Surprise!

Tags

3-ply, baby, bfl, biffle-silk, corgi-hill-farm, pastels, spinning, watercolor, watercolour

I’m back! Yeah, we’re still trying to get to our last few posts on Lie Back And Think Of Iceland, but in the meantime I’m on holidays and I’m BUSY!

I’ve set myself a resolution to spin down the obscene number of spinning WIPs I have lying around the place. Until further notice, I’m not allowed to start any new spinning projects until I finish two old ones. I’m not doing too badly, either, although I have had to give myself two dispensations.

The first is a Halloween spin-along by the ever-lovely BohoKnitterChic (here’s her charming blog, also), but this post isn’t about that. It’s about the second dispensation.

That one is because I promised a friend I’d spin and knit a little cardigan for her baby, who’s due around now (look, I’m not a baby person, ok? I’m not keeping track like most people would be). Since the little tyke might still get some wear out of a cardi before the weather gets really hot as our summer bears down upon us, I wanted to get this project underway and finished as soon as possible.

I ordered a braid of BFL/silk from Corgi Hill Farm (have you guessed by now? I’m something of a CHF fangirl…) in the oh-so-sweet colourway “Watercolor”. Here’s her photo, from the listing:

I broke the braid into three sections, and then spun a fractal 3-ply. The singles were spun on my Ashford Traddy, mostly because the bobbins are so much better to ply from than the mahoosive heavy Majacraft Aura ones, but also because I like the higher ratio for vanilla spinning like this.

I plied on my Aura, because I love being able to crank the take up waaaaaay down so I end up with as lofty a yarn as possible. Frog took some cool photos of the bobbin while I was plying.

The last bobbin, annoyingly, had a lot more metreage knit than the first two, but I still got a 133g skein out of it. It seems to be in the 4-ply/fingering weight range, edging toward 3-ply/light fingering weight. I’m hoping it gives me a really pretty Baby Surprise Jacket.

Short But Substantial

Tags

art-yarn, corgi-hill-farm, couls, merino, novelty yarn, plying, spinning, supercoils, Yak

I just today finished spinning an exciting yarn that I really wanted to show you! It’s a supercoil yarn, where you coil a handspun single around a commercial or handspun plied yarn. It comes out looking nothing like a normal yarn, and they are so fun and wonderful!

I used this beautiful braid of merino/yak fibre, dyed by the ever-charming AnnaMarie at Corgi Hill Farm in the colourway “Shazam”.

I split the braid down the middle, as it was a pretty big one, and then spun the single onto two bobbins on my Ashford Traditional. My wheel choice was driven by the need for easy bobbin wrangling during plying; I’d have loved to spin on my Majacraft Aura but the bobbins are so heavy that plying from them is nothing short of purgatorial.

I also had spun two singles of plain old Ashland Bay merino top, in some plum-ish sort of colour. (Don’t ask me details, come on…). As I intend to keep these for corespinning and coiling, I plied them together onto one bobbin, but instead of plying in the correct, plying direction, I did so in the spinning direction, so the 2-ply already has some opposite twist in it to counteract the over twisting that is almost inevitable in corespinning, and entirely inevitable in supercoils. The result looks like chewed string:

After wrangling with the coil yarn for all of about thirty centimetres, I realised that even with the opposite twist, I was going to end up with a cruelly overtwisted yarn. To prevent this, I wound the chewed string off the bobbin (I didn’t need to detach it from the wheel) onto a toilet roll, and then wound it off the toilet roll onto a drop spindle.

That way, I could release small lengths of the core yarn at a time, and crank the counter twist into it as much as needed as I went along with the coil yarn. I didn’t worry about dangling the spindle – it was too heavy to be comfortable. I just kept about two feet of yarn as the “leader” between spindle and orifice, and rested the spindle on the floor between my feet. Supercoil yarn goes slowly enough that it didn’t slow me down too much more.

And here it is, not quite 14m of yarn, weighing in at 90g. It’s a hefty sucker, with a hand like a heavy rubber gasket or something.

But I love it to bits…and here’s the best bit (for you)…it’s for sale! There will be another one, and when I know the total amount of yarn I will price it, but it will be in the order of $AU50 per skein.

Camouflage yarn

Tags

3-ply, corgi-hill-farm, tdf11, tourdefleece

And here it is! This took well over an hour to ply, and I wasn’t slouching – my feet were treadling at warp speed! It almost filled the Aura bobbin, but not quite. Washed and whacked, its stats are:

294g/10.4oz
490m/536yd
10wpi – DK or 8-ply weight.
1 ply each – merino/possum 70/30; superwash merino/tencel 50/50; blue-faced leicester

I’ve called it “Reconnoiter” because it looks like army camo gear, and I love the word “reconnoiter”. I’ve got a list of cool words I’m going to name yarns after – and open to suggestions!

Day 8 – and boy is this hard going

Tags

3-ply, bfl, corgi-hill-farm, forest fur, possum, tourdefleece

I’m so sick of this yarn. (I always say that, don’t I?) Three bobbins that just seem to have taken forever – the BFL didn’t, thankfully; I managed to spin that in about three hours of solid spinning, and it was fun and satisfying and wonderful! But the superwash merino/tencel (on right) and the merino/possum (left) were interminable. Now to ply, and finally get something to show for my efforts!

And then I’ve got the same thing to do all over again. Oih.

#TdeFleece

Tags

#TdeFleece, batts, bohoknitterchic, corgi-hill-farm, crown-mountain-farm, overcommitted, top, tourdefleece, wensleydale, wildberry-moon

The Tour de Fleece starts on Saturday! Well, I’m not sure exactly what time the cyclists start but the date being bounced around is 2 July, so I’m going with that. In case anyone’s curious, it’s a rather strange phenomenon where worldwide, handspinners pledge and make the effort to spin every day during the Tour de France, working on the motto, “They Spin, We Spin”. There are “teams”, which are based on lots of different factors like what kind of yarn you’re spinning, how much you expect to get done, and where your fibre came from.

So, since I have a level of crazy that astonishes even me, I’ve joined not one or two, but FOUR teams. I shall therefore be spinning fibre from four different vendors (with a few ring-ins because I can’t help myself). For details, see their sites (alphabetically listed!!): BohoknitterchicSpins, Corgi Hill Farm, Crown Mountain Farm and Wildberry Moon. I’m a huge fan of the fibre from all four vendors, and all four are amazingly lovely people, hence I’m now waaaaaay overcommitted!

I’ve been sort of planning which braids and projects I’m going to save up for the TdF for a month or two now. I got the special 4oz batts from Annie at Wildberry Moon – yellow, of course, to match the leader’s jersey. While I was there I “accidentally” (no, really) bought a 4oz-ish bright red batt from her as well, so both those are going to be the representatives from WBM.

Brittany at Bohoknitterchic did a spinalong a while back with a Harry Potter theme, and I’ve only spun half of that fibre, leaving one approx. 3oz batt set that I want to make a boucle yarn with, using variegated purple and rainbow holoshimmer threads along with the spun loop ply.

I started spinning a HUGE batch of Wensleydale top from Klaus at Crown Mountain ages ago, with the intention of making a large floor rug – I’ve got 56oz of that waiting for me (yes, really) so I want to get through all that during the TdF (yes, really).

And last but not least, some of my vast and ridiculous collection of AnnaMarie’s (Corgi Hill) incredibly beautiful work. There are eight braids of hers, in the 4-5oz range, and some of them are to be plied with a couple from a mystery dyer (perhaps Funky Carolina? not sure). Total? 108oz, or about 3kg of fibre.

Wanna see?

3kg of fibre to be spun for TdF

I’ll be tweeting about it as a sort of sanity check during the grand scheme, so look in and see how things are going! The general agreement seems to be that #TdeFleece is the hashtag, and I’m @thorhammer24. See you there!