I had a great time at Black Sheep Gathering last Saturday with Kate.
There were no yarn purchases this year, but there was a lot of fiber purchased. I didn’t have a huge fiber stash before, but now I’m fairly satisfied with my stash. I’m going to post in the order of purchase. I’m not sure that there was a method to my buying, but I’m pleased with the fiber I came home with. On to the details…
First up, 10.2 beautiful ounces of Blue Faced Leicester Top from Diacentra Designs in the colorway Madrona Dark. It’s a soft blend of dark red/maroon, slate blue and gold. It really became a tough color to capture with the camera. I know that the photo here does not do it justice.
I purchased this fiber of purples, blues and greys with the colorway name Heather. I looked at this one for quite a while before I got it. I wasn’t going to, but I’m such a sucker for purple. It’s a Wolf Creek Wools blend of 70% superwash merino and 30% alpaca top, 4.3 ounces in total.
Next up, 2 ounces of 80% merino, 20% angora roving. It’s Bunny Patch Fiber from New Hue Handspun in the Ancient Roses. This one was a bit of an impulse buy. I wasn’t sold on the roving by looking at it while walking by. As I stood around waiting for Kate to purchase some, I noticed she was selling hanspun out of the roving, and I really loved the look of it. I decided to buy some and see if I could spin a yarn as nice as the ones she had.
Next, 8 ounces of Superwash Merino from Crown Mountain Farms in the colorway Hey Jude. It’s a blend of purples, blues, greens, yellows, and oranges. From talking with them at their booth, this is a new colorway for them. This is the same vendor that I purchased my alpaca lace from last year for my Icarus shawl. I loved the yarn, so I’m hoping to love this roving.
At the Tactile Fiber Arts booth, I picked up 4 ounces of a natural colored alpaca silk blend. It’s 80% alpaca and 20% silk, and so soft. I admired it several times before stopping by to pick it up. I can’t even begin to be able to explain how soft this stuff is. I also love the natural black color with the silk blended in to lighten it up. I think this is going to be a dream to spin.
Finally, on my way out of the show, I stopped by the Creatively Dyed booth. I debated for a while, but finally walked away with 8 ounces of the 70% Wool, 30% Seacell blend. It’s mostly orange, with lots of blues and greens blended in. If I were naming the color, I’d call it Key West, just a vibe I get from the color scheme.
Yesterday, Linda had us over for Fber Fun Day. What is Fiber Fun Day?
There was dyeing of fleece and fiber.
There was lots of spinning.
We had our own Fiber Bus full of fiber to try and buy.
For extra fun, there was drum carding.
I didn’t do any dyeing, but I did take an opportunity to play with the drum carder. I carded some yellow and blue merino top that I dyed a month or so ago into this big fluffy batt.
I also purchased some fiber and carded up these watermelon colored batts. I used a nice rosey pink-red and a neon green. I also mixed in some sparkly firestar to give it some flash.
I decided to post about how I spun my fiber for the local spin-along that I mentioned in an earlier post.
First, I decided to divide each of the colors in half by weight so that I had two piles with equal color amounts. In each pile was 0.5 ounces of the blue and screaming green, and 1 ounce of the tropics color.
I took one of the piles and decided to divided it further, and set the other aside. I visually divided the screaming green and blue into four equal sections. I created eight equal sections of tropics. Then, I combined the colors into four bundles, each consisting of 2 tropics, 1 screaming green, and 1 blue.
I then took the strips and twisted them into small balls of roving. I may just have to post a few photos of them because they were so fun to photograph.
I then repeated the steps with the second half of the roving, and ended up with eight bundles.
My plan for spinning was to use a short-forward draw. I’ve developed my own natural backwards draw, and I still struggle with the short-forward draw (which seems to be the way that most people are taught to spin), so I wanted to challenge myself to spin all of it using that technique and see how it goes. I wanted to spin four of the eight bundles onto each of two different bobbins and then ply them together.
For the actual spinning I held a bit of all colors of the roving in my hand at the same time and spun them. Sometimes I drafted the colors separately, and sometimes I drafted them blended. In the end, I was trying to create some gradual color changes in the final yarn. This is what it looked like on the two bobbins. At this point in the spinning, it felt stiff and wiry.
Once I plied it, it softened up a bit. It wasn’t as wiry as it was as a single. When plying, I made an effort to use a lower amount of twist in the ply then I usually do. I definitely have less twist, but I think I like my high-twist plying that I usually make. I love how the bobbin got a stout barrel shape with all of the yarn plied on it.
I found it interesting while plying that a lot of my screaming green areas seemed to meet up and be plyed together. I’m not sure how this happened, because it happend much less frequently with the blue.
After soaking the yarn, it became even softer than it had been after plying. There are even some fluffy parts. In the end, it’s 140 yards of 10 WPI yarn.
I’m suprised by how much the green and blue are still prevalent in the final yarn, I was really thinking that they would have blended together more effectively.
You can see some areas of the yarn where there was some barberpole effect with the green and blue.
This yarn has so much halo and fuzziness. It almost made it hard to photograph.
I’ve learned a few things while spinning this. This is the first time that I’ve actually spun roving; almost everything else I’ve spun has been commercial combed top. It’s definitely different, and drafting seemed harder for me. I had to slow down my wheel to the lowest ratio to try and spin. My worsted, short-forward draw is not reliable at all. I got a lumpy, somewhat inconsistent yarn. I’ll definitely need to practice more in the future.
I’m anxious to see how this yarn knits up.
Jim’s been helping out on a local farm by pruning fruit trees and other things he wants to learn how to do. The farm that he’s at also has sheep, and for a while I’ve wanted to see the sheep. On Thursday, I got out of work a few minutes early. Jim was still at the farm, so I finally went over to meet the sheep. They’re Shropshire sheep, which the farm raises primarily for the meat. But, she does have some people that request the fleeces. We may go over and help on shearing day.
Perhaps it’s just my suburban upbringing, but I find visiting the sheep so much fun. I used my cell phone to grab a few photos of the lambs. Most of them were born in January, so they’re already getting big.
For a while now on Ravelry, I’ve been following the Ply by Night spinning group. As a newer spinner, it’s really interesting to me to see what happens in it. The idea is that everyone spins the same fiber, and then knits the same projects. The group had their first spin-along in January, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to join. But, after watching for a while, I’ve been kicking myself for not joining in. It’s so interesting to see how different all of the yarns look. I feel like I’ve learned so much about planning my spinning projects, not just sitting down with the fiber and spinning.
The next round of spinning is the March/April spin-along, and I decided not to miss out this round. I jumped in and got the fiber. This round, we’re using a custom dyed Blue Faced Leicester Top from Briar Rose Fibers. I just got my four ounces yesterday. It’s lovely, and so, so soft. I can’t get over how much crimp still exists in the wool.
There is so much color variation close together, I’m not sure how to preserve some of the color differences when I spin. I’ve been watching in the group, and bulky singles seem to do well at keeping the color defined. I may try to separate the darker sections from the lighter sections and spin them separately. I think I may watch a little longer before I jump in and spin this.
I liked the Ply by Night group so much, I invited the other local spinning Ravellers to join me in the group. Some liked the idea so much that we’ve started our own local spin-along. We’re using a few different fibers from Bellwether Wool Company, which is local to us. We went over to the owner, Lois’s, house, visited the sheep, and picked our roving colors. We decided that as newer spinners, we wanted some challenges both in spinning new to us fibers and in trying colors outside of our standard safe palette. We opted for a total of four ounces. It’s two ounces of the Tropics color in the center, which is a Border Leicester wool. There is one ounce each of the Screaming Green and the Blue, both of which are Wensleydale.
I’m still planning what to do with this roving color combination. I think that the green and blue will both be muted by the tropics if I blend more as I spin. I’m just not sold on what to do yet. There’s talk of a get together to try out the drum carders, so I may wait until after that to start spinning.
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