Spinning in the New Year!

Okay, so I have various things to report, but my favorite will be the subject of this post. I spun awesome yarn. It looks absolutely amazing. I got my fiber, pretty much as per usual, at NaturalObsessions. Her fiber is of EXCELLENT quality and I would suggest her products to absolutely anyone.

4 oz of BFL arrived at my house and I began working with it in, like, November...

So, the singles looked really great:

The yarn looked really great and came out to 510 yards of light fingering weight with only two knots in it. Yay!

And my typical "gauge swatch" for handspun or hand-dyed yarns looked really great in my sock yarn blankie:

I, sadly, will have no other FO for this particular yarn, as I spun it up for a friend. It turns out it goes perfectly with the yarn we dyed for her birthday and will be the perfect counterbalance for a knit dragon she is making. Huzzah! (See? Perfect!)

So, please enjoy my yarny porn!

Tour de Fleece: Days 16 - 20

The past few days have been quite eventful for me as far as spinning goes! First, I started plying my rambouillet yarn. It looks great!

So far, it's come out to 580 yards of fingering weight 2 ply yarn. It's smooshy and soft and I'm very much looking forward to dyeing it. I'm going to save that mini skein, which is about 25 yards, and knit a square of my sock yarn blanket before and after adding dye. That's the plan, at least.

I have been spindling up a storm, as well! I have a few pictures here and there, but I haven't been posting them. Woops!

This is the 1 oz amount I spun up on the spindle and have now wound off and started the last ounce of the braid. Woo!

It's kind of awesome, because Dax helped and held the spindle while I wound the yarn off of it. It was very sweet and and helpful of him.

Anyway, it looks like my TdF progress is going very, very well and I'm interested in seeing how this targhee turns out once it's plied. It's not as uniform and even as my wheelspun yarn, but I really haven't had too much practice with the spindle. As it is, I'm just thrilled to be on the show. :)

Tour de Fleece: Day 15

Success!

I have finished working with half the fiber for both of my major projects and wound everything up into balls to be used for plying once the other half is finished! Yay!

The targhee looks good. The two amounts I spun up on the spindle are not equal, but I'm hoping I'll be able to join them up during plying since yardage is not going to be the same between the two of them, anyway. I wish I had bothered to get a picture of the cop on the spindle before taking it off to wind, but I was so excited I didn't think of it.

The rambouillet is my pride and joy. During the winding process, I realized exactly how consistent it was and was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it has nepps and it's a bit bumpy, but the overall consistency is pretty even, so yay! Also it looks like it'll ply up into a lace weight yarn... considering this is 4 oz already, I am actually rather upset about this because this is only the first half of the fiber. I have 4 oz left. No one in their right mind needs 8 oz of laceweight yarn. Anyway, I may end up plying this on itself and leaving it at that. I'm also excited about the prospect of dyeing this because it's my first time really spinning an undyed white yarn.

The little bit at the top is what I worked on with the tahkli. It got full pretty fast, but I think I was just not winding the cop on evenly enough. I will continue to mess with it here and there and report the results, but it's not a priority right now.

Tour de Fleece: Day 14

Today was a decent day for spinning for me. I spent some quality time with my wheel and some Battlestar Galactica. I think the yarn is turning out great so far and I'm looking forward to finishing up the first four ounces. That was the goal for today, but alas I was distracted by the humidity. I had more than one moment of desperately wanting to lay down spread eagle on the floor under the ceiling fan. It rained this evening and the humidity in the air is just awful and it makes everything feel sticky, so working with wool was not a terribly attractive idea. I did get quite a bit spun, though, so it wasn't a total loss.

Tour de Fleece: Day 13

Wow, I can't believe it's been thirteen days already! I have gotten quite a bit of spinning done today, I think. My main task was to get my fiber all portioned out and really get a good look at how much I've done as the tour is now more than halfway over. I'm about where I expected to be, halfway or so. I'm hoping to hit the halfway mark in my fiber for both of my main projects tomorrow.

I spent the entire day with my two good friends and their daughter and I had the opportunity to spindle a teensy bit while we were at an indoor playground. It was a fun place and I'm looking forward to going again sometime.

Anyway, a picture!

I love the red of this fiber. Andrea at Natural Obsessions does such a great job! I also spun a bit on the wheel, but not enough to take a picture of, really. It doesn't look too terribly different. Anyway, I'm going to have some free time tomorrow so I'm looking forward to getting quite a bit done. It's the second bit of the tour, now, I have to get a move on and push toward my goals!

Tour de Fleece: Day 9

I had a very busy day, today. Aside from work, which was good, I had a few errands to run. I went to the pet shop and bought food for the rats, cats, and my dad's parrot because he was out. Cat food and rat food are pretty reasonably priced, in my opinion, but when I got to the parrot food I was completely shocked. $22 for 4.5 lbs. Really? I was not aware that my dad's pretentious bird had a strict dietary requirement of unicorn farts and fairy eyelashes. Sheesh! I, of course, bought it and he is probably looking in my direction with murderous intent. Ingrate.

Anyway, after all of that excitement, I went and played Pathfinder at a friend's house and spun like the wind!

I wound a ball of singles and started spinning a new cop! Woo! It was fun and I really wasn't too distracted for game, to be honest. It was a lot of fun and I have game tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to bringing my spinning up to Denny's. Oh, joy.

Tour de Fleece: Day 8

Well, today has been fun and eventful. I continued working on the targhee that I have been spindling. The last I measured, I have spun approximately 0.6 oz. Oh, joy! The current plan is to get about an ounce per time I fill up the spindle, then ply to make two little skeins of whatever it will be. It's going great!

When I got home from work, I found a package waiting for me and... woo! Fiber! I got some gorgeous pima cotton from NO and, basically, raced over to my friend's house to use her charkha to spin a little of it and see how it went. The charkha experience was interesting, to say the very least. Once we figured out how to get the thing set up properly, everything went all right. I did start to pick it up, but honestly I'd prefer to use a support spindle like a takli rather than the charkha, I think, because the charkha just involves some really funny ways of moving. We will see. I'm hoping to have some time during TdF to play with the takli a little, so hopefully more on that later.

Please excuse the blurriness of that picture! 

... and my end product looked somewhat like a joint. Ha! It was a fun little experiment, though, and I think the charkha is something I could get used to, but I'm looking forward to trying various methods to see what I like best for spinning cotton roving.

Tour de Fleece Day 5

Well, due to my plans for Independence Day today, I did not get much time to spin. I also spent quite a bit of time napping between work and my plans, so there goes an hour and a half or so down the drain. Lovely. I spun a bit after I got home, though, and there is progress. I'm feeling reasonably encouraged that I can finish up this bobbin tomorrow and start on the second half of this fiber.

It's not a huge improvement, but there is more there. I am having a lot of trouble with nepps in this fiber, but I have chosen to leave them in because spending the time to remove them would take forever and the sheer amount would probably be more than I'm interested in. I'm also a bit afraid this is more overspun than I usually do, but if I recall correctly it seems I worry about that every time and my yarn always comes out pretty balanced with minimal wash and thwack necessary. We will see.

I'm considering doing a 3-ply with this just to get some good practice with Navajo ply, but I haven't quite decided. The funny thing is I just came off spinning ridiculously fine and this is a much thicker single. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a 2-ply sportweight. I'll have to check the NPI when I am finished spinning. It isn't horribly even, but that's mostly due to nepps. Blah. I still like Rambouillet, though. It drafts like butter.

Such A Quitter...

So, one of the things I have neglected to really discuss on this blog is the fact that I recently quit smoking. I had my last cigarette on the morning of April 26th, vowing to let that be the only nicotine fix of my 23rd year of life. So far, it has been a success. It hasn't been easy, obviously, but one of the things that really got me through the whole ordeal was spinning.

I am very proud to say that May 26th, while on vacation, I picked up 4 oz of roving and began to spin in celebration, though I wasn't aware of it because I had totally forgotten at the time. It's a good sign when you forget to count how long it's been since you quit, right? Right!

I bought the roving from Lazy Pi Farm. I have spun her fiber before and it is absolutely great and my experience with this Corriedale was no different. It is not as soft as the merino I had been spinning, but that's the nature of the wool. The color is fantastic (hello purple!) and I loved every minute of it.

I went ahead and wound it into a ball and plied from the outside and center, though I think I will try the Andean bracelet or "handy" form of plying next time because I was very frustrated when the two singles would twist around each other as I unwound them from the ball. I think part of that was overspinning, though.  I'm not sure. It's worth a shot, though. The only problem I see with it is you have to finish plying before you can really go anywhere, as you are sort of tied to the spinning wheel at that point.

Anyway, it plied up into 330 yards of 2-ply in a fingering weight yarn, finally! I mostly use sock yarn so finally getting sockweight yarn was just... awesome. I'm so happy! Some of it was actually finer, I'd call it a laceweight, but it plumped up a bit with thwacking so it's all good. I'll probably knit up a tiny shawl with it! Squee! I'm very well aware that I have simply swapped one addiction for another. Don't judge me!

Into The Dyepot

Well, on Tuesday my little brother and I went ahead and dyed up some yarn! I had a partial skein of Lion Brand Fishermen Wool and thought it would be perfect for the kool aid experiment.

So, I went off this tutorial and got one kool aid packet per ounce. In this case, there were 4.75 oz of yarn, so we went for five packets. Dax chose two lemon-lime and three ice blue raspberry. The kid loves green, I'm not sure why I was surprised. Anyway, we rinsed the yarn off in the sink and dissolved the packets in some water in our huge stock pot on the stove. The huge benefit to kool aid dye is that it's food safe (duh) and you don't have to get another set of pots like you do for acid dyes.

So, we put the yarn in and added some more water to cover it, put it on high heat until it was almost boiling and let it go for half an hour or so, stirring every 8 - 10 minutes to make sure the dye was soaking in pretty evenly. The only thing I didn't see mentioned was perhaps having something to weigh the yarn down so it's not all floating above the water and not getting any dye. I went ahead and took my collander and set it on top, balanced on the handles of the pot and it weighed it down without pushing it to the bottom. Success!

He seems quite pleased with it, though he was not happy with posing for the picture. I set it outside to dry on that chair for the rest of the afternoon and took it in to hang up and finish drying on the towel rack in the bathroom and voila! It dried and looks great.

It's sort of a minty green color and reminds me of mint chocolate chip ice cream! The big problem I have with it is that I tied the ties too tightly and the dye did not soak in very well in those places. A friend mentioned that he usually takes a bit of the dye bath out before putting the yarn in so that he has some to spread over those areas and touch up, using the microwave zapping method. Others mentioned moving the ties around, which seems like a great idea but honestly messing with the yarn in its wet spaghetti form is really not that fun. Add hot water to the mix and we are a sad panda, for sure.

Anyway, I'm hoping to knit him a hat with it for Christmas or something. He will be happy with that. :)

Spinning Candy!

So, I bought some roving from WishFox Dyeworks on a whim. I absolutely adored it. It came in just in time to be worked on at the big spinning meetup at Yarnivore and everyone thought it was rather wild and (hopefully?) awesome. I got quite a bit done that day, then worked on it a little here and there and finally finished it today!

My, that is one full bobbin you have, there!

It was 5 oz of fiber and I surprisingly managed to fit all of it onto that bobbin. I know last night I made a comment about how it never all fits on one, but I managed it this time, even with an extra ounce of fiber to work with. I plied it from both ends in a ball format and it became this:

 

350 yards of glorious, wonderful sport weight (15 wpi) yarn in the most kooky colors imaginable. Perhaps this will become a moebius cowl of some type. I haven't decided. Also, part of me is kicking myself for even thinking of it because there's pretty much exactly thirty seconds I would ever want to use a cowl in south Texas. Seriously. Anyway, no matter what it is I am sure it will be interesting. 

This is the thinnest I have ever spun, but I have not met my goal of spinning actual sockweight yarn yet and, while this makes me kind of sad, I think I could have done it if I had taken more time to spin it and plied a bit tighter, since the plying is actually quite loose. We will see how the next experiment goes.

I do know that I want to get a wpi tool because measuring it the old-fashioned way was not fun. There is one really, really cute one on etsy and I might get it if it's still there when I get home on Sunday. We will see. I really should not run around and buy ALL THE THINGS, but I love the little smiley face. I'm a total sucker for cute little things that are also useful.

Weekend Meetups

Well, I have had quite the busy weekend regarding fiber!

Saturday

Saturday was a really great day. I met up with the San Antonio Handweavers Guild. They have a meetup every third Saturday of the month starting at noon at Yarnivore. There were quite a few people there, I was very surprised! It was nice to meet new people and learn from them a little. My little spinning wheel was quite a hit and a lot of people thought it was cute and had questions.  I also got quite a bit done, as well! I spun up some of the dyed merino I bought from WishFox Dyeworks. It's probably the only merino I have done well with thus far and I think the spinning is coming up great! I will probably navajo ply it to keep the color changes nice and consistent, since the roving is a bit wild. I would hate to lose the gorgeous colors in the business of plying it. I'd rather try to keep it consistent. Anyway, I bought 5 oz so I'm hoping it will turn out lovely with quite a bit of yardage.

Another great thing is that this particular fiber seller is part of the Phat Fiber group. Apparently, this month each purchase made from the etsy shops of any of the sellers listed gives you a chance in a drawing for a fiber box. Wooo! If you are interested in the details, please check out the thread on the ravelry group. These fiber artists do amazing work so being the nasty enabler that I am gives me warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

Oh! Pssst... speaking of enabling! Yarnivore is now carrying Tosh sock and DK weight, and waiting on the worsted. I would hate to be alone in this dangerous place, you know. :)

Sunday

Today was a local LSG meetup at 2 Rivers Coffee in New Braunfels, TX. It took me forever to get there, and not just because I underestimated the time... but because I got lost. Yes. I, even with the superpowers of a GPS and iPhone, got lost. Horribly. I will say, though, that New Braunfels is hardly the worst place to get lost. The scenery is quite wonderful and it's nice to drive around there, lost or not. Also, I will mention that it is not a horribly big place, so getting lost there is kind of... special. I did eventually figure it out and we met up and had quite a bit of fun! I gave away some fiber to the daughter of one of our local hoars and also traded her some sock yarn for her blankie, which I totally convinced her to do in the first place! She had some great sock yarn for me to add.

Please ignore that purple ball toward the bottom, there. I had meant to add it to her bag and had a brain fart and dropped it into mine on accident, even though I have an entire ball of it. I'll keep it and give it to her when I see her next. When I came home, I totally ignored my sock (the almighty last few inches of it!) and worked on four squares. The blanket is looking less and less scarf-like by the day, it seems.

I took a picture cutting off the area I haven't worked on all month, so that blue square in the top left is where I started off this month. I'm submitting my blankie squares to BSGFPB this month, so I'll probably doctor a picture up at the end to outline the squares from May. I love that big red one. You can't see it too well, but it's actually a lovely gradient yarn starting at a deep fuschia color and going to a red-orange at the top. I like it.

I'm really hating the yellow light in the house. I'm going to have to definitely take pictures outside, probably on the picnic table in the yard. Everything looks so muted and jaundiced it's not even funny.

First Fleece: Procurement

Well, as many of my spinning friends (and some non-spin buds, too!) are aware, I have obtained a raw fleece.

The Story

Right, so my friend happens to be working as a volunteer out at Fiesta Farm and they have sheep. I'm guessing for the petting zoo or something. Anyway, the owner was selling the raw fleeces of mutt or unknown breed sheep and, when I heard about this, I totally jumped on it. This was a few months ago and I had not seen her until our potluck knit night, and I reminded her and then promptly forgot again (because that's how these things work). Then, we set up a spin day on Thursday and that's finally when I actually remembered and had cash on hand and so... yeah! I came home with a fleece. It's an incredibly huge bag and it is smooshy.

So, this is my very first fleece. I am going to obtain the necessary equipment to get it nice and clean for carding and spinning. Luckily, my friend has a drum carder and has totally offered to lend it to me or let me sit around at her house and keep her company while I use it. Score! I will probably set it up as my main project for June because Tour de Fleece begins at the end of the month and apparently I have absolutely nothing to actually do (hah!). Anyway, I am very excited about this project I have undertaken and will be doing some research about good ways to clean it up and sort it. I will be sure to share the techniques I use and the results, as always. 

I guess I really didn't think I was quite crazy enough when I started spinning...

Yellow Rose Booty!

Well, it's taken me a while but I'm finally ready to talk about what happened at Yellow Rose... as in I have gotten over my serious laziness and will now post all about it! Nothing bad, it was AWESOME! When we first got there, we were greeted by a naked alpaca and llama. I got a picture, but the llama was being a douche and did not want to be photographed.

Our first stop going in was to fill out a cool form for drawings. Amazingly enough, I was the first person to win a prize! That's so crazy and cool and I was excited while walking around trying to figure out where I was supposed to go to pick it up. It contained some stickers and a skein of yarn, by Gritty Knits called Smug. It's a really striking yellow, a DK weight and I have no idea what to do with it but it is pretty and quite shiny.

Then, I returned to the booth where I was when my name was called. The shop is called Knitting Rose. The top is her Blossom yarn, it's a sockweight, and is superwash wool. Below are some minis I purchased from her, she has another yarn that contains buffalo fiber, called Budding. I believe two of the minis I purchased are of this yarn, but they are not labeled. It feels like it, though. She was a really awesome, interesting lady. She also has a podcast if anyone is interested.



Next, I explored the MAFIA booth.  Yes, the fiber world has the mafia and we do love it so. This is a group of several different fiber artists, so I will try not to blather on about them too much. But! In my Battlestar Galactica group there is an amazing, generous woman who offered to give me a birthday gift when I visited her stall. She is the owner of Lazy Pi Farm. She gave me some absolutely amazing fiber as a gift and had some sock yarn minis as freebies. I shamelessly took one, but really, really want to buy some more of her yarn. It's really good stuff. The type I got was called Elemental and it is glorious. Seriously. Go buy some right now.

Also from the MAFIA booth was The Droll Eclectic. I purchased fiber from this exact dyer before and actually spun my first yarn from it. Amazing stuff! Her shop says that she is currently on vacation, but there is amazing stuff to be had there.  I purchased some more fiber (merino) with the intent to ply them together to get a gigantic amount of yarn, I guess. We'll see. Also of note is the fact that she sells Spinolution wheels. Since I happen to own a Spinolution wheel, I am quite happy to know this and will contact her in case I need any parts or have problems with it breaking down.

After that, there was quite a lot of wandering around. I was sorely tempted by a mini niddy noddy, but I am saving myself for another, so I had to pass. I did pick up some minis at the WC Mercantile booth. It was toward the back and there were some really awesome things to be had there. I focused on the huge bowl of sock yarn minis, though.  Shamelessly. They do have some excellent sock yarn and roving, though, if anyone is interested in that.

Next up was Sky Loom Weavers. I really loved their yarns and purchased a skein of sock yarn (do you see a pattern yet?). I have never really been too fond of melon colors but this just caught my eye and I couldn't put it down. I have no idea what to do with it, but really I don't know what to do with anything, do I? There was a freebie of spinning fiber, though I completely spaced on taking a picture! I plan to give it to a friend's daughter. She discovered spinning at the festival and I am really just a shameless enabler. Don't you know?

At this point, we decided to stop and have a break for lunch. We went to Davila's BBQ, also in Seguin. It was difficult to coordinate with so many people, but eventually everyone did get there. I did not have the presence of mind to snap a photo, which I regret, but hopefully maybe someone else did. It was a lot of fun to see all of the San Antonio area people gathered there. It was a meeting of groups, as well, since we had the San Antonio Fiber Junkies and the LSG folks in the area all together. Fun stuff, I do hope to see these people again because they are awesome and amazing and I LOVE FIBER FOLKS.

After lunch, it was more shopping, of course! I purchased some sock yarn from the Dawning Dreams booth. I was torn and had trouble deciding between this skein and another, more yellow colored one. I decided on this one after a while.

Also, during my ridiculous waiting to decide time I got to see a cute little baby goat. I pet him and he was quite wiggly, hence the blurry picture. Also -- DIAPER! HA!

I also purchased some soap from a booth there run by an etsy store called Mike and Diane . I did not have the presence of mind to take a picture, but I got some soap that smelled like watermelon from them. I am still using it and it is great soap, though. I would recommend it, but my sister does not think so. She is very sensitive about scents, though.

Well, after all of that I went and paid a visit to the major booth of the festival, Windmill Crest Farms. I bought a bag of alpaca fiber. I'm looking forward to spinning it! I am hoping that they will be able to participate in or advertise for Yarn Crawl this year. I'd love to see them again soon! Liz bought some yarn from them. I was a teensy bit jealous until I realized I was going to be able to make my own out of this. Pretty excited about it. The fiber is ridiculously soft.

Then, I found the next booth over or so that was selling llama fiber from Stalter's Farm. I should have put it together when the douchey llama outside was shorn, but I didn't and was surprised to figure out that llama fiber is, in fact a thing. Anyway, it's very soft and amazing and so I bought some of it, as well. It's a pretty natural gray color and I am really looking forward to spinning it. Their website has no mention of llamas, but they were really awesome, amazing people and they came quite a way to get to the festival, so I would not hesitate to buy from them again should I see them. They also gave me a little freebie with the fiber purchase, of both llama and alpaca. I have shamelessly spun up the brown llama, so I will post a picture of that as well. It came out pretty soft and I love the way it spins.

Last, but certainly NOT least, are my favorite people to run into at fiber festivals. Andrea and Emily. They are from the Austin area and are serious enablers with a great attitude. Emily owns a shop called Buena Suerte. I have purchased yarn from her in the past and it is absolutely lovely. This time, I bought two skeins of her Jinx yarn:

She has another type of yarn, called Charm, which is a blend of merino and tencel and it is absolutely fabulous. I did not buy a skein this time around, but I had one that I haven't caked up from Kid 'n' Ewe. The sunlight was pretty weak at the time of the picture taking, but it is incredibly shiny!

I also purchased fiber from Andrea, her shop is Natural Obsessions. She has such amazingly bright, eye-catching dyes it took me forever to decide what to get. Emily suggested I try spinning a wool called targhee because I have had some problems here and there with merino due to the short staple length. It's absolutely gorgeous and I've already started to spin it. I have one single already done, just need to spin up the other half and ply!

I am thinking it will probably spin up to be my best yet and I absolutely love it. Andrea also has a fiber club going on and that looks amazing. I can't sign up for it this time around, but I will keep an eye out for the next one if she does it and  I will be the first one jumping onto that, I can assure you!

All in all, Yellow Rose was amazing and I can't wait until next year. So, I will leave you with a picture of all of my purchasing glory in TWO bags, one of which I had to buy because my poor knitting bag was too full. Ridiculous, aren't I?