Santa Cruz. Take 2. More balanced, but I still would not want to knit with it; it has many underspun sections.Here I am. Did you miss me. Let's try to regain control of my schedule this weekend. Its going to be rainy here all weekend, and wood things that have to move within tight tolerances, like spinning wheels, don't like high humidity. I could work with spindles all weekend, but I don't want to. I want and need some instant gratification spinning. Have you heard of Craftsy? . Its a website that specializes in online craft classes, they also more frequently than not, have kits that coordinate with the projects in the specific classes. I purchased one of the Stranded Colorwork classes, and I'm going to spin the two colors of chunky wool to make mittens instead of purchasing them. I'm leaning towards using this bright orange green merino as one color and a solid neutral as the other color.. Today's post will be more process, less production. When I was a new spinner, mostly what I saw was fiber and finished yarn pictures. Without seeing all the little steps that take it from fiber to finished yarn. First up...a single continuous strand of Santa Cruz wool. A.K.A. a single.If you like venturing into the unknown...spinning a rare breed like Santa Cruz, is fun. I'm not super into risk taking, but with wool its easy and fun; because its wool. What's the worse that can happen? So, I will be doing a lot of various spinning and prep techniques just to see how the fiber behaves as yarn. Because its such a very rare breed, there are about 125 of them in the US, mostly California and surrounding states. I'm going to give you a separate post on the history of the Santa Cruz breed, for anyone who finds it interesting. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by my own derailed train of thought. Because its such a rare breed, there is not any web documentation of experience from others who have worked with the fiber from from raw to finished project. The non-spinners in the room are now hearing white noise. Next, I make a 2-ply yarn sample by spinning in the opposite direction using both ends of the center pull ball of yarn. I wind that onto a niddy noddy. The tiny 12 yard skein gets a relaxing bath in a hot water. The mini skein had a relaxing soak in hot water. And this is how it responded..... It is more curly and it lost 2 inches of length. That is not the desired effect of the relaxing soak in hot water. Rut-Roh Charlie Brown. This response means that I put too much twist in the yarn when I was spinning it, and that I did not put enough plying twist in to counteract that. Not a big deal on a 12 yard sample. It would be a big deal if it were a 300 yard skein.
I will spin another sample and see if I can get a relaxed balanced yarn. stay tuned. There's been a little actual spinning; mostly I've been washing & combing the Santa Cruz fleece. More washing than combing. Pictures....
Well it is going to take a year to get through this thirty day challenge at the rate I'm going. Yesterday, I did spin a bit on the blue/gray rambouillet, but my spinning wheel was behaving a 2 year old having a temper tantrum, so I only tolerated it for about 10 minutes. And really, watching a bobbin fill is about as exciting as watching paint dry. Mostly what I did yesterday evening was wash some wool. I will tell you more about the Santa Cruz sheep tomorrow.I really have been making yarn every day, I just haven't made time to update the blog. Let's call this Day 6, and move on, shall we. Today, I finished the sample of the fuschia/purple merino that was on the turkish spindle. Next, I make this single into a 2-ply. Next, I wind the 2-ply onto a niddy-noddy. The niddy-noddy make a skien that is 1-yarn long, so when I want to know how many yards I have, I only have to count the wraps on the niddy noddy. There are also larger niddy-noddies that are 1.5 yards and 2 yards. But I only use the 1 yard niddy noddy for sampling. For larger skeins I have an antique floor skeiner that makes skeins 2.5 yards. Measuring yardage is basically the same process, count how many wraps are in the skein and multiply by 2.5. Finally this little 24 yards of 2-ply, will have a relaxing soak in warm water, hang to dry and get knit into a small swatch
|
TraciMy superpower is creative problem solving. And when there are no problems that I need to solve, I find ways to be creative anyhow. Archives
November 2017
Categories
All
|