallon Ziploc bag. So far, this has worked. The real test will be with Shetland top, which seems to be Beau's favorite fiber for consumption. We shall see.

Fiber prep: With some help from my granddaughter, we cranked the rest of the red Tunis through the drum carder, in half-ounce chunks.
Spinning: I have started spinning some of this red Tunis and, yes, there is less VM in it. What a relief!

I seem to have developed a bit of a case of agoraphobia from the pandemic. I tend to be a homebody to begin with, so enjoyed having an excuse to not go anywhere. Now that things are opening up a bit, I find I still don't want to go anywhere. I was planning to attend the weaving guild meeting in person this past week, but at the last minute decided to Zoom it. I'm glad I Zoomed, as I was tired anyway.

I'm glad I attended, though. The program was on yarn, or more specifically, the making of yarn. Even though I feel like I know about yarn, I still learned a thing or two from the presentation. For example, pulling yarn from a center-pull yarn can result in the untwisting of the plies. To avoid this, when winding a skein on a ball winder, first slide a toilet paper core over the center of the ball winder and wind the yarn onto it. Then when using the yarn, be it for knitting or weaving or whatever, insert a dowel or straight knitting needle into the core and unwind the ball from the outside. A couple of strategically placed holes in a shoe box to support the dowel helps faciliate this.

Spring cleaning

There is a special place in hell reserved for the engineers who design stuff that can't be easily cleaned. The nooks and crannies defy scrubbing by toothbrush and picking with toothpicks. Some of that grime will be there until the end of time.

Fiber prep: I was hoping to have started processing a fleece by today, but no such luck. I did purchase some lingerie bags, as that is what will hold the raw fiber while it is being cleaned.
Knitting: The Reader's Wrap body is finished and is being blocked post haste. If the blocking ends the curling, I will add the pockets.

Spinning: More red Tunis. (This section of the progress report is going to be very boring for a very long time.)
Weaving: I wove in the ends of the blue sampler. I'm ready to prematurely end the macrameing of the ends - it's really tedious.

My granddaughter slept over Friday night, a real treat. Having her here no longer feels like babysitting, more like having a guest in the house, she has grown up so much. I feel like I have missed out on a year of her life.

The retired introvert

I'd rather we were not going through the current COVID 19 crisis, but I have to admit I kind of like staying home without interruptions or distractions. It was a bit discombobulating at first, but after I learned to embrace the solitude, my attitude improved. Schools here are closed until May, the libraries until mid-April, no recitals to attend (which makes me a little sad), but there is plenty of fiber in this house to play with.

Fiber prep: I am still trying to unknit a sweater but even with the pattern before me, it is a puzzlement. I chose the pattern in part because of the unique construction. Apparently, it cannot be deconstructed.
Knitting: I started a new pair of socks. Originally, I could not decide what contrasting color to use for the toes, but today I selected some cheerful yellow. The daffodils in the yard will not be far behind.
Spinning: Still working on the fractal spinning. I am loving the colorway.
Weaving: Making progress with the online weaving class. I am loving that new Mirrix loom.

While I sit safely at home, there are others who work to keep us supplied with goods and services and protection and healthcare. Without them, we would all be doomed. To them, I say THANK YOU!

A super Saturday indeed!

My weaving guild conducts what they call "super Saturdays" several times a year. These daylong events give us the opportunity to go beyond what can be done in a two-hour meeting. I haven't been to very many of them due to scheduling issues, but I did manage to get to one last Saturday. WARNING: This is a very long post, but hopefully interesting enough to read to the very end.)

(Even though I have been to Peggy's house before, Google Maps managed to lead me astray. After I crossed a river I knew I shouldn't have, I stopped and ask directions from a nice man in a mini backhoe. I followed his instructions while Google Maps barked the exact opposite. That got me in the general area - well, actually to the exactly right spot, but I drove right past Peggy's house without realizing it. When I reached a describable location, I called for help.)

Being a scientist, Peggy is on a "journey of discovery" which in recent years has included growing, processing, and spinning flax. Her husband is a handy guy and helps by creating whatever tools she needs to get the job done - a true enabler. I neglected to take many photos while at her place, as I was a bit discombobulated (see above paragraph). Here are a few from the flax demonstration.

The flax fiber needs to be separated from the rest of the plant, which is accomplished through retting (a good crossword puzzle word) whereby the stalks are soaked for a week or so, to get the stem to rot. An alternative method is dewing - leaving the flax out in the weather where the daily cycle of dew and sunshine do the same job, but over the course of about six weeks. The dewed flax comes out gray in color, while the retted flax is, well, flaxen.

An interesting tidbit is the fact that flax is highly flammable, while the chaff is just the opposite. Flax came in handy when starting a fire with flint.

Peggy also raises sheep, which she keeps jacketed to protect the wool from the usual detritus of country living. She demonstrated fiber prep of wool, from fleece to wheel. Since I'm familiar with these steps, I took no pix, but I did pick up some tips like turn up the hot water heater the night before scouring and put the locks in mesh bags (like oranges come in) so you don't have one big clump of wet wool to deal with. I also learned that finding what is now considered an old fashioned washer - a top loader with a manual timer - may be hard to do. I hope my Maytag lives a long time.

For the second part of our super Saturday, we drove over to the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time business Wabash Woollen Works. Lisa and Michael saved a former hatchery from demolition and are in the process of turning it into a fiber mill/workshop classroom/event center, preserving the stone walls and utilizing windows and doors scavenged from local schools. Lisa is one of those go-getters who rarely sits still so she appears blurry in many of these photos. After we ate our sack lunches, she lead us on a tour of the new facility, which contrasted nicely with all the hand labor we witnessed at Peggy's.

I really wish I had been more with-it that day, wish I had not only taken photos but kept written notes as well. Since I didn't (and I have slept since then), some of the ensuing information may not be exactly correct. So don't quote me on any of this.

WWW purchases fleece and sells it as roving or yarn. The likelihood of the sheep being jacketed is nil, so the fleece must be cleaned. Above, a tumbler breaks up the dirt and vegetative matter and manure so that it separates from the fleece and falls out of the device. Below, the automatic washer runs the fleece through as many as five wash cycles, to remove the remaining dirt and lanolin. (Lanolin gums up the machinery.)

Now I'm a bit vague on how the fleece gets dried. Maybe in the same machine? Or the next? I think this machine's job is to "pick" the fleece - fluff it up so that it is ready to be carded. For the hand spinner, this is akin to using a flicker on the wool locks.

The next step is running the wool through the carder. Here fibers may be blended - in this shot, we have silk and cashmere on top of merino, I believe. The merino is green, so there obvious must be an opportunity to dye the fiber before this point in the process.

The output of the carder looks like roving ready to spin, but not quite. The fibers run every which way and don't spin up well, which brings us to the next machine.

Here, the carder results are attenuated - the fibers are aligned in one direction. I guess this would be like semi-worsted fiber.

Finally, we are ready to spin. Just like my spinning wheel has a leader to start the process, this machine has leaders for each spool of yarn being created. The machine is designed to automatically distribute the singles evenly on the spool, whereas on my wheel I have to move the flyer hooks manually. Very slick.

And of course, the singles need to be plied. Again, this machine evenly distributes the plied yarn on each cone.

At home, I set the twist of my yarn by soaking it in hot water for about 20 minutes, then swinging it around a bit and/or snapping it before hanging it over the tub to dry, which takes a day or three. A business can't wait that long, so they use steam. The yarn here gets steamed by traveling through those insulated pipes.

The yarn is transported through the steamer by this machine pulling it across the room. The yarn is dry by the time it is spooled, a distance of about 20 feet.

Now the yarn is ready to be wound into skeins, which is how it is sold. The finished product is priced by the ounce, and most skeins contain about 200 yards of yarn, but results vary.

Now, as if that weren't enough, there is also a needle felting machine. Roving is fed in from one side...

... and felt comes out the other.

But wait! There's more! There is also a wet felting machine which uses friction to create area rugs of thick felt. (That's a loom in the background, not the machine itself.)

I believe all the yarn is dyed using natural materials, many of which WWW grows, including some in the raised bed garden out front. They also offer natural dye workshops.

I was surprised to discover one may dye with daisy flea bane, which grows wild in my yard, and teasel, which grows almost everywhere around here.

The tags on each skein note the mordant (M) and modifier and sometimes even the water used. I think every dye book I own recommends using water with a neutral pH. But the outdoor spigots at my house are on a well - the water is very iron rich - and I know even the tap water has a certain amount of minerals in it. So now my next experiment with dyes may be to use different water sources, including distilled water and rain water and maybe snow melt.

There were questions about the rug yarn for sale, some of which appeared to be wrapped in a contrasting thread. So back to the carder(?) we went.

These photos do not show it very well, but the rug yarn has a cotton core. The roving is wrapped around the cotton core. To get the contrasting thread wrap, a different color wool is lined up along the rest of the wool on the conveyor belt feeding the machine.

It's like magic!

I have been to the Green Mountain Spinnery, in Vermont, where the machinery is very old and geared for a higher level of production than WWW. The spinning guild I belong to had a dye workshop scheduled at another local fiber mill this coming weekend, but due to the oppressive heat expected (the dyeing occurs outside), that event has been postponed. Like Peggy, I experiment with fiber (although I doubt I will ever grow flax), but I enjoy seeing how my handwork is achieved using machinery. Fun stuff!

PlyAway 2018

I'm not much for traveling just for the sake of traveling or sightseeing. But if there is a fiber event nearby, count me in! I had never heard of PlyAway but it seemed like a good excuse to go to Kansas City. My SO has family there, so he was happy to make the trip, too.

Westward ho!

We drove. Weather forecasts were iffy, so that meant packing extra clothes, just in case it was warmer than expected or colder (it was wetter and windier, and the temps were a bit better than back home, but I was still overly optimistic in my tee shirt choices). The pic above is just my stuff. I moved the wheel into a back seat and belted it in, to make room for my SO's stuff. He's a photographer, so there was that gear, too.

I signed up for three classes: Spin Unusual Threads for Weaving, taught by Judith MacKenzie; Plying by Design, taught by Stephenie Gaustad; and Fiber Prep Elevated, taught by Mary Egbert. I was so engaged in each class that I neglected to take any photos until the last class. Also, my impression was that I was one of the least experienced spinners there, and keeping up with the instructor was a bit of a challenge, so besides no pics, I have little to show for my efforts. It's a good thing I took notes, otherwise I might feel like I learned nothing. Not so! Here are some highlights:

Spin Unusual Threads for Weaving: Even though the instructor implied that to be a weaver, one must weave on a harness loom, I learned techniques I can use on my rigid heddle looms. An unexpected piece of advice was to use one's handspun for the warp - put all the color and texture in the warp and weft with whatever. If the handspun is something likely to break, warp it with a fine fiber like silk thread - the silk will disappear after fulling. Yarn spun worsted is best for warp, though, while woolen works well for weft. Alternate Z-spun and S-spun threads in the warp to produce a shimmer. We practiced cabling 2-ply silk threads while wrapping them in wool or imprecating (entrapping) fiber between the threads. Another handy trick is to cable silk with a metallic thread, wrapping it in wool, then ply with wool yarn, to make the metallic thread more subtle. All these ideas (and more!) were mind-boggling to me and opened up a new world of yarn creation. Unfortunately, all the thread I created became bound up on the bobbin and will probably have to be cut off. I wish there had been a handout; I also wish the prerequisites had listed knowing how to spin woolen, so I could have been better prepared.

Plying by Design: There was a handout for this class, thank goodness, as there was a lot of info discussed. I wish I had brought about 5 empty bobbins, however, as the recommended two full of Z-spun singles and one empty didn't get me far. A white board would have been helpful as well, as sometimes the instructor's verbal instructions were a bit complex. Spinners are such an opinionated bunch - one teacher will say X, but if you ask another teacher about X, she may say that is all wrong or just give you a blank stare. This teacher was no exception: umbrella swifts are "evil", don't use ball winders because they change the twist, the only way to set twist is with steam, etc. Again, I struggled and my samples were a mess, but I learned some good stuff, too.

Fiber Prep Elevated: This class was the most fun, primarily because we each had our very own 8" Clemes & Clemes MOTORIZED drum carder to work with. OMG! I wish I could justify blowing $1K-2K on one of these machines. We also were equipped with all the tools we needed to create lovely batts of fiber. I was disappointed we did nothing with hand carders and practically nothing with combs (just a demo, although when I came back early from lunch, I tried my hand at combing), we did a lot of color blending. This year's programs in my weavers guild have accentuated color, and this class helped solidify that learning. It is also the one class I had decent enough results for photos.

Squee!

One exercise had us creating an ombre batt: one person blended a color (in our case magenta) with white, one person blended it with gray, and a third person blended it with black; then we combined all three of those into a single batt.

Ombre

Working with a "cmy primary mixing wheel", we tried our hand at blending. The primary colors on this wheel are cyan, magenta, and yellow (cmy). I tried mixing equal parts of magenta and yellow to get red, but without a scale, my proportions were a bit off, so I ended up with more of a tangerine color.

Pass 1

Pass 2

Pass 3

Final result

Another exercise was to select a photo and use it to inspire a color combo.

Blueberry parfait

Yum!

I experimented with creating an ombre in blues. The fun thing about blending colors is if the result doesn't seem quite right, just add more of whatever you need to correct it. Having a motorized drum carder really made this easy.

Blue ombre

We made tweed batts as well. While the instructor said I "got" it, the color flecks seem too subtle to me. Maybe once I spin this up, I will change my mind.

Purple tweed

Tweed detail

Besides classes, from Thursday noon on, the vendor area was open. Quite frankly, I have more fiber, from fleece to yarn, than any sane person should have, and was quite pleased with my restraint. I also have a rule regarding fiber fests: I take $200 in cash, and when that is gone, I am done buying. In the pic below, the blue tool on the left was included in the material fee for the fiber prep class; it's a "brush cleaner" but we used it to remove the final invisible wisps of fiber on the drum carders. The other items are a wraps-per-inch (WPI) tool, a burnisher (packs the fiber onto the drum carder), a diz threader, a diz, a pair of earrings that look like spindles, and a fringe twister.

Little purchases

All participants also received a swag bag full of mostly samples of fiber. What does one do with all these little samples? I think I might blend them with something basic like merino, and knit myself a PlyAway souvenir.

Swag!

Most of my fiber equipment is from Ashford. Consequently, I have watched a lot of their UTube videos which invariably start out "This is Kate from Ashford". So I was excited when I saw Kate from Ashford in the vendor area! I gushed about the videos, and she graciously asked someone to take our picture. My local dealer was impressed.

Almost famous!

Since I wasn't able to get into all the classes I wanted, we had time to make a side trip to Lawrence, to visit the Yarn Barn. I had tried to make a purchase from them online a while back, but everything I wanted was back ordered. Well, I was able to fulfill my original order, and then some, that day. It was mostly spools of carpet warp and skeins of rug yarn, plus some silk thread. Now I am set for a while.

PlyAway is held at the Westin, and I was able to get the special rate for all but one night of our stay, but I still found myself hyperventilating occasionally over just how much money this trip cost. I had to keep giving myself permission to be okay with that. I try to learn as much as possible from books, videos, local experts, and nearby fiber fest classes that cost a pittance, but the PlyAway classes were definitely a step (or three!) above what I am used to. I'm glad I went.