Back to spinning!

 If you've seen the January '25 issue of HSN then you'll know that I'm quite taken by the Snow Queen Snood.

I'm itching to do some spinning because I've been occupied for months now on a knitting project. It's quite relaxing to do late at night now that I've reached the body, which is long rows of stockinette with a short section of lace at each end. But all the same, it's going to take ages to finish. (Especially if I get distracted by other projects. Monogamous? Me? Never!)

The snood is a Zoom Loom project (or other square pin loom). I'm also keen to use that tool again. It's a quick and fun way to use handspun yarn. 

I had a rummage and found this yarn, left over from my Fulton Shrug. I bought the yarn (undyed) from my friend Jenn at fibreworkshop.co.uk. She studied the Norfolk Horn breed, found local flocks, bought the fleece and had it processed and spun.  It really is beautiful yarn. I asked Freyalyn to dye it for me in teal.  My phone's camera doesn't like the colour and tried to correct it to grey. I've done my best to correct it to something like how it looks in real life.

I also found these nests which are obviously fleece that I've processed myself. I've lost track of where it came from. It may be the last of this fleece but I'm not sure about that. It's not particularly fine and I think it will match the Norfolk Horn quite well if spun to the same thickness. 

I'm not sure whether the quantity I have here is enough. A quick calculation based on 8 yards per Zoom Loom square means that I'll need around 380 yards of yarn altogether (blue and white). I guess I have plenty of the blue, probably not the white. I'll make the yarn and see what I have. It may mean altering the pattern (more of the plain blue squares).

I'm trying to spin longdraw, since the Norfolk Horn yarn is very bouncy. I'm having to pick out some VM as I go. 

Spinning alpaca fleece

I've been spinning like a demon this week, partly to use some alpaca that has been in the stash for such a long time that it's a miracle that it hasn't become home to something nasty. And partly so that I can have a knitting project started in time for a trip.

   For speed I decided to run it all through the drum carder and either make that into punis or put handfuls over my finger and spin from the fold.

Neither of those methods worked out. The best way seemed to be tearing off strips, pre-drafting a little and then just spinning from the end of the strip. This made a very smooth and close-packed yarn (as worsted as it was going to be from carded fibre). As you can see it spun very fine, and I needed to 3-ply to get a yarn with any thickness.

 I have three colours. The black is the best, very soft and very black. Not dark chocolate but inky black. The white is also fine and soft but after washing, not quite white, I've got to accept that it's more of a creamy or off-white. The grey is a blend of black and white. It was made from a bag of fleece that was terribly short, almost all of it was like second-cut. I doubted that it would be possible to card and spin, but with equal parts  of a better white fleece, it did card and spin very well and has produced a nice yarn, although more prickly than the other two colours.

That's about 500g altogether, of something between fingering and sport, I guess.  Ready for knitting!

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.)

Tour de Fleece, stage 9

The problem with sticking to one big project through an event is that the photos are much the same. I've tried a different angle here, showing the fleece.

I'm pulling locks from the raw, dirty, greasy fleece and dog-combing both ends of each, for a well-separated, parallel handful of fibres. This is a technique I was shown on my very first spinning lesson, and one I find more therapeutic than using the big combs, with much the same result.

The fleece isn't so dirty, my hands and wheel are staying pretty clean, and I'm sure the lanolin is doing my skin some good. I can't wait to see whether the colour lightens when the yarn is finally washed.

One interesting thing is the variation in shade from light to dark. I'm now planning to 3-ply the very fine singles, a true 3-ply rather than navajo, so that might blend that variation a bit.

I'm enjoying this so much, it was difficult to take a rest day yesterday (Monday) but today's stage (10) is 'hilly' so I'll start a new bobbin, put in a bit of effort later today and make some more progress.

casting on!

I've now made three colours from some almost-forgotten fleeces and my new wool combs. The fleeces are an unidentified family pet sheep (white) and a zwartbles (black). I've used the combs to blend the two for the grey which I'm delighted with.

 All three are incredibly bouncy, the skeins are light and really squish down to nothing in your hand. They're so even too. After combing, the wool almost spins itself into very neat and even yarn.

Just a short while in Ravelry's pattern search turned this up. (Check Slouch from Interweave) It only gives one size and calls for slightly thicker yarn than I've made but it should be an easy pattern to adjust. It'll also bring in new skills for me, it'll be the first 'double knitting' that I've done. One colour per round, lots of slipping. Gagging to get started on this one.

Shepherdess Cowl - part 1 - dyeing experiments

It takes some discipline to abandon something that's not going so well. In the past I would have impatiently carried on regardless and finished up with something I knew could have been better.

But back a week or so, Mum and I decided to have a dyeing session, using some fleece given to her by a friend with a few sheep (washed and carded previously).

The strategy was to make up some basic colours, mix them to make new colours and just see what happened.

Helped along by a 'small' sherry. This was Christmas after all.

One lesson learned was to make sure that the dye soaks completely through the fibre (unless you want the white patches). Two of our experiments worked out particularly well. This blue / green and a black / red. These looked so lovely that I decided to make a cowl for the owner of the sheep.

We also spun these up during the holiday. Mum the greens and me the red. Here you can probably see the problem and the reason  for starting again.  The colours are wonderful but this fleece is particularly coarse and hairy. The result isn't something you'd want to wear next to your skin, so we're going to think of something different to do with this coarse yarn and I have a very happy story to tell in part 2 of this post...

Scouring fleece

With the difficulties I've had obtaining the scour and wash I have been using / selling, it was great to receive these samples in the post from Aussie Know How. As I have been trying them I thought it would be a good idea to write about how to scour a fleece at the same time.

We're aiming to wash and rinse out the dirt and lanolin from the raw fleece without felting it. Therefore agitation has to be kept to a minimum. I like using these net bags (available from your dry-cleaning or pound store) as they make it easier and cleaner to handle the fleece and help you to handle the fleece without rubbing the fibres together too much. Don't pack too much in a bag - the water needs to flow through the fibre.

Carefully place those bags in the hot soapy water. The raw fleece can handle hot water as long as you don't move it around too much and don't transfer it to water of a different temperature. The new product says 20ml per 10litres (that's 2 gallons or one big bucketful). So for my bathful I calculated 80ml, about the same quantity that I'd have used of Power Scour.  I would normally leave to soak for 20 mins, but this product says 'paddle after 5 mins'. I'm not quite sure what that means but the aim is to allow the water to flow around the fibre and carry out the dirt, without allowing the fibres to rub together.

I call this 'sheep soup'. It's amazing what dirt is trapped in the fleece. After this first wash, the instructions suggest using the spin cycle or gently squeeze to take out the dirty water before rinsing. I would generally be more cautious and simply leave to drain on a rack for a few minutes rather than spin or squeeze. These bags then needed two changes of rinse water before the water was running clear. I do use the spin cycle (slow spin) to take out most of the water, with the fleece still in the net bags.

Evaluation of the new Fibre Scour

The essential oils (Tea Tree and Lemon Myrtle - antibacterial) smell very strong but pleasant. I assume that the product contains enough of these to be effective rather than just a token amount.

At suggested concentration, the new product has cleaned the grease more effectively than I expected.  Usually I wash only once in order to take out the dirt and some of the grease leaving a little of the lanolin on the fibres which aids combing and spinning. Now that this fibre has dried (it takes a couple of days to be completely dry) it feels much drier (ie free of grease) than I'd expect. In future I think I will try using a little less product.

[UPDATE] I now have these items (500ml bottles) available at http://handspinner.co.uk/scour_wash_rinse.html

Zwartble fleece - comparing young and older

This rare Dutch breed's fleece is a rich black and said to be great for felting and spinning. The wool looks quite brown in this picture, but you're seeing the sun-bleached ends. (all together... Aaahhhh).

I'm lucky enough to have been sent samples and can compare spinning fleece from a year-old ram with some from an older ewe.

The young fleece is very consistent in colour - inky-black (with bleached tips of course). It's very 'zingy' - crimpy and bouncy

The older fleece is less crimpy and isn't quite so black. It's a little more brown with a few silver threads in it (like me).


Surprisingly I enjoyed spinning the older fleece a little better. The fibres were longer and they were also 'tamer' and so the result has a little less of a halo. It may not end up as bouncy as the younger fibre, and not quite as black but it's no more coarse and I think I prefer the resulting yarn.


The two sample skeins are soaking now, which I hope will plump them up a bit. When they're dry in a day or two I'll compare them again and update this post.

[Update]

These are the finished sample skeins - the younger on the left and the older on the right.