fin - Tour de Fleece 2016

I can't really say that I've crossed the finish line, I've done much less than I'd hoped. But I did spin most days of the three weeks, and have found much pleasure in this project.

I've been dg-combing locks individually by hand (or rather a tuft of locks at a time). A method I was taught on my very first spinning lesson. The results are great, you have in your hand a lock with all fibres separated and completely parallel. I did try dizzing the result but that took too much time with no benefit really, spinning the combed locks works very well.

 Having said I've not done as much as I'd hoped, I really don't know what yardage I have there. The singles spun out very fine, and I went with that.

I've plied, washed and knit some samples. The top one is a 3-ply, still thinner than I'd like for the project I have in mind. The bottom one uses two strands of 2-ply (ie four plies) and that looks neater and is closer to the gauge that I want. But spinning 1200 yards of 4 plies - that's a lot more spinning!

I'm now less sure about the project. I do want to knit one of these, and while spinning I've been thinking this Shetland would be perfect. but now I'm not so sure. The colour of this yarn is a fairly nice fawn, but looks a bit rustic. I may keep looking for the perfect pattern for this fleece. And buy some fibre in a light grey at Fibre East. (The very light colour of the Illas Cíes shown in the pattern looks terrific and will suit me.)

Spinzilla Team HSN UK Visit to wool processing mill

From a crafter's perspective, it's fascinating to see the familiar scouring and combing processes happen on an industrial scale. It's also heartening to see a large business working so ethically. They're proud of their environmental credentials, with all waste (dirt, grease, noils) going off to serve useful purposes elsewhere.

Friday's visit to Haworth Scouring Co was a 'spin-off' event from last year's Spinzilla.

The first year that the yardage competition was open worldwide (2014) I spun 'rogue' because there was no UK team. For 2015's event I registered a UK team linked to Hand Spinning News. What happened next blew me away. The team filled up within a couple of days (25 spinners max). There was such a spirit between team members during a gruelling week's spinning (the most active team forum by a long margin) and we ended up coming seventh out of around 70 teams worldwide, all of us meeting the 'monster mile' and a grand total of 146,336 yards or 83.15 miles.

Martin Curtis of Curtis Wools Direct / Haworth Scouring Co sponsored our effort by providing real Shetland top for us to spin,

He very kindly also offered us a tour of his mill. Besides being a fascinating day, it was the first time that many team members had met in person!

We saw fleeces being opened up, shaken out and then being passed through a number of tanks of detergent.

The mill also has a combing plant, turning the snowy-clean fleece into beautiful squishy top for spinning. I gather that most of this goes to the carpet industry; wool carpet being more environmentally-friendly, healthy, comfortable, non-compacting and not necesarily more expensive than synthetic fibres. Some of the wool goes to make garments and the noils (shorter fibres) into bedding.

Longdrawjames and Freyalyn testing the wool by twisting small amounts between their fingers. There was a funny moment when Martin did the same and looked around expectantly. "Usually when I do this, people are impressed", he said "...but you lot being hand spinners, I can see that you're not...."

potamousse's other half took this excellent picture of the team, or most of those that were present, with our Spinzilla team pinnies.

We had the opportunity to buy some real Shetland top and other fibres. I'd gone intending to buy more of the white to spin, dye and weave into a tartan blanket-scarf. However, after seeing how the natural fibres look when woven, I chose a selection of natural colours.

For the genuine 'real Shetland', contact Martin's son Adam of the Real Shetland Company. They're not really geared up to supply smaller amounts for hand spinning, but depending on what you want, Adam may be able to help or to pass you onto a retailer.

Dew-retting nettles, not a success

After a number of weeks, things appeared to have worked well.

This stem snapped easily and the fibrous outer peeled away. By my index finger there are some quite fluffy fibres. All good.

After separating what fibres I could from a number of stems, it became clear that the first one I picked up wasn't representative. Some peeled like rhubarb, the fibres in a thick ribbon, like blades of grass (I assume the retting hadn't worked well in those cases) and other stems had nothing, or a black mush that wasn't fibrous. Maybe in those cases the fibres had been eaten / rotted away, or the stems weren't good in the first place because I harvested late.

I noticed that the best ones felt slimy. This is backed up by the fact that when I left all the fibres I'd collected in water, they all turned slimy. I take this to be the bacterial / fungal action that we're after with the retting (if anyone reading this knows about these things and can confirm or deny this, please comment).

After soaking for a bit longer, I did have a fibrous material. But there were too many thicker fibres in there (maybe not separated / broken down) and trying to draft and twist them between my fingers produced what looked and felt like twisted grass - not what we were after.

When dry, they felt brittle and coarse. I decided to cheat on the 'apocalypse' idea and see what happened with carders (hoping the fibres would separate).

There are a few fibres on the carders. But a lot has just broken and flaked. I think it's fair to say that this hasn't been an unmitigated success.

I'm going to try again in the autumn, harvesting earlier and trying the quicker retting method in a trough or the bath.

Samoyed dog fur - finished spinning

Longdraw is like magic when it works well. This was difficult to spin because there's absolutely no length to the fibres (some was fluffy and very short, some was a little longer and coarser, I assume this is soft undercoat and coarser outer coat)

But by the end, with lots of practice, the singles were flowing well. I found that tight punis worked best

This is just a part of the total, I now have seven skeins altogether, maybe 5-600 yards. I understand that this came from just one brushing!

[edited to add a picture of the total yarn, balled]

How to deal with a braid of dyed fibre

Mum asked me for some tips for spinning a special braid of dyed fibre. I'm posting publicly in case these thoughts are useful to others too.

1. It always seems a shame to undo a beautifully braided coil of fibre, but it has to be done! You'll probably find that the length of fibres is actually a tube and you may even spot a seam. carefully open this out into a wide flat ribbon.

2. I find that it really makes the following steps easier if you split the fibre vertically. Whether you split into two, four or eight, or whether you split at all depends on how you're planning to spin and how you'd like the colours to be distributed (see my notes on variations later).

3. However many times you've split it, I find that the fibre really benefits from  a lengthwise stretch, either by 'snapping' or a gentle tug. The idea is to separate the fibres which may have become a little clingy with their neighbours. The trick is to pull less than you think you need to, and move your hands along a little bit each time.

4. Again, where you go from here depends on how you're spinning. For my last few projects I've been spinning fine, even and as worsted as possible. I've found that continuing to pre-draft into a 'pencil roving' really helps. The fibres are  now so free that they spin like a dream! (There's a great video about pre-drafting from Sara's Texture Crafts here)

Variations:

Spinning from the fold. You'll want to split vertically only once or not at all, and then after step 3 pull off a staple length or so to fold over your finger.

Longdraw from rolags. David of Southern Cross Fibre has made this great post which shows how to make rolags from a dyed braid.

Fractal spinning. The more times you split lengthways, the quicker your colours will repeat in your singles. Fractal spinning means splitting your yarn differently for each bobbin of singles to achieve certain stripe effects or to balance your colours better in your finished 2-ply. There are different ways to do this for different effects, but for starters, split your yarn lengthways once, spin one bobbin from one half. Split the second half again before spinning the second bobbin. This way the colours will change twice as quickly on the second bobbin.

Do you prepare your fibre differently? Do you have anything to add to this? Let us know in the comments.