two more yarn bowl designs

I've just added two more yarn bowl designs from Helen Dixon. The dark bronze in colour is mirror-like. The other glaze is a very bold red. I think these glazes and the geometric design are reminiscent of the opulent Ard Deco era - what do you think?

100% cat

I've not made any progress with any of my own projects recently because I've been spinning this 130g of pure cat fluff.

It was badly matted, with lots of variation of colour. I tried drum carding which would have saved a lot of time but lots of work with hand carders was the only way to separate the fibres nicely. This meant that each lot on the carders became well-blended colourwise, but I tried to stick to one colour on each charge of the carders so that there's a good colour variation within the singles.

Some of the fibres are very short so I tried a tightly-rolled poonie as with cotton, but in the end I found that it went best from a very loose mass lifted off the carder.

There's more of a colour variation than you can see from the photo, in places it's almost white and in some places dark brown. I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks knitted up. The owner isn't sure yet what she'll make.

Book review: Hand Spinning and Natural Dyeing by Claire Boley

Contents:

• Sheep and fleece
• Spinning with a drop spindle or just your fingers
• Spinning wheels
• Carding and combing fleece
• Spinning techniques
• Getting the handspun yarn ready for hand knitting
• Fancy handspun yarns
• Natural Dyeing
• Glossary

First impressions are that the book is smaller than I was expecting (6" x 8"), but that does make it a nice portable size, and it packs in 127 pages of not-oversize text and lots of illustrations

The text is comprehensive and isn't lacking in any way. From selecting a fleece (with a table of popular British breeds and their properties) through spinning with a spindle and a wheel to skein and ball winding and knitting with your handspun.

The plain-English and straight-to-the-point-style makes it very easy to read and understand (although a background image does obscure the text a little bit on a couple of pages). It is definitely aimed at beginners but does take us to the next level with topics such as woollen / worsted yarn and some fancy techniques.

The photographs have a little bit of a homespun look but they're plentiful, clear and illustrate the text well.

The topic of hand knitting your handspun yarn and the necessary considerations is important but often overlooked or only touched on. Claire Boley gives us a whole chapter and a pattern for a hat with a rolled brim; easy to knit and a good introduction to knitting with handspun.

Natural dyeing is covered in a single chapter, starting with a double-page spread showing some of the surprising colours that you can obtain using natural dyes. The following dozen pages give recipes for dyeing with 'found ' and 'bought' substances with some basic instructions for dyeing and mordanting. Unfortunately, other than a few at the start of the chapter, there don't seem to be images of the colours obtainable for each of the many recipes; only the berries, flowers and leaves themselves.

The combination of hand spinning and natural dyeing is a good and unusual one. The book comes from the The Good Life Press, who are also responsible for Home Farmer magazine, so it is obviously aimed at those of us keen on doing things from scratch the natural way.

I'm very happy to recommend the book and I hope to have copies available at handspinner > books very shortly. It will retail at £12.99 and make a nice and slightly cheaper alternative to the Ashford book of Hand Spinning, Spin to Knit and Start Spinning , especially if you're interested in natural dyeing as well as learning to spin.

paperback, 6" x 8", 127 pages

Review by Shiela Dixon, 5 Nov 2011

Tardis socks finished! Just in time

... for the autumn weather:

Really pleased with these.

• It's my first go at colourwork (Intarsia in the round = lots of ends to weave in) that's worked out very well, the second one is neater than the first!
• The detail is embrodered on, not something I'm familiar with or very keen to do more of
• The chart only gives you the leg - after that you're using your favourite sock pattern. I love the squares and chose to carry them on over the top of the foot and that looks good
• The leg chart isn't symmetrical, so I read it right-left for one sock and left-right for the other to make them a pair
• One ball of Zitron Trekking XXL 4-ply Sock yarn (shade 451) was perfect in colour and more than enough. The white was some almost-white wool/nylon sock yarn from my local shop, but they don't use much white so anything from stash will do
• Many many thanks to Tara Wheeler for the pattern which is free and is here - and the Ravelry page for the pattern is here

A change of mind (I can feel a frogging coming on)

In the last post I'd decided to make some hiking socks from some black zwartbles yarn that I was very proud of. I kept looking at the skein and swatch and wasn't sure that it was saying socks to me. So I tried knitting a sample bit of cable from the Opulent Raglan and loved the result!

The cable is very well defined with the black yarn. The grey really is a woollen yarn which is ok for the big cable but the little ones look very, well, woolly. The WIP above came to a bit of a halt after a few mistakes and some uncertainty about the yarn. Been thinking about pulling it out. I think the black is going to work far better.

So here's progress so far. Not much but it's looking and feeling good. Pattern is Opulent Raglan

combing for the first time

This week has seen me using wool combs for the first time and some of the nicest and most consistent yarn I've made so far.

The gauge is not only spot on, but I've been experimenting with colours. The black is the zwartbles fleece that I've been selling. I thought the yarn would be great for the trekking sock pattern in the background, but I've found that wool on its own wears quickly, so the middle grey section is with the addition of some mohair (I heard someone refer to this as 'nature's nylon' this week) and the top section is some brown shetland, again combed and mixed at the same time with some mohair. The decision is to make the socks using mostly the black zwart with the brown shetland mix as contrast colour / heel & toe.

So let's do this story backwards. I'm very proud of the yarn. Combing takes out shorter or tangled fibres leaving you with the best fibres arranged nice and parallel. (Known as worsted preparation.) Fabulous to spin. In my case there's a little grease left in the wool which also helps.

Short draw keeps the fibres straight and even. In this case quite a long short-draw worked well because the fibres are nice and long. With the combed wool drafting like a dream I switched to the faster ratio and have been working very quickly.

This pair of mini-combs has been knocking about here for a long time but drum carding makes such short work of fleece that I've not tried them before now. With lots of fleece around, curiosity got the better of me. Even with these small combs, I found that you can work with quite a few locks at a time.

You work with the empty comb at right angles to the static one and a sweeping motion. This transfers the long fibres onto the second comb leaving the rubbish on the first one which you remove. I've been repeating 4 - 6 times.

It pulls off the comb into a sliver which is ready to spin.

I love combing and am now in the market for a grown-up sized secondhand pair - if you can help, contact me!

The Frame-breakers

I read this blog post from Amy of Spin-Off magazine which made me think about the Luddites and their motivation. Wool and cotton mills and spinning and weaving machinery were broken and burned.

The recent distubances in London have similarities to the actions of the 19th century textile workers, but also some important contrasts.

'Luddite' is a term used about someone who has a fear of new technology. I think that's a bit unfair; the Luddites weren't simply afraid of technology and progress.

Unlike the young people in our cities recently, Ned Ludd and his followers were clear about their purpose. They valued their skills and employment and were fighting for their jobs and way of life. They believed in a skill-based economy and were resisting a move to automation and unskilled jobs.

Some were executed or transported for their actions.

Although it's not proved possible to halt automation and technology, we can't shake off connections with the past. It's clear that we still feel the need to develop and use manual skills to create beautiful and useful things.