A long time ago, in a blog entry far, far away...

...I started blending these batts. One of the Spunky Eclectic club fibers from early this year was Icelandic. It was from a gray sheep and it was dyed dark blue and teal green. I love those colors, but the fiber was NOT soft (after squeezing Icelandic at MDS&W this year, I'm pretty sure what I have is all tog - the outer coat). I felt like it would make a nice outerwear sweater that would stand up to all kinds of things, but 8 ounces wasn't enough to do much with. So I went stash diving and found an undyed creamy white Cotswold lambswool and alpaca (both would add drape and softness to the blend as well as lighten the color a bit) and some leftover finewool batts from Spinner's Hill in both blue and teal green (these add a bit of bounce and softness). I carded each of the fibers individually first before blending them together. What you see above is half of the final blending. (I still have do the second half.) I only ran the blended fibers through the carder twice because I want the spun yarn to have some personality and not be thoroughly blended. I'm hoping to get the second half finished up this weekend before I forget how I did the first half, but I'm not sure when I'll start spinning it up. I feel like I haven't spun in ages and I want to get back to it soon.

Carding, Again

I started blending the different types of wools from Monday's post and look at what I'm getting! The colors remind me of water.

This is two passes through the drum carder and while it's not perfectly and completely blended (there are parts that are slightly darker, lighter, bluer, whiter - one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish - sorry, I got distracted there), I really like the way the batts are looking and I think the slight variation in colors will make for a more interesting spun yarn. Remember how I was thinking these wools would be pretty drapey? When I take the batts off the drum carder, they just flop over my hand, draping perfectly, but they also have a good "puff" to them - that's the finewools doing their thing in the blend. I think the spun yarn will have some nice loft as well as nice drape and while I won't officially decide what pattern to use for this finished yarn until the yarn is finished and I know exact yardage and weight, I've pulled out my Knit Kimonos book and I've been thinking about using one of those designs with this yarn. If the finished yarn has the kind of drape that the batts are showing, it should be beautiful for a kimono shaped jacket.

Oh, and if anyone is curious, my drum carder is a Strauch Petite with the brush attachment. It's reasonably priced and easy to use, works with a wide variety of fibers and makes a nice batt size. I got it about a year ago and I'm very happy with it. Don't just think that you can only card washed, unprocessed fleece on a carder - this project is all about blending already processed and dyed rovings. Having a carder gives you the option of making up your own color blends and fiber blends to really make the EXACT yarn you want in the EXACT quantities you need. Also, seven year old boys think they're fun and will turn the crank for you.

Carding

Remember this project? Well, over the weekend I got all of the different wools carded in preparation for blending*. This is what they look like now. On the left is the Icelandic from the Spunky Eclectic Fiber Club - January fiber. In the center is the Cotswold Lambswool and Alpaca, and on the right is the green and blue finewool from Spinner's Hill. I blended the two colors of the Spinner's Hill batts a bit to make it easier to blend all three fibers together. Now I'm ready to start blending all of the different wools together into batts. I don't know for sure how many passes each batt will take through the carder, but I want a fairly well blended batt to spin from. This should be a drapy yarn with the Icelandic, Cotswold and Alpaca - the fine wools will add a little bit of bounce and some softness, without interfering with the overall drape of the finished yarn. Of course all this is theoretical. If I was smart I would sample before I did all this, but I don't want to sample - I just want to get it all blended!

*All of the fiber had been previously processed - the Icelandic and the Cotswold/Alpaca blend were both in roving forms and the finewool mix was in batts, but by running it all through the drum carder once (except the finewools, which went through twice to blend colors), I fluffed up the fibers a bit and got smaller sections to work with as I blend.

Finn Blogs

Due to some freakishly warm weather the last couple of days, I was able to sort through some raw fleece* yesterday (definitely an outside job) and start washing it. It's been a while since Finn blogged, so I let him do the honors today. The following post is dictated by Finn.

Mommy did the most wonderful thing yesterday! She went up to the magic room, where I'm not really allowed (but since they took down the gates, I sneak up there sometimes when no one's looking) and she brought down a box. I have never in all my days seen or smelled such a wonderful box. If I could have rolled in the box, I would have but Mommy was watching the box too closely.

She took the box outside and very rudely left me in the house, but I could look out the window and did you know if you smoosh your nose up to the edges of sliding glass doors, you can get the scent molecules? Just a tip in case you ever get left inside while someone is doing what Mommy was doing. She opened the box and pulled out the second most glorious thing ever (the first being meatballs - I mean it's meat in a ball, what genius came up with that one?) - raw fleece! Have you ever smelled raw fleece? It's fabulous! Sheep must be the most amazing animals ever! I'm trying to get Mommy to get one but she mutters about the HOA and won't let me have one. I mean I would let it share my crate with me and we could take it on walks and does anyone know if sheep bite or have big claws? Because the cat does and I mean seriously, just 'cause someone knocks you over repeatedly with their ginormous puppy feet is no reason to jump on them and try to eat their eyeballs, so maybe we could trade in the cat for a sheep! I bet sheep don't meow at night either. Do sheep even talk? Man, I wish I lived on a farm! Then I could have sheep and I bet they wouldn't mind if I licked them and snarfled them a bit and maybe they would let me roll on them when they napped. I would share my tennis balls even! Yummy, yummy sheep!

After Mommy went through all the fleece (I don't know why, but really, do you have to have a reason to handle something that smells that good?) and shook it out , then she put some of it into these bags and the rest into a basket - the kind where the clean laundry goes (not a bad option to roll in if you have no raw fleece around) and then THE FLEECE CAME BACK INSIDE! Oh Joy, Oh Rapture, Oh Waggy Wag Wag!

The fleece in the special bags went into the big white box that the dirty clothes go into (also not bad to roll in - come to think of it, pretty much anything is good to roll in) and while she was messing with that...

I PULLED SOME OF THE FLEECE IN THE BASKET OUT AND ATE IT! YUM! Of course then she came out of the laundry room and fussed at me, so I swallowed really quick before she could stick her fingers in my mouth (man, she must like to do that, 'cause she sure does it a lot). I hope she puts that basket back where I can reach it because I bet I could get more fleece out.

I'm worn out now after all that excitement so I'm going to go fall asleep with my legs in the air. I think I'm going to ask for a sheep for my birthday! Does anyone know when my birthday is? I can't reach the calendar.

*The fleece that I was messing with was 3# of Polypay that I got last March (surprisingly, it hasn't hardened up or gotten yucky) from Homestead Wool and Gift Farm. While it wasn't a coated fleece and has some dirt in it, I didn't find any dung tags, there is minimal VM and only a few short cuts/second cuts in the whole batch. I don't really know what I'll do with it yet, but it needed to be washed before the lanolin did harden up and make cleaning it harder to do.

Spinning

Remember way back in May when I dyed some Merino Top (at top) and some Romney (at bottom) a rich ultramarine blue? Then I carded them into batts and blended them with some Angelina (the Opal colorway) on my brand new drumcarder?*
Over the summer I slowly spun the batts into singles.
And this weekend I plied the singles together, ending up with 590 yards of fingering weight 3 ply yarn. It's a firm but bouncy yarn and I think it will knit up into some really nice socks. I think I could have used some more Angelina as the sparkle is less than subtle, but I'd rather it be too little than have yarn that resembles a disco ball - maybe that's just me. As the first yarn that I took from raw fleece (the Romney part), cleaned, dyed and carded it myself, then spun and plied it, I'm pretty proud. I might just spend the next week or so walking around with this on my shoulder like a wool parrot.

*I have a Strauch Petite with the Brush Attachment in case anyone was wondering.

More Blue Singles

I got some spinning done yesterday and I am more than halfway done with my second bobbin of blue singles. When I showed the first bobbin, there were some questions about the fiber and the color so I'll give you all the details here.

This is spun from batts that I blended of Romney and Merino (50/50) and then I added some Opal Angelina (sparkly stuff for you non spinners). The fiber was dyed before blending with Landscapes Dyes. My Mom and I were working on these together (she has 6+ ounces of this fiber too, only her's doesn't have Angelina in it) and we wanted a blue that hinted at being blue violet. We started with Marine, the pure blue color that Landscapes makes. It's a nice clear royal if you use it full strength. Then we added just a tiny bit of Grevillia, the cool red color. (Cool reds are also called magenta by some dye companies). By only adding this tiny bit of cool red, we were able to tip the pure blue just barely towards the violet section of the color wheel and as you can see, we got a nice, rich ultramarine color.

So now I just have to finish up this bobbin, which I hope to get done today, and spin a third bobbin and then ply them together. I will use this yarn for socks- the Romney adds strength and the Merino adds softness.

Something Else I've Been Working On

For the last couple of weeks, I've been working on getting a gray Corriedale fleece carded. Yes, it really is a true silvery gray! I've found that I can flick open the locks in the evening in front of the TV and you can see a basket of the flicked locks in the chair behind the drum carder. Then, I can send the wool through the carder at random times during the day: while I'm on the phone, while I'm waiting for dinner to cook, while I'm waiting for Caleb to finish eating his dinner. At this point I'm just getting it carded up. Once I have it all in batts, I will sort the batts into light, medium, and dark gray's. Then I'll recard the lights and darks together and mix up the mediums a bit so I have a fairly even color. I've got enough for a sweater set aside to card up, but I'm not entirely sure of what kind of design I want - I've got a couple of ideas though.

A Bowl of Blue Batts!

I finished carding up the Romney/Merino/Angelina batts. Unfortunately, the Angelina didn't photograph, so you can't see it here. I ended up with 6 1/4 ounces of fiber which will be plenty for a pair of socks. (For non knitters, a pair of women's socks usually takes 100 grams or 3.5 ounces of fingering weight yarn.) This will probably be spun up pretty soon - I can't wait to see how it spins!

Here in the US, today is Memorial Day and I just want to say Thank You to all the men and women who are serving and have served previously in the armed forces. I hope you all have a great Memorial Day!

Carding in Progress

Since you guys said you didn't mind seeing carding I thought I'd show some in progress shots from the second half of the Romney/Merino blend, AKA My Socks. (The first half was officially titled Mom's Socks and while we're doing full disclosure here, it was only like 2 or 3 of you that said you didn't mind seeing the carding, so now the rest of you have to suffer through it.) Above are a couple of batts: the top one is the Romney and the bottom one is Merino. The Romney began as raw fleece from a sheep named Shenandoah who lives in Baltimore (or maybe just outside Baltimore - it's hard to tell). The batt looks shorter than the Merino because the Romney wool is very bouncy and when it came off the carder it bounced back to a shorter length. The Merino batt (which was raw fleece at one point, but I never saw it like that, it was purchased as top and then dyed to match the Romney), because it started as top, doesn't have as much bounce. Before the fibers can be blended they have to be carded by themselves. Since the Romney was loose fleece it took two passes through the drumcarder to get to this point, but the Merino only took one pass since it started out as top. From this point, I will tear each batt into half and blend half a batt of Romney and half a batt of Merino. I do this by dividing each half into 4 more sections, spreading them out the full width of the drum and feeding them in in layers, alternating the types of wool. When I pull that off the carder I can actually see the layers of the two wools, so I divide that batt into fourths and recard it. This is what the batts look like after a second blending pass. They are getting close, but if I look I can still see stripes of the two different wools, they just don't look quite as stripey as they did after the first blending pass. When I did Mom's Socks, I figured out that a third blending pass made very well blended batts so these two have one more pass to go through the drum carder before they're ready to spin. You might have noticed a small bag of something sitting on top of the Merino batt in the first picture. That little bag is Angelina, which is a sparkly fiber used for blending. It's a very fine fiber, so if you use it carefully (a little sparkle goes a long way- I won't use much of that bag in this project) it won't change the hand of your yarn. This is the Opal color and I'll add some of it when I do the final pass through the carder.

Just in case anyone is wondering, Deb Menz' Color in Spinning is a great book for carding directions as well as step by step pictures of what happens when you blend. These batts could just as easily be different colors rather than different wools and the techniques I'd use to blend them would be the same. Also, if there are more experienced carders out there who see something I'm doing wrong, please feel free to let me know in the comments.

Look what the new scarey thing with teeth can do!

There has been a bit of carding going on here. Remember the periwinkle dragon from the other day? The batt at the bottom came from that. Two passes through the drum carder made a very nice, consistent batt from the Romney. The top batt is one pass through with some Merino top we dyed to match the Romney because we only had 6+ ounces of the Romney (we both wanted socks out of this and socks take around 4 ounces of fiber each). Once I get all the Merino carded, I'll be blending it with the Romney (it will be a 50/50 blend) on the carder. I feel like I'm getting a feel for the carder and it's really fun! I can't wait to see how the two wools blend together. It's exciting to turn your very own batts into cute little muffin rolls of carded fiber! They feel so soft and fluffy, I can't wait to see how they spin up!

Have a great weekend!

Something New - With Teeth!

Well, I promised something new and interesting and while you might not privately think this is interesting, I'll bet you'll pretend it is since it has teeth! Yep, I got a drum carder! It's a Strauch Petite with the Brush Attachment. I bought it from Janet at The Wheel Thing and while I've only done a little bit with it, it seems really great! After sending some "junk" wool through to clean up any grinding dust like the directions said (OK, I only made it through the first page of directions before I started messing with it, but I'll go back and read every single word today - I promise), I got out the periwinkle Romney wool and started carding it. (That's a bit of what you see on the main drum.) Caleb got very excited about this new fierce thing with all the teeth and after a discussion about how close his fingers can go and how he can't turn the crank (I don't think wool likes to be carded at 6 year old speeds), he sat down and pulled small bits of fleece out and opened them up for me. He said it was more fun than Play Station! We'll have to see how long the novelty lasts. I'm going to see what I can do on it today and get the rest of the Romney carded. Tomorrow - Batts!