Adventures In Handspinning

A week or so ago I teased you with a "guess who this is" basket of half spun yarn.  While I'm chomping at the bit to spin Maisie's yarn, I'm making myself hold off as long as possible because I'm sure I'm going to want to cast on as soon as it's done and I really, really, really want to knit her for the 2015 Iknitarod (not that far away!).  Here's another clue.

Hmmm - looks like someone curly ;-).

I love how the character of the sheep shines through into the yarn.  Maisie's yarn probably won't look significantly different between spinning and washing to set the twist, but as soon as some hot water hits a curly fleece, boing!

Here it is before washing.

A closer look. 

800 yards of 32 wraps per inch yarn.  Perfect for a special lace project.

It didn't start out "perfect".  And while I've yet to spin a perfect yarn, it needed to be a bit more perfect than it was.  I must have fallen asleep halfway through plying and a huge chunk was waaay under-plied.  While it didn't fall apart, it wasn't "right", so I stewed on how to fix it.  Almost anything with yarn is fixable, especially if you've got the right tools.

You can live without a good skein winder.  You can wrap yarn around other things like a big box or board to skein it.  You can get your sweetie to hold the skein while you unwrap it to wind a yarn ball.  You can try setting your skein down on the floor board during a long car trip to wind your yarn ball.  Actually, don't try that!  Don't ask me why I know ;-).

What I really should have said above is you can live without a skein winder.  What is hard to live without is a GOOD skein winder.  Don't ask me how I know that as well.  I now have a good skein winder.  It's an Andy Nistock hand crafted winder/swift.  With a counter.  That works exceptionally well...as long as you remember to write. down. the. number.  Don't ask me how I know that either.

397 times around.

I had the arms set out to the 2 yard mark.  Actually, I like to set them a hair past the mark just to give myself a little extra padding, especially if the yarn is super stretchy.  This yarn isn't, but still.  So, 397 x 2 = 794 yards (or just under 800 yards in crazysheeplady maths ;-).

Next I take a scrap piece of yarn and tie off each stretch between the arms with a loose figure eight to help secure the yarn before washing.  Then, loosen one of the adjustable arms and off comes a perfectly wound and counted skein.  

Here's where the not so perfect part comes in:

Because part of my yarn was under-plied and I wanted to fix that, I stopped after the winding it from the bobbin onto the skein winder part.  I then took the loose end of the yarn, hooked back onto my bobbin and proceeded to slowly unwind the skein back onto the bobbin, adding a bit more twist in the spots that needed it.  

I could only do that because the winder is so free spinning and smooth. You can tension it or completely un-tension it with the knob in the center.  And interestingly, my first wind off after plying was 398 times, so I added enough new twist to shorten the overall length by 2 yards.  I think this yarn is much better. Still not perfect, but very pretty and special and ready to knit.

It's washed and drying on the porch.  It will then go back on the skein winder/swift and lickety split I'll have a ready to knit center pull ball of yarn.

Now to pick my pattern...

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Looks like Robin and I are trading blog posts today!  I'd salvaged enough of Burrnie's first awful shearing to make her a hat.  She posted pictures (that I forgot to take :-o) on her blog today. Thanks, Robin :-D.

If You Want To Get All Technical About It

With enough cute corgi pictures to keep it interesting ;-).  And some stats at the end that will probably surprise you.

Even 20 looks overwhelmed with trying to decide how to decide which singles to ply to which to get the most evenly matched skeins in the end. 

Here is what we did:

We re-weighed each finished ball.  The reason?  A big fluffy pile of wool doesn't necessarily weigh the same as a compressed ball of wool.  I used my "science" scale to get really fussy technical.

I then put each ball in a water pitcher (so it wouldn't bounce all around the room) and pulling from the outside of the ball carefully wound it into a two yard skein.

Noted yardage.  I love, love, love having a counter on my skein winder*.  It's life changing...well spinning life at least...but spinning is life...no wait, sheeps are life... ;-)

I tied a piece of yarn to the loose end of the single.  I did that so I'd easily know which end I was supposed to start with for plying.

I also tied a couple of tight bow knots to secure the rest of the skein.  I used the bows to be easy to untie but also to help keep track of the outsides of each skein.  

Next, the Jethro cipherin'.  Skein #11 actually weighted 2.024 ounces.  It is 220 yards long.  Solve for x to get the yards per ounce, in this case 108.7.

You can do the next part by hand...or use a spreadsheet.  I like math, but love spreadsheets ;-).

I sorted the skeins by yards per ounce and then paired of skein #6 with skein #17, #4 with #9, #3 with #7...  

Making sure you have the two loose ends facing the same direction...

 ...and the bows are all facing up (if facing down then the skein is twisted)...

...and your skein winder securely anchored with a corgi butt...

...ply as usual.  My skein winder has a tensioning feature and I cranked it down pretty tight so I didn't go free wheeling off into space.  

The final results?  

First I re-weighed all the plied skeins.  The yardage of each skein could only be as long as the shortest single so there were leftovers on several of the skeins.  The leftover singles were all on the thinner side (longer yardage per ounce) so when they were plied together, the resulting two ply is significantly thinner, hence separated out at the bottom.

Ply shrinkage - when you ply the two singles, the plied yard will end up shorter than the original singles because as you twist the two yarns together, the yarns are no longer straight.  The more you twist them, the shorter the yarn will become.  

That skein with the shrinkage of 14 was either plied with more twist or I wrote something down wrong.  Just looking at the finished skein I can't see a significant difference from the others so regardless it will knit up just fine.  Likewise with the shrinkage of 4 yards.  

Verdict?  I am much, much happier with my finished yarn.  The difference between skeins now is much less than any yarns I've spun previously.  Plus I found it interesting to track all the stats.  

While I was thinking along the lines of statistics, I decided to track my time spinning and plying.  It took me 27 hours to spin the singles and 6 hours to ply them.  I didn't figure in my time cipherin'.  That would have been an embarrassing number ;-).

Want to take this a little further?  If I paid myself $10 an hour, that's $330 just for the spinning work.  It costs $10 per sheep for shearing and about an hour for skirting, so another $10 there.  $24 to wash and $27.50 for processing into roving, not counting gas and time going up to the mill and back.  

Just counting BASIC yearly costs for hay, grain, bedding, vet work...it costs us $100 to produce a fleece.  That doesn't include mortgage, insurance, utilities, fuel, buying the sheep, farm equipment... Also, spinning wheels aren't cheap.  Neither are the workshops I've traveled to take to learn to spin the yarn...

The moral of this story?  I might just print this out and hand it to the next person who can't believe I can't sell them a hand spun and hand knit sweater.  That's $501.50 Just. For. The. Yarn.  Figure in the weeks I spent knitting the Muffin sweater?  Even if it wasn't Muffin...it would be priceless.

*     *     *     *     *

*My skein winder is from Nistock Farms.  Even if they weren't good friends of ours, I would say this is the very best skein winder I have ever used.  It's solid and stable, easy to use winding on or off and being able to easily count yardage is...life changing ;-).

Tour De Fleece Wrap Up

Last week I walked out of the Wool House and around my car to find my beloved bike crashed and all the accessories strewn about...and a sassy little tail sashaying away.  Hit and run.  A bit like my Tour de Fleece this year.  If you look closely, Jared is standing up the hill peeking around the back of the truck.  Jared does not like drama.  He lives with Maisie...

I ended up spinning four bobbins of Ellie's lamb fleece.  I had some issues with back fatigue because I was using a not ideal chair in the air conditioned wash room so I could hang out with Pinot while I spun.  I didn't make any effort to change my chair until almost the end.  I'd have probably spun more if I'd done that earlier.  My typical can't get out of my own way strategy.

Removing the chair aspect, Ellie was a fun spin.  The yarn is super soft and just a bit fuzzy and a beautiful creamy white.  I loved it even, or more so, as a single, which is not very common for me.

I did my weights and measures thing and paired up the appropriate skeins for plying and then swapped out to the double arms for my skein winder.

This is my favorite way to ply.  Everything stays nice and tidy and evenly tensioned and by using skeins rather than balls or bobbins, you have a better idea of what each skein looks like throughout and I find I have better luck matching up my singles that way as I'm not a very consistent spinner, especially over a long time frame.

I was able to get most of the plying done during the day with just a little bit left for after evening chores.  The porch was cool and comfortable, even in the heat of the afternoon.

As I was plying I noticed a pretty big spider crawling on a ball of wool off to my left.  Just as I was thinking I needed to remember to watch for that in the morning it took off towards the ceiling and I realized she was building a big web.  That really struck me, the two of us spinning on the porch.  Two Wool House Crafters :-).

I ended up with a little over 700 yards of smushy, cozy, sportweight/dk yarn.

It lost a bit of it's fuzziness being plyed, but Ellie's dad was a Cotswold cross from Nistock Farms so I know if I want it back all I'll need to do is run a soft brush over my finished item.  The pattern I've picked will look pretty either way.  The skein winder is from Nistock's as well - good sheep, good tools :-).

I started knitting a few practice rows with the small skein yesterday.  I'd have more to show if I hadn't had trouble counting to nine, but I've practiced doing the stitches required for the patterning and I'm hoping to get started for real this afternoon or tomorrow.

Tomorrow we are going to go back to In Person Crafters here on the farm.  We'll still be on Zoom as well as we are every Tuesday, but if you are local and would like to come out from 7:00 to 9:00 on the second Tuesday of each month until it gets too cold, the porch is really nice now - spider approved :-).  We'll have to over flow onto the grass so maybe wear long pants if you are a bug magnet.

Yarn Along - Renny's Ready!

This post is probably going to seem pretty random and/or weird, but hey, it beats missing another week of Yarn Along and I do have something exciting to share.  Or a couple things.  I had a pretty intense root canal this morning/afternoon, so hang on, it might be a crazy ride!  I apologize up front :-o.

First up, Renny's ready to roll!  My half of her yarn is all spun and I feel like I've got plenty of yardage to not have to dip into the other half of anything :-D.  How did I get it done so quickly?  I ended up having a brilliant idea to enter the Handspinner's Yarn Basket class at the Finger Lakes Fiber Festival later this month.

Not only have I always thought that looked liked fun, but by doing so, I Had A Deadline.  This is never a bad idea with me ;-).  And, not only did I have a deadline, but I obviously wanted to do my very best spinning, so I really concentrated on doing my very best spinning.  Also never a bad idea with me.

I had a great time assembling my basket.  I included half of the spun yarn, the pattern I've picked, my knitted swatch and some info about Renny and Miss Ewenice and how and why this project came to be.  I did take some pictures of it before I put it in the mail.  I'll share those after the festival.

If you've never entered your yarn or a finished item in competition, I can't encourage you enough to do so.  Even if you don't win a ribbon, you are going to get so much valuable feedback from folks who know way more than you do and that's a big win in itself.  Even just taking the time to really do your very best spinning is going to teach you something!

Speaking of fun and interesting competitions at fiber festivals, I would LOVE to enter a Shepherd's Lead class...but I can't find one close by.  Can you imagine taking Maisie all the way to Maryland?!?  I have an idea that maybe we could all do something "online", but oh man, I'm getting way off track here...

Back to Finger Lakes!  This is one of the very nicest fiber festivals I've been to.  I've gone three years now.  Or maybe I've gone two years and this is my third?  Lalala...  Last year I taught a drop spindling class and they asked me back to teach it again and add a "what next" class after it to talk about plying and finishing your yarn.

We had a blast last year and I'm really looking forward to this year.  Just like entering your work in a competition kicks you in the butt, so does having to teach someone how to do something.  I always learn as much as my "students".  I'm sure there are still spots open.  Come join us!  Or at very least, stick your head in the door at the end of the workshop and say hey :-).

Now for something random about spinning yarn you might find interesting.  Or maybe it's about wool.  Or it probably includes characteristics from both spinning and wool.  As I was making test samples before I started spinning for real, I'd spin a bit and then wash the sample to see how it worked, if I needed more twist or less twist or thicker or thinner...  You should always wash your samples to get the truest final results.  Don't ask me how I know this ;-). 

Here are two samples.  Notice that they are different lengths even though they were wound on the same skein winder?  Do you know why?

The long one is still wet and the short one is dry.  As your wool yarn dries, the fiber itself and the crimp or curl in the fiber will relax back into more where it started just off the sheep.  That wet skein is stretched out.  The dry one is stretchy.  And even though this picture really doesn't show it very clearly, it's thicker and rounder and exactly what I wanted :-).  

See I told you this post was going to be goofy.  I'll wrap it up.  Okay, one more really random thing.  As I tried to type wrap, I actually typed warp (a weaving term).  I also tried to shear a book.  Friends should not let friends post blogs on pain meds :-o.  

For my book to share - I've listened to several books lately as I was spinning.  One I really enjoyed was The Language of Hoofbeats by Catherine Ryan Hyde.  Ooh, I didn't realize she also wrote Pay It Forward.  I'm currently listening to another No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency story.  Always fun :-).

Joining in with Ginny...

The 2018 Iknitarod Race Prep

After seeing the iPhone compilation of pictures and videos from knitting on the Baaxter Carbeth, 20 knew he'd lost his new sweater and that we were going to re-knit it.

I hadn't done a cast off or woven in any of the loose ends, so it was physically easy to pull the needles out and start frogging (rip it rip it).  Mentally...well, a. it wasn't right and I wasn't happy with it and b. Stella (the queen of rip it back and make it right) came down to help and support.  It wasn't so bad ;-).

We used my handy Nistock skein winder to...wind it into skeins.

One sleeve.

The body.  I'd spit splices all the original skeins together so we decided to let it wind off as one biiiig skein :-o.

We used steam to relax all the knitted curls...without setting Stella's hand on fire, but Be Careful with steam!

Back to normal.  Wool yarn is fun :-).

Just for curiosity I decided to hold out one sleeve to wet block just in case I needed to know something important about how the knitting would behave.  I don't usually wet block my swatches...and should.  

We took measurements, let it soak for 20 minutes, set it out on a towel, let it dry completely, remeasured, learned that Baaxter's wool yarn was going to respond the way wool does almost every time, steamed out the last of the curls and wound everything from skeins into balls.

It doesn't look like a sweater's worth of yarn there, but it is.  1700 yards total, but held double to knit a second attempt, smaller Carbeth sweater.

20 was okay with getting his Ford sweater back, but asked if he could participate more this year, so he will be going along as my Iknitarider :-).  The Carbear will be the knitting bag mascot :-).

The Baaxter logo from a couple years ago has been updated to include 20 and reflect Baaxter's more, um, mature color ;-).

The Iditarod's Ceremonial Start is underway, so the Iknitarod "mushers" are eligible to cast on, so I'm going to go get busy!  Hope you enjoy following along this year.  I believe this is my sixth year :-).

Proper Use Of A Skein Winder

"This top part is for scratching your eyes."

"And your cheeks."

"This part moves to adjust for different size sheep...but I can't figure out how to move it."

"Oh, here, this knob is how you do that."

"What?  I was just supposed to be looking at your yarn?  Here, let me try to fake some interest."

"Moving right along, the arms are for scratching your back."

"Ah, yes, that's the spot."

"If you put some yarn on, you can scratch your butt."

"It is, TOO, for scratching your butt!"

"This stupid yarn keeps getting in the way."

"I guess it is kinda pretty."

"But I've sure never seen a sheep that color before!"

No skein winders were harmed during the filming of this instructional article ;-).