Dishies

I've weaving some dish-scrubbing cloths to accompany an order of the Autumn Leaves towels I wove last month. I wound a separate warp for these, so they're not exactly the same - my random warps are just that - RANDOM - but I used the same colors, so they'll coordinate. I'm using a different draft of huck texture, to create more "nubbies" for scrubbing. The warp is 12" in the reed and I'm weaving them to 13" on the loom, which will translate to 9"x9" after washing and hemming.

I'm spinning this lovely 50/50 blend of superwash merino and tencel, Enchanted Knoll Farm club for December 2014, called "Poinsettia". I'm planning to spin the whole 4 oz, then chain-ply it.

Hoping to finish this one by day's end and begin the plying...

More Towels - Blue With Stripes

A Ravelry friend commissioned a set of towels to match her kitchen - she wants cobalt blue, with accents of brown and natural. I'm weaving hers with vertical AND horizontal stripes, and I'll do a few extra with only vertical stripes. I really love this color combo!

Spectrum Warping

Warp wound on the warping mill:

Sleyed through the reed:

Threading heddles:

Spectrum Seedlings

They're sprouting up in the garden, so they must be seedlings, right?

This is a kit from Lunatic Fringe, in their Tubular Spectrum series. It's 10/2 cotton in 20 different shades. I'm weaving a scarf for my dear friend Cass, who loves rainbows. It'll be plainweave/tabby, in a color gamp pattern - the colors will go across the scarf following the spectrum, and as I weave I'll change colors the same way. It will be a very cool scarf, and I can't wait to see the results. I'm winding the warp today.

More Custom-Handspun

WOW - the rainbow dishtowels are all sold and gone. I was amazed at how quickly they were snapped up. I'll be weaving another set of them (slightly different, of course, but still rainbows) - they were such fun to weave.

Speaking of rainbows - here are a few more. I just finished a big pile of custom-handspun yarn, and I snapped a pic before boxing them up for their trip to Ohio.

 That's nearly 5,000 yards of yarn. I love all the color!

Tour de Fleece 2012

Here we go again - the spinning world gears up to ride along with the cyclists as they push themselves to the limit in the Tour de France. The Tour de FLEECE (Ravelry link) lasts for the same duration as the cycling race - Saturday June 30th through Sunday July 22nd. We spinners challenge ourselves, and race against no one but the calendar and our creativity. We make outrageous plans and try to complete as much as we can before the clock runs out.

My plans are skewed a bit this year by the fact that the Tour coincides with two weaving workshops - Rep Weave this weekend and a Saori workshop next weekend. Still, I'll have mornings and evenings free (and the weekdays in between) and I plan to make the most of them.

I have a big pile of fiber that I'm spinning on commission, and that will continue (I do my commission spinning in the mornings). I'll show you that giant pile of yarns soon, when it's finished. That doesn't count (in my mind, which is the only place that matters) toward my TdF spinning.

Here's the fiber I plan to spin up during the Tour. I dug deep into the Southern Cross Fibre, Hello Yarn, and Enchanted Knoll Farm bins - the teams I'm spinning for this year. I belong to all three clubs, and have squirreled away their fiber lovingly for years. I pulled out some golden oldies - well-marinated and loved colourways whose time has come to shine.

Southern Cross Fibre “Equinox”, australian merino, Club, October 2009

Southern Cross Fibre “Funhouse”, falkland, Club, December 2009

Southern Cross Fibre COMBO:
“Irises”, shetland, Club, June 2009
“Deep Thought”, oatmeal bfl, Club, November 2009

HelloYarn “Patchwork”, merino, Club, August 2009

HelloYarn “Red Velvet”, shetland, Club, March 2008

HelloYarn COMBO:
 “Throwing Stones”, rambouillet, update fibre, August 2010
“Pallid”, rambouillet, Club, November 2009

Enchanted Knoll Farm “Treasure Chest”, Hooves Batt Club September 2008

Enchanted Knoll Farm “Harvest”, Hooves Batt Club October 2008

Enchanted Knoll Farm “Pass The Pie”, Hooves Batt Club November 2009

 

 

Look for some of the resulting SCF and HY skeins to show up in my Etsy shop in August. Not sure of the yarn construction plans of these, though I know the Enchanted Knoll batts will all become sock yarn for me (which I'll then madly knit into socks during the Ravellenics following the TdF.) Wish me luck!

Custom Confetti, and Another Scarf

Remember when I talked about designing a handspun yarn, specifically the rainbow yarn that my customer friend requested? Here's the resulting yarn (remember, she chose the "confetti" option):

Rainbow colors with black accents. I'm happy with the way the two skeins coordinate, considering the original braids of fiber were slightly different. They're 400 and 380 yards of 16wpi fingering weight 3-ply.

And I finished another of those fun scarves on my Cricket loom - this one is the mirror image of the Rainbow Waterfall scarf, which had a purple center that flowed down into red fringe. Instead, this Rainbow Cascade scarf has a red center flowing down into purple fringe:

50" long, with additional 4" handtwisted fringe on each end, 6.5" wide.

I'm really pleased with the way these scarves turned out - they're soft and drapy, colorful and fun. I see more in my future!

Today is World Wide Spinning In Public Day - I'm taking my Matchless to the library. We have a guild meeting, which is usually just us sitting around a table discussing weaving/spinning and passing around FO's. Today I'll demo for passersby and see if we can't attract some new members!

Handspun Yarn Design - Rainbow Edition

I chatted with a customer friend today about some rainbow-dyed superwash merino (from Western Sky Knits) that she wants spun into a 3-ply. We discussed the many possibilities, and I thought I’d share them with you.

 Here's what we've got in this "Rainbow Brights" braid: Black/pink/orange/yellow/green/blue/violet...black/violet/blue/green/yellow/orange/pink...black/pink/orange/yellow/green/blue/violet...black/violet/blue/green/yellow/orange/pink.

 What the dyer has done is folded the fiber into 4 equal lengths (in half, and then in half again). Then she painted the fiber black/pink/orange/yellow/green/blue/violet/black across the 4 lengths. So when you UNFOLD the fiber and stretch it out to its full length, the rainbow reverses several times, pivoting on the black at the folds.

When I spin rainbow yarns, I try to arrange the rainbow in consecutive order if I can. Sometimes that's not possible, if the dyer has randomly chosen her colors. In this case, it IS possible - what I can do is to separate the fiber into the 4 repeated pieces, and reverse the 2 pieces that are out of order. This would line everything up into "black/pink/orange/yellow/green/blue/violet", repeated 4 times. OR, I can leave it as the dyer painted it, which would give the order of the reversed rainbows.

I will divide the fiber lengthwise into 3 equal lengths. Then depending on how long the desired color repeats are, I'll either spin the fiber "as is", or split it down further into thinner strips to shorten the lengths of solid color in the strands.

For a navajo/chain-ply, I spin all 3 of those lengths in the same order onto ONE single bobbin, then chain-ply the strand on itself to preserve the strongest saturation of color.

 For a traditional 3-ply, I spin all 3 of the lengths in the same order, each on a separate bobbin. Then when I ply them, they'll line up colorwise, mostly - the variance is because of infinitesimal thickness variation and the fact that the dyer doesn't have straight lines in her color demarcation. There will be some areas where the colors overlap in the plied yarn.

 For a "confetti" 3-ply, I spin 2 of the lengths in the same order on separate bobbins, but REVERSE the order of the 3rd length. This mixes things up when I ply, and guarantees that there will be a lot of color overlap and speckles, with a few accidental areas where all 3 strands happen to be the same color at the same time.

 Now, for color-length - if I spin this fiber, which has 6" color sections, just as a traditional 3-ply all lined up, I'll get 7-8 yards of each solid color before the color changes to the next one. If I want the color lengths to be shorter, I can split each one of those original 3 equal lengths into thinner pieces before spinning, which will yield around 3-4 yards of solid color before it changes. With a Navajo/chain-ply, color-length becomes even more important – if the fiber is spun without any splitting, it’s going to give super-long color lengths, which may or may not be desirable.

Our 3-ply choices from this one braid of rainbow fiber:

3-ply "confetti".

3-ply rainbow solids, in rainbow order, short lengths of solid colors.

3-ply rainbow solids, in rainbow order, longer lengths of solid colors.

3-ply rainbow solids, in rainbow/reverse/rainbow/reverse order, short lengths of solid colors.

3-ply rainbow solids, in rainbow/reverse/rainbow/reverse order, longer lengths of solid colors.

Navajo/chain-ply, in all those variations.

So many choices! So much fun! (My customer friend chose "confetti" - which would YOU choose?)