I'm always on the look out for patterns which work well in handspun, partly for stall samples, but also because I happen to spin rather a lot of yarn.... I tend to like patterns with flexible yardage, or ones that allow you to combine smaller amounts of differnt colours, I also love how 2-ply handspun looks when knitted up in garter stitch. This particular pattern was released during Wovember last year. It's a baby version of a very nice looking adult jacket called Blayter. The original was in beautiful natural shades, and when I saw it I have a feeling it would work well using smaller bits of handpsun, at the time I was thinking of the Birds and Queens sample packs. But then of course I came up with the Rainbow Sprinkles, and they work perfectly for this! My Mum, ever the practical one, looked at it and despaired of the white sleeves... but you could swap them for black. I made the smallest size, but on a larger needle as my yarn was slightly thicker than commercial fingering weight. I made a few other modifications to the stitch count as well (full details on my project page). It's a really clever pattern with very little traditional seaming, you mostly join the pieces using kitchener stitch, or pick up live stitches. I suspect you could make the next size up using the fibre in the pack, but probably not any of the larger sizes.
Right now I'm still on a bit of a Rainbow kick, I'm spinning up some BFL that was a prototype for the Sludgy Rainbow colourway that I dyed for the Hilltop Cloud team to spin during the Ravellenic games. It's all a bit more subtle though, as the colours blend as you draft. I've got 3 different base shades of BFL to work with so fingers crossed I'll be turning it in to this pattern. What's your favourite pattern(s) for handspun? Some of the most lovely posts written in the Hilltop Cloud Ravelry group are by the people just starting down the slippery path of spinning. Usually they're rather uncertain of their finished skeins, and a bit worried that they're not very good. Of course their skeins are often far better than they think, and usually it's just a case of practise makes perfect. As I say on the insructions I include in the Learn to Spin kits... the sheep keep growing more wool. Now no one could accuse me of not practising; in fact the amount of yarn I spin in an average month is usually pretty high, given I only spin in the evenings after I finished working, and I also knit and weave in that time as well. However, sometimes, it just all goes a bit wrong, in fact it went wrong 2 skeins in a row.... oh dear! This one is a skein of Cable Plyed yarn. You create a regular 2ply yarn with twice the amount of plying twist, then ply it back on itself. The fibre was some lovely BFL/Silk from Freyalynn, I bought it from her at Fibre East last year, but didn't really have any plans for it, so reached for it when I knew I wanted to try out something new. In part I hoped to jumble up the colours a little as it was all a bit stripey for my personal taste. Well in places it all went swimingly. Those lovely little bumps are exactly what you're meant to end up with, you get a very round yarn, but it doesn't have much stretch and give due to the way the fibres interlock. In other places though... oh dear, it's kinky and over twisted and just a mess. I think from dissecting it that in some places I rushed the extra plying this yarn needs at the 2-ply stage. The temptation is to only ply a bit more than you would do normally, so when you ply it again in the opposite direction there's far too much twist, as you're plying in the same direction you spun the original singles. However, all is not lost, this skein has gone in to the big bowl of odd skeins, and I'll probably weave with it at some point, and most importantly I know where I went wrong! Then following close on the heels of that overtwisted mess, I then proceeded to do the exact same thing with the next yarn I spun. In my defence going from spinning uper fine high twist singles for the longest thread, and jumping staright to Aran weight lofty singles was probably a bit much for 8pm on a work night... However in this case I knew how to fix it. I've read in a few places about fulling yarn like this really aggresively, and then you run the yarn back though the wheel in the opposite direct and take out nearly all the twist. Definitely not my original idea, but I can't for the life of me remember who I should credit with it. End result, a lovely yarn. that should actually wear pretty well despite being a single due to the rough treatment it's already had locking down the individual hairs.
For the past week I have been "not working" of course not working when you run your own business from home is actually rather tricky. There have been emails to reply to, parcels to pack, and a fibre club shipment to send out. What I haven't been doing is making any new stock, instead I've been making for me. In reality I might have overdone it slightly... turns out that having all day to spin and knit is not actually a good thing. My elbow is crunching, and my shoulder feels a tad odd so having a rest today is very much a good thing! However, when I look back at the week I appear to have got rather a lot done! My Little Black dress, made from handspun Gotland/Black Welsh Mountain and hand dyed silk now has a front, and looks like it will actually fit! A grand plan for a woven skirt made from some gradient batts I bought from someone else now has a warp. I know this looks like a really odd collection of colours, but there's all sorts hiddden underneath and it will all go together, honest! There's been a Camden Cap knitted in one of the wool free blends (Camel, Seacell, Faux Cashmere), because it has lots of bounce and is perfect for hats. Of course I guessed at the size, and it turns out it's too small for the manekin heads, so will need reknitting, but it's a lovely pattern and quick to knit so I don't really mind. The wool free blends were dyed before the holidays, I plan on photographing and listing them on Thursday. And there's also this... I know, it loooks like a very odd bobbin, but it's my entry in to the 2015 longest thread competition. Last year over Christmas I decided to conquer spinning silk, so wanted another challenge for this year. I am being ultra-ahead of the game, but this is not the sort of spinning I want to do under time pressure, and this way if it all goes horribly wronng I have plenty of time to have another go! How skinny is it... Certainly not likely to break any records (1000m+ from 10g of fibre), but for a first attempt on a non-ideal wheel it's not bad. If anyone else feels up for the challenge the Ravlery group full of helpful advice is here, and the actual competition details are here. So far I'm halfway through the spinning, there's around 6-7g on that bobbin, just the same amount of singles to go, then some very nerve wracking playing!
Eventually I will have something else to talk about, but for now bear with me, things are busy round here and there's little else going on but sleeping, carding and eating. Luckily I have friends who are kindly doing things that I can blog about! This is one of the new luxury wool free blends, a mix of 65% Silk, 35% Kid Mohair. Spun up it turns in to a very grown up subtle kind of colourway, greeny gold, with hints of turning leaf. And here's the clever bit... You can turn it in to your own version of a Brushed Mohair yarn. It's not quite as fluffy as most of the commercial yarns, as they have a far hgher mohair content, but it has a lovely delicate feel, and just enough fuzz, but not so much that you'll lose all the stitch definition. You can however leave it as a smooth sleak shiny yarn, and knit something with drape that's more silk like, but with slightly more body than pure silk. The pattern is Darling, Darling, Stay with me, and is great for handspun, a few customers have now knitted it and every version looks lovely.
The new blends should be heading in to the shop just after the New Year. First off a disclaimer... I like to make my Christmas present, I am well aware that makes me slightly crazy, and if you choose not to make your presents that does not mean I think any less of you as a person, in fact if anything I admire your sanity and strength of character. That being said, the present making has started. I hate knitting scarves, it takes forever, is boring, and leaves me wanting to poke my own eyes out with the needles. Why they're a beginner project I'll never know... Weaving them however, now that's fun. In 2 evenings (probably around 3 hours each night), I can warp, and weave a full size scarf using fingering weight yarn. Perfect Christmas crafting. If you don't have a loom I can thoroughly recomend that a simple rigid heddle should be top of your Christmas list. It's great for using up odds and ends in one project in a way that doesn't look like you're using oddments. The next scarf that's on the loom currently has a warp using the leftover stripy yarn from this cardigan, and this hat, add in some of the mountains of mystery soft white wool I spun during last years Tour de Fleece and this years and it's another scarf. Just to spice it up a bit there will be other presents going on. At Stitch Solihull at the end of October I sat down with a spool of wire, purchased from the handy garden centre where the shop is located, and made some corespun wire yarn. Just so you know, this stuff is addictive, and leaves you feeling immensely proud of yourself. It's soft and fluffy, and you can bend it in to shapes... like pipe cleaners for grown ups! However, I don't do yarns that look pretty for the sake of looking pretty, so I fiddled about with it trying to decide how I could use it to make something. I tried knitting, but it was fiddly, and wasn't flowing, but when you pick up a crochet hook.... No pattern, just chain a few stitches then single crochet in a spiral adding increases when seemed like a good idea. And what's even better, you can change it's shape, don't want a flat bowl, and instead want something more vase like, just give the wore a squish and a pull and Bob's your uncle. I'd still got half a skein left, so went and did a bit of a until around Ravelry to see what anyone else had done with this sort of yarn and came across a woven bracelet. After a quick hunt for a tutorial I came up with this. It's light as a feather, and warm feeling in a way that metal never is.
And because spinning this stuff is addictive, there are a few skeins (though that's the wrong word as you can't skein this stuff) in the shop. I've also pinned a few different bracelet tutorials on to one of my Pinterest boards. Next up I'm going to try doing the same technique with silk... if it works it will be beautiful. Firstly, I'll just say I love my customers, partly because they do things like this.... Southdown is meant to be a great wool to use for socks, all the down breeds resist felting, so in theory that also means you can machine wash your socks. Handy, if like me you do minimal laundry and tend to want to put everything in together. You can buy machine washable wool, it's superwash treated, either by being chemically stripped of the scales that stick together during felting, or by being resin coated. Both require the use of chemicals, and the resin treatment in particular doesn't seem to last forever. I have, eventually, felted socks that were meant to be superwash wool. That's not to say I'm anti superwash, I'm not particularly anti-chemicals in modern life, I particularly love the intense shades I can dye on superwash, the stuff sucks up dye like nothing else. However, a natural alternative that's also machine washable is a pretty cool tool to have at our disposal. Now like I said, Southdown is machine washable in theory, but I'd never personally put it to the test. Projects to do outweigh available time unfortunately. Now I won't need to, as sockrat has done it for me. She knitted 2 swatches in some of my hand dyed Southdown. The colourway was autumn hedges from last year's BoB club. Look closely and you'll notice that one has a little strand of red yarn knitted in to it, this was so she could tell the difference between the two swatches. Both swatches originally measured 5 inches wide by 3.75 inches tall. The one with the red yarn was treated delicately, just a cold machine wash. The other one got some abuse, same cold machine wash, but then put straight in a hot dryer. They had 4 washes/drys, and both swatches did change shape slightly. Here's the delicate treated one (cold machine wash only) It's filled out slightly, developed a bit of a halo, but barely altered. It ended up measuring 5 inches wide, and 3.6 inches tall. Here's the one that was put in a hot dryer while still wet. It's definitely fuzzier, but it's not exactly a square of felt, it definitely still has identifiable stitches. Finished measurements were 4.5 inches high, and 3.5 inches wide, so slightly more shrinkage than the other swatch, but not by a great deal.
I have to say, we don't really tumble dry anything, it either goes on the washing line outside, or is hung on the airer above the woodburner overnight. Sometimes it takes a combination of the 2, but our tumble dryer hasn't been switched on in a very long time. Having seen this I feel perfectly safe putting my Southdown socks in with all the rest of my washing on a low temperature setting. It seems to work just as well as superwash treated wool. If you do choose to use a tumble dryer I'd be inclined to avoid drying your Southdown socks in it, but if you do accidentally put a pair in with the rest of the washing it's not going to be the end of the world. Of course, from a dyers perspective hand washing does make the colours last longer, they stay brighter for longer, but if you know you won't handwash your socks then Southdown is a really useful fibre to have in your spinning tool box. As for how to spin it, Sarah Anderson did another experiment in her Spinners Book of Yarn Design. She spun up several different types of yarns and made them in to pairs of socks, and carried out wear tests. The book itself is well worth buying, Christmas is coming, why not put it on your list... Traditionally the gold standard for socks is a 3-ply yarn. She compared chain or navajo plying to a regular 3-ply and debunked the myth that navajo plying makes a weaker yarn. So go ahead and navajo ply if you want. She also experimented with opposing plys, which were better still than 3-ply, and cabled yarns which were also better, for that technique you need to be able to produce fine enough singles to make the right thickness of yarn with 4-plys though... I've been on a bit of a knitting deadline the past few days. For the past year a skein of handspun silk laceweight has been along to all the shows, and I've finally turned it in to a shawl. Aa you can probably tell it's extremely lightweight and floaty, of course, being silk it's also lovely and warm. I was a bit worried about the cast on as it seemed quite tight, but as I blocked it everything evened up, and it's made a beatiful crescent shape that will be really nice to wear. The yarn was spun from one of my hand dyed silk bricks, it looked something like this in fibre form. I spun it up over Christmas last year, I won't lie, it did take a while, but was surprisingly easy to get nice and fine. The finished yarn didn't have much twist, in part that was intentional, as I didn't want thread, I wanted to keep the softness, it does lack a bit of plying twist though in places, however in the finished project you really can't tell. The long staple of the silk means you can get away with the lower twist and still end up with a yarn that's quite strong. I spun 890m from the 97g brick, and the finised shawl took a little over half of that, so not bad entertainment from £15 worth of silk! The shawl itself is really hard to photograph, it's shiny so you get the light reflecting off it, and it's also quite see through, but this shot gives you an idea of the edging. I fosee much more handspun silk shawls in my future because I'm thoroughly smitten with this one. If you want a closer look it will be on my stand at Yarndale this weekend, or indeed any of the other shows I'll be attending.
The pattern is called Longfellow by Carinea Ferguson, you can see more pictures of my version of it on my Ravelry project page. Everynow and again I set myself a project that saner people would realise is a little bit crazy, maybe a touch ambitous, and guaranteed to give me sleepless nights... This is one of thse projects. I'm well aware that's just a little black swatch of handspun, it's however the start of a much, much larger project. I have lusted after this dress at every fibre show I've been to this year. I could never afford to do it in commercial yarn, however I have the ability to spin my own, and after all, if I'm going to knit a dress it might as well be in yarn I love. I took some fleece from my friend Katharine's flock. It's a Black Welsh Mountain/Gotland cross, I love this wool, long, shiny with a nice crimp. Add in some of my hand dyed silk and you've got the makings of a very special yarn. To start off with I just did a little sample on hand cards and with the drop spindle. Just to test the colours and check the prickle factor. I have no intention of ever wearing a knitted dress next to my bare skin, if it's cold enough for that much wool then I'll want tights and long sleeves on as well. I was ok with it not being butter soft, after all this is going to be a lot of work, I want something that isn't going to pill and start to wear out with in hours of wearing it for the first time. It's not exactly the same as the finished blend, or yarn, but did the job. Next up came the scales, and properly measured out batts. They're going to be 20% silk (10% of each colour, a lilac and a grey), 80% wool. Then I spun a sample, the yarn in the pattern says Sport weight, but I'd handled the recomended yarn and knew that it was more like a DK so aimed for slightly thicker. Rather handily 2 ply DK weight is my default yarn...
I kept back some singles from that sample spinning, that way I can check my spinning against them and hopefully stay consistent. The rest I plyed, and knitted up in to a swatch, just to check I was going down the right thickness path. Once washed I could do some measurements, and the guage is about right. Not perfect, but I can fiddle around with needle sizes, and as I'm between sizes in the pattern I can do some maths to make sure it's right once I've got my skeins of finished yarn. There's rather a lot of spinning to do between then and now though... Meanwhile I have a pile of scrummy batts to spin up, I love how the bounce of the wool ripples the silk. After Woolfest, I decided I was to treat myself. For ages I'd been looking at the new Bliss wheels, made by Louet forWoolmakers. The clean lines are just what I like in a wheel, I'm not a fan of wheels trying to look old when they're brand new. It was also single treadle, with nice big bobbins, and a very sensible price. It arrived a couple of days before Fibre East, and was taken with me to spin on over the weekend. I've had a bit of a play on it since then and these are the first finished skeins. They're Shetland, dyed by the lovely Amanda from MandaCrafts. Even though I have more fibre than I can shake a stick at, I do enjoy spinning things from other dyers. They stock different fibre to me, and have different colour palettes. It's a bit like cooking, sometimes it's just nice to eat something you've not cooked for yourself!
This is my default DK weight, nothing fancy, nothing technically challenging, just a chance to see how the Bliss spins, and to run it in. I also wanted to see how much I could fit on a bobbin, the big skein is a whopping 145g, so the bobbins will hold a huge amount. The wheel itself spins beautifully, there's lots to like about it, and very little that I'm not so fond of. One of the big plus points in the price, until September 1st they're available for just over £200 including delivery. You do have to assemble the wheel yourself, it comes in a tiny box, but they provide the screwdriver and it wasn't hard. I love that the hooks are properly offset, you can fill a bobbin really evenly as the hooks on opposite sides of the flyer don't line up perfectly. a great many more expensive brands (cough Schacht!) don't bother to do that with their flyer. (ETA it might be that the newer Schacht flyers do now come with offset hooks, mine is 25 years old and doesn't) It's got sealed bearings so the only thing that needs oiling is the treadle, and the bobbin shaft. As I've already said the bobbins themselves are huge, they dwarf the standard Ashford ones. The bobbin storage itself is really good, I refuse to call it an in-built Kate as it's not convenient to ply from, though it's possible to use it that way. The bobbins also have a little slot you can use to poke your leader through so you don't need to knot the leader on. It's a nice little touch and shows someone has thought about the little details. The ratio's are excellent, the slowest at 1:6.5 rivals the slow ratio on my art yarn wheel, and the orifice is nice and large so it would work well for spinning thicker or more textured yarns. The fastest ratio is 1:18.5, which is faster than the standard ratios on my Matchless, it rivals what I achieve with the super high speed whorl, and it feels fantastically fast. They also supply an orifice reducer for spinning finer yarns and reducing the vibration as the yarn passes through the orifice. There are another 2 ratios in between those so you're covered to spin anything from bulky to laceweight without having to treadle like a mad woman, or battle to draft fast enough. My only minor dislike is the Scotch tension, it was changed from the test wheels that were sent out, and I still don't think it's quite right. You can't do fine adjustments to the tension very easily, and if you're not careful you risk catching the end of the flyer on the non-spring side of the tension band. In a wheel with so many clever and thoughtful touches it just doesn't quite sit right, and I can't help but wish for a slightly more elegant system. The Bliss definitely attracted a lot of attention while I was out and about at both Fibre East, and the guild summer school. Quite a few people spun on her and everyone was impressed with the smooth spinning, some weren't keen on the looks, but everyone was very impressed with the value for money. At £200 you get a lot of wheel, and quite a few experienced spinners who teach were considering getting one as a teaching wheel. Woolmakers are doing that very continental thing of having a month off for a summer holiday right now, so you can't place orders until they get back on August 19th. I think the Bliss might get a lot of use over the next few months, not least because I'm going to have my Matchless set up to have a go at the Longest Thread for 2015. The past 3 weeks have been something of a spinning marathon. Along with many others I've been doing the Tour de Fleece, a simple idea of spinning alongside the Tour de France. For every day the cyclists ride, you spin something. We've had our own HilltopCloud team running, and some of the yarns that people have produced are amazing, go and take a look if you have a spare half hour. I've mostly been working my way through Fibre Club spares, and samples of other odd things that I've been wanting to try out. Here's what I spun, in total 2563m, 9753g, so not a bad effort. I am now spinning something dyed by someone else as I'm ready for a change from my own colour palette. Despite owning my own fibre business I still buy lots from other dyers as they have a very difference sense of colour to me, and a different range of fibres, and variety is the spice of life!
Most of these are going to be for sale on the stall at Fibre East this weekend, I reached out all the skeins for a beauty shot this afternoon and couldn't believe how many there were. Most are spun by me with a few by my friend Katharine that I'm selling on her behalf. |
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Beautiful fibre you'll love to work with. Established 2011 VAT Reg- 209 4066 19 Dugoed Bach, Mallwyd, Machynlleth,
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