Something about spinning

Over the weekend I navajo plied the orange single from last week. Having the single wound into a ball made this much easier than the previous tangled version, so I will be doing that again when I am wheel plying spindle spun singles (btw that is really hard to say!).

Here is the finished three ply:

I have to say I love it, a lot. The colours are gorgeous, which I can't take credit for since I bought this one. It has also come out suprisngly soft and squishy considering a lot of the singles were very tightly spun by my new to spinning self.

There is a little difference in the weight along the length, the most recent parts are similar to a commercial 4 ply, the older stuff is a little thinner, but not so much that it does not work. I now have an idea how thin to spin to achieve sock weight, which with my sock obsession is the holy grail of my spinning.

The thing that dissappoints me slightly it that I don't seem to get very good mileage with my spinning. I was told by an experienced spinner that handspun gave a better weight:length ratio than commercial yarn but that does not seem to be the case with my spinning. This skein weighs 68g and I have estimated the length as 170m, for the thickness of the yarn this is not a great ratio. It also means I have no idea what to make with it. I had hoped to get enough for a small shawl but now I am thinking I might combine it with a commercial 4 ply to make a hat. I have too many neck warmer items anyway!

Tour de fleece day 19

Today's project had been yet more blue superwash merino. I am onto the second single and an early start this morning has about 1/4 of it done. I am hoping to get a little more done this evening, but it is easier to get the blog post done in the morning, any extra progress will make it into tomorrow's post.

I thought you might be getting a bit bored with reading about this spinning project, it tends to look the same in every daily photo. I took a couple of other pictures to make it a little more interesting.

For the Wonder Why Team- even though I am spinning merino I am keeping it 'paca with some 100%alpaca socks. Still worried these will not be very hard wearing, but I tend to wear them on days when I don't need to wear shoes so they should last longer. They are so soft and mmmmmmmmmmmm.

For anyone who is interested I thought I would take a photo of my spinning corner. The wheel lives here, it is perhaps a tiny bit in the way (there is a corner wall behind the chair, but then so is the sofa really and after a while you don't notice, you just sort of walk around. 

I used to drag the wheel out into the room and point it at the TV to spin. Then it occured to me that I don't actually watch the TV, just listen to it, and the chair fits neatly inbetween the wheel and the wall. So now I just put a chair in front of the wheel and start to spin, it is much faster and less hassle. I am totally in the way, you can't get into the next room when I am sat there, but never mind.

Using the airer for prepped fibre is a new thing, it makes life so much easier and spinning much faster (but means I can't dry as many clothes!).

Tour de Fleece day 18

I forgot to post yesterday (ooops). It was a rest day so nothing happened spinning wise but I was aiming to post every day. I caught up with some knitting and reading blog posts, so it would not have been an overly exciting day for you to read about anyway.

This morning I got up early so I could finish the first single of my blue superwash project. The fibre was taunting me yesterday, but I had planned to stick to the rest days and am determined not to break my self imposed rules on this one.

The first single is done. I think it is a little underspun so it will probably not be hardwearing enough for socks, it may end up as a shawl instead but I will see how it looks once it is plied.

During the tour I have managed to go from overspun to underspun, will I ever get the holy grail of perfect twist?!

I have just enough time to prep the rest of the fibre before I should get on with some work. Hopefully I will get some of it spun tonight, I still think I will not get this finished during the tour as I have something else planned for Friday, if not it should be done by the end of the weekend, next week there will be yarn!

Tour de Fleece day 14

Today was more of the same superwash merino as yesterday, you can tell I have done some more because it is more blue today.

I have about 1/3 of the prepped fibre left then it is onto the second single. I think this project will take me to the end of the tour apart from the challenge day next Friday.

Tour de fleece day 9

Today has been another busy day, I had hoped to get loads of spinning done this weekend, but it has not turned out that way. However, I have managed to navajo ply the alpaca and baby alpaca from the last few days.

I used my wheel to navajo ply the singles. Today's learning experience was taking the single off the spindle shaft to make a singles sausage rather than trying to ply off the spindle or having to widn a plying ball; and the fact that sliding it on to a knitting needle is much easier and ends up with less tangles.

There's about 26g of alpaca (the chocolate brown) and 32g of baby alpaca. The baby alpaca is much softer than the alpaca, after the tour de fleece I might buy enough to make a decent sized project.

Tour de fleece day 5

Today was another plying day. I navajo plied the BFL spingle from yesterday to get about 30m. It is a similar weight to the alpaca from the start of the tour so I might combine the two.

Close up shot

I have learnt some more with this project, in an attempt to avoid overspinning and get a soft squishy yarn some bits were underspun. This caused a few problems with the plying as navajo plying needs a little extra robustness in the single so that it can cope with being pulled through itself. There were a few breaks in the single because of this but it all held together ok in the end.

I did some other plying too, but since the singles were spun ages ago I am not counting them as part of the tour, they will get a photo later on.

Tour de Fleece day one

Today was the first day of the tour de France, and therefore the tour de fleece- hooray! I have been really looking forward to this as I missed it last year. I might not post every day, but thought I would share the progress from my first day.

I have some possibly overly ambitious plans, but today went well.

I started with this beautiful alpaca and merino fibre from the Wonder why alpaca farm and Haze the alpaca.

I thought it was a batt, but when I went to open it up and tear it into strips found it was skinny roving. I love roving (Andrea you may be psychic and are most definitely a star)!

I am trying to spin this fairly thick and not overtwisted, both challenges for me. So far it is going well, the lovely pencil roving means I can work from the bag so no ends to join together and only a little drafting is needed.

I have done about 28g (that's about 1oz) today, this is far more than I ever usually manage to spin in one day so I am really happy. I am going to see how full the bobbin is at 33g and decide if it will be a three ply ,if the bobbin is full; or a two ply, if I can fit another 20g in.

Tour de Fleece teams and challenges

Welcome to my first Tour de Fleece post, this will be the first year I have taken part and I am quite excited about it. I am not a huge fan of cycling, so that aspect does not really interest me, but I am into the spinning part. I need to get more practise and this is a good way to motivate that.

For anyone not familiar with this the idea is to spin along with the Tour de France, spinning each day the tour rides from Saturday July 2nd to Sunday July 24th July apart from rest days on the 11th and 18th. An extra task is to spin something challenging on the day of the mountain stage (Friday 22nd).

First up, the teams. You can joint more than one team, and there is a choice of Main teams and Wildcard teams.

I have joined the Peloton team from the Main teams group, this the group for the pack and really the only option as I have been spinning too long to count as a Rookie (over a year) am not aiming for lace (Sprinters) or art yarn (Breakaway) and hope to spin every day so am not a Lantern Rouge. Climbers is a group for those with a big personal challenge, but I think I will save that for next year. I have not found a badge for this yet.

For Wildcard teams I have picked a few:

The Team of Wonder 2011, as some of my challenges are alpaca based, including a lovely Batt of Wonder.

Team UK, because that is where I live

I don't have badges for the rest of my teams yet, but I have joined Team Kromski as my wheel is a Sonata. I am using my wheel for my larger projects.

And the Spindlers team, as some of my challenges will be done on a spindle.

I have also joined Team Hopelessly Overcommitted, because I am :D.

Next my personal challenges:
To spin for at least 15 minutes each day apart from the rest days. This can be wheel or spindle.

To spin this beautiful merino and alpaca batt courtesy of Haze the alpaca and the Wonder Why Gal. I want to make some slipper socks so need a two or three ply that is fairly thick.

My third challenge is to spin up some of the fibre samples I have collected, I would like to try them all, but am aiming for three so I am not too over committed! There is baby alpaca, alpaca, humbug Bluefaced Leicester, Wensleydale, plastic bottle, tussah silk, seaweed and crab. I am going to spindle these into a thin single then navajo ply them using my wheel. I may make my mountain stage challenge to do a whole fibre sample in one day.

Finally I have this beautiful roving from Shunklies (post about the purchase to come later in the week). I tried to resist this as I think I have plenty to keep me busy just with the above tasks but it is so pretty. If I finish the other tasks this will start its journey towards becoming socks.

So with fibre waiting I am eager to get to the start line. I need to do some training first though, by which I mean I need to empty my spindles. 

Pastels ain't my thing

But I quite like this anyway.

I bought some hand dyed roving from an indie dyer (it is good to support other indies). I had pictured it as mostly purple and grey but it spun up much more pink and pastelly. Although I had split the roving into three to make a three ply I decided to use some dark purple I already had for one of the plies instead, it made it more "me" and less pastelly (I'm sure that should be a word), you can see it here.

That left one third of the roving unspun so after letting it hang around for a little while I decided to use it up. I spun a fairly loose skinny single then navajo plied it. It has come out quite nicely soft and squishy, although my efforts to avoid over spinning have gone the other direction in a few places and it is a little fluffy and underspun.

I need to find a good handspun project, I have lots of small skeins (20g or so) of various colours and thicknesses that I have spun and then don't know what to do with.

The spinning story part three

After the fairly successful if somewhat smelly and rough blue fibre the next step was to make something soft and squashy from a nicer fibre.

I had one plait of fibre in my stash, it was pinks, light purple and grey. None of these are really my kind of colours so I did two singles using a third of the plait each and another 30g of a darker purple I had dyed myself as a trial.

These were plied together to give a stripy effect.

The remaining third of the plait will be spun and navajo plied later on.

I split the roving a lot down its lengthwise, probably ten or more times to give a really thin roving to work from. This meant only a little drafting needed to be done as it was spun so solved the problem of taking too long to draft.

I also made a special effort to treadle slowly.

I am really pleased with how this came out, it is nicely squashy and not at all twisty. I had hoped to make a sock weight but it is probably thicker than DK (worsted) weight.

The next challenge will be to get the same squishiness with a thinner yarn. I need to do some fibre shopping first though :D

Spinning FO

I have cleared another WIP, when it was blogged a few months ago it looked like this:
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It now looks like this:
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I am pleased that I have finished it, but I am not totally pleased with it. It is thinner than I was aiming for, I wanted a sock weight and ended up with over 16WPI. I know how to fix this, next time thicker plies or more of them. I struggle with spinning thick, so that is challenge number one.
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It is also over twisted, I am hoping some of the experienced spinners out there can give me some advice on this.
As I was spinning thin plies (really very thin ones!) I need a lot of twist. I was using the middle ratio option and not treadling overly fast, so to me that seems like it should only just give sufficient twist for something so thin (otherwise what is the third ratio for?). So how come it was so over twisted? I am thinking to fix this I need to treadle slower, or draft faster and maybe use the largest ratio. Any thoughts wise and experienced spinners of the world?
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I really want to make some soft, squooshy yarn!
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I have another chunk of fibre that is going to be my trial piece. I am aiming for a thicker yarn (around DK weight) that is soft and squashy. Either a two or three ply.

Spinning Sunday- Singles

I finally finished spinning the first singles on my wheel. It was the end of a bag of undyed superwash fibre (type unknown).

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There's about 100g of singles, it was going to be a 2 ply but I am going to try my hand at navajo plying instead.

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Spinning Sunday- Wheel time

I finally got a chance to play with my new wheel this week, spinning an unknown superwash fibre. It is thin, as always, and I think it is a little overtwisted, but plying and finishing will hopefully fix that. I have about 100g of the fibre, will probably make a 2 ply and dye it for socks (of course!).

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Close up shot:

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I have spun a bit more of it now, more photos next week when hopefully I will have most of the singles done. It is so much faster than drop spindling, but I need some more practise to get faster at drafting, some of the tour de fleece rates are still a long way off I think (100g/4oz or more a day!).

The start of Spinning Sundays

Last year I decided to try my hand at spinning, the theory being that if I spun my own yarn I would get more hours of crafting fun per project than if I bought it. I duly bought a drop spindle starter kit and had a go.

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It was something of a disaster and the drop spindle ended up being tucked away in my stash tub. (Sorry, no photos of the lumpy disaster yarn)

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A couple of months later I saw some instruction videos on YouTube and decided to have another go. Much more successful this time (eventually).

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I even managed to make enough sock weight yarn for a pair of socks.

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But drop spindling, while fun, is so very very slow- you spin, then stop, wind on, spin some more etc. And when you are going for thin stuff it takes a long time to get enough to knit with (at least for me). s
The answer, obviously was a wheel, I tried out a friend's Ashford Traveller a few months back but have been holding off on buying one. Partly because of umming and ahhing over which I wanted ( I went Traveller, Kiwi, Sonata and back and forwards between the last two repeatedly) and partly because they are not cheap.
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This week I got paid for some work, which happened to coincide with an offer from a lovely Raveller of a Kromski Sonata for a good price, how could I resist?! So here it (she/he?) is:
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I know a lot of people name their wheels but so far it is just called "Wheel", it might be a she though. Not had a lot of time yet to play as am trying to finish up a lot of projects before a show next week (more on that in the week) but am looking forward to a lot of spinning.

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So, from now on the theme for posts on Sundays is going to be spinning, you can see how the adventure goes!