stuff and things
Had a very fibrey day today, I finished up a custom order for a raveler, then did some dyeing and carded up some squishy batts for my shop.
For anyone in the UK, I’m now offering free shipping if you spend over $40.
Also, here’s a sneak peek at the dyeing I did earlier. The fibre is a South American lustre wool, it feels very soft, very similar to BFL, and i got it at a bargain price, so when the roving has dried, I’ll be listing it on etsy, also at a bargain price.
The other night, while reading my favourite forums on Ravelry, I saw a picture of a wheel in pieces. This reminded me ever since I got my new (secondhand) wheel, I’ve been meaning to give it a makeover. It’s an ashford traditional, and all the parts are different colours, the double treadle kit was bought separately, and is stained a different colour, and the lace flyer kit was untreated. The next day I saw some paint stripper in a supermarket (strange, cos the last time I was looking for it, I couldn’t find any, which is why the project was shelved).
I also bought this, mostly because I found the name amusing:
(yes, I’m easily amused)
Armed with my bag of rags, I laid out the stuff I needed…paint stripper, wood stain, white spirit, teak oil, sandpaper and other useful things like gloves, paintbrushes, screwdrivers and the like.
The first job was to stain the lace flyer, as it was already untreated, so I didn’t have to mess around with the paint stripper. I took the flyer/mother of all to pieces, and sanded it down. I then gave it a rub over with white spirit. Pre treatment, it looked like this:
Then came time for the wood stain, the colour I chose was called ‘indian rosewood’. I followed the instructions and applied it with a cloth (yay for the bag of rags!). Here’s the maidens, one stained, one unstained.
and here’s the whole lot in it’s stained glory:
It’s looking much better already. While the stain was drying, I turned my attention to the wheel:
You can see in the pic that all the parts are differently coloured. I don’t mind that too much, as I believe they are made from different woods, so even with staining they won’t look identical. What you can’t see is that there’s paint spots all over it…so the job really needed doing. I considered just removing the wheel and leaving the rest intact and using paint stripper on it like that…I figured the parts you can’t see don’t matter. But I decided to stop being lazy, if I’m going to do this, i should do it properly. So I dismantled it completely.
As you can see, the person who stained the DT kit was lazy, so there’s big areas of untreated wood where they didn’t bother taking it apart before finishing.
The next step was to try the paint stripper to remove the varnish. I did this on a couple of bits, but then realised it was late and time for bed, so left the rest for another day. I shall take more pics and explain what I did when I next work on it.
Thanks to Random.org, the winner of the batts is Jo (freestylefibre on Ravelry). Congratulations Jo, and thanks to everyone else who entered.
I’ve done a small update on the shop today, a couple of happy feet batts for spinning socks, and some nice shiny batts with bfl and silk (among other things) in.
I’ve been a bad blogger lately, I’ve had so much to do in RL, and spent all of my spare time sleeping, so I’ve not updated for aaaaaaaaages. While I’ve been away, I set up an etsy shop to sell my creations: spinning fibres (batts and tops), handspun yarn, and hand-dyed sock yarn.
Here’s a pic of a few things I added last night.
In other exciting news, I got piggies!!! Well, not me personally, they live on a field belonging to a friend which backs on to my bf’s garden, so I get to see them lots and give them lots of scratches and kisses (piggies don’t like kisses so much though). They are Kune-kunes, and they are about 8 weeks old. They’ll be ready for eating next summer, which I’m sure will make me sad, but I’ve had kune-kune meat before, and it’s lovely. We’re also getting another one, who will be mine. He’s the runt of the litter and has mostly been hand-reared, and he’s so friendly, he comes running over to see you when you go visit, and last time I was there I cuddled him lots, and he fell asleep in my arms. We didn’t get him with the others cos he was very little, so we thought if we took the big ones away he might be able to get more milk from mum, or at least get a bit larger before we take him away. You’re not allowed to move new pigs into the same area within 20 days, so that restriction gives him plenty of time to grow, and he should be with us in a couple of weeks. I’m just hoping his big brothers aren’t mean to him when he arrives. I tried to sort some pics to show them, but the PC kept crashing, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that they are super cute.
 Now onto what you’ve all been reading for….free stuff! In honour of my new shop, I’m giving away this pair of batts, in a colourway called ‘fireworks’. They weigh 85g together, and are mostly made up of merino, with tencel, alpaca, silk, acrylic, sari silk threads, and lots and lots of sparkle. I made one large batt in layers of colour and black, then split the batt in half and recarded one half to blend the colours more.
To be in with a chance of winning these batts, simply reply to this post and tell me which of the items in my shop is your favourite, and why…and any other comments you have about the shop, make sure you include your ravelry name or some other way to contact you should you win. I will pick one name at random at midnight (GMT) on fireworks night (5th November). Anyone who buys something from the shop between now and the deadline will get an extra entry. Good luck!
For those of you in countries who don’t have fireworks night and are wondering why we do it, the reason behind it can be found here.
So today I had a bath. I was going to shave my legs, but it was late, and I was tired, so I didnt bother. The reason I am sharing this will soon become apparent. I have been asked to do a little craft stall selling my knitted stuff at a school fete this weekend, I’m not expecting to sell much, I’m just doing it to help out the organiser really. Anyway, I decided I should wash some of my socks and my favourite jumper to take along as samples of stuff I can do on commission if desired, so I chucked them into the bath after I’d finished to soak for a bit, then completed washing and hung the socks out to dry.
 The jumper I laid out on the floor in the spare room. I made it around 6 months ago and it’s had a lot of wear, and it’s made from kureyon, which as a singles yarn, pills like crazy. So even clean, it wasn’t looking its best. Then I remembered reading somewhere that if you don’t have one of those snazzy jumper shaver bobble removers, a simple disposable razor will do. Fast forward to 5 minutes later, and I’m on my hands and knees on the floor in the spare room, shaving my damn jumper. At one point I looked down and noticed my stubbly legs. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
 Look at that huge pile of fluff that came off it! The knitting geeks amongst you may notice this looks a lot like Lizard Ridge. I knitted an awesome blanket from that pattern (though I made it bigger), which was completed sometime in the winter of 2007. I loved knitting it, it was so relaxing, and so beautiful. For Christmas I was given a pack of Kureyon, and I decided I wanted to make a jumper based on the Lizard Ridge wavy stitch pattern. So I did.
I’m bored of typing now, so I’ll pad this out with some pics. Firstly, some spinning ones. I’m taking part in the Tour de Fleece, which is a spin-along type thing where you have to spin every day the tour rides. Today was day 4, and here is my progress so far; 375m/100g of purple merino sock yarn that I dyed myself, and one bobbin’s worth of a single that will become yet more sock yarn.
Finally, here’s a pic of some sock yarn I dyed the other day for the stall. I’m not entirely sure whether many sock knitters attend school fetes, but if no-one buys it, I get to keep it for myself, which is fine with me, as I LOVE the purple one. mmmmmm.
(clicky pics that’ll take you to my flickr where you can see even more kitteny goodness)
This is the latest addition to my household. She is called karma. Karma Kittenface McPurry. The reason being, I am part of an awesome swap group on ravelry called UKarma. The idea is, if there’s yarn you don’t want anymore, you offer it up for someone else to claim. Then in return they offer something else, and the cycle continues. Rather than a straight swap of items of similar value, this relies on people being honest and offering stuff up purely for karma, knowing that in future they will claim something else they want.
Anyway, I had to go to the post office to send off a couple of parcels to people in this group, and I noticed on the noticeboard outside there was a small sign saying ‘kittens for sale’. with a picture. and one of them was grey. Now I have wanted, no NEEDED, a grey kitten for EVER. So on seeing this sign I ran home (well, as close as i get to running) and immediately called…the kittens were still available!!! So I got in the car and went to see them, and the grey one was as cute as expected, so I brought her home with me, and she is now in my spare room being a cute little rascal. Apparently the sign had only gone up 10 mins before I got there.
On reporting back to the UKarma group that they were personally responsible for my latest acquisition, someone suggested I call her ‘karma’. So karma she is. And I love her lots.
Today, the postman brought me exciting post. Now, i love my postman, not only is he called Postman Pete, he doesn’t wake me with the doorbell, he just leaves my parcels in the garage. I’ve been waiting for a couple of things from overseas for a while now, and I’ve been checking my garage daily, but no luck. Then today, when I was on my way out to run errands, I looked into the garage, and there was stuff there….and look what I got!!!
There’s a whole kilogram of undyed sock yarn from these people (which only took 8 days to arrive from Hong Kong!), a big 100g bag of cashmere from Claire, and some Kureyon sock yarn.
 I am currently babysitting my parents’ kittens, so dyeing of yarn was out of the question with them running around all over the place, so I decided to sort out the Kureyon. From what I’d read online, I was expecting it to be very hard and scratchy, which it wasn’t really. Sure, for £10 a ball you might expect better, it’s no Jitterbug, but it felt pretty much as I’d expect a singles yarn in a medium fineness wool to feel. Regardless, I decided to skein it up and condition it, as much to check for knots as anything else. There was only one knot in the ball, which I suppose isn’t too bad for Noro, but there were LOTS of tangles that needed undoing. On a plied yarn, pulling hard probably would have been enough to untangle, but being a singles this yarn seemed fragile and I was too scared of breaking it.
I also measured the yarn as I skeined it, more out of habit than anything else, and was surprised to find I had 464m of it (and 97g). The ball band states ~ 100g/420m, so this is a fair way off. There was the odd thick patch, but no thinner than normal bits, so I’m sure this won’t impact on the end result, though I’ll probably use smaller needles than recommended. Â
Once the yarn was skeined, I soaked it in hot water with hair conditioner for half an hour or so, then treated it as I would handspun; I dunked it alternately in hot and cold water, and whacked it around a little, rolled it in a towel to get the water out, then snapped between my wrists. The theory being, if the yarn is abused now, it’ll get any shrinking out of the way so the end product stays as knitted. Oh, and I put a glug of vinegar in the final rinse water, as I wasn’t sure of the pH of my hair conditioner.
Here’s a pic of the yarn drying (click to enlarge). Mmmmmm. It looks so pretty, all the tangles were worth it.
I wanted to save the cashmere for something special, rather than wasting it just spinning for fun, but then I spoke to Claire and found out she had more if I needed it, so I decided to have a play with it. The staple length is very short, the auction said it was for “Laps (this is the ends from the spinning mills which will need to be recarded for spinning.)” I’ve no idea how they are made, it looks like many layers of fibres were built up, and then punched with a big hole punch, and these are the bits that come out. Here’s a pic (all the pics from now on are clicky):
Notice the kitten bite marks in the end of the tape measure? And yeah, the short staple length. I’d have pulled a few fibres out to show them, but they are so fine they are almost invisible to the naked eye. I carded up a small amount and tried to spin. It was a disaster. I knew with the short staple length I’d have to spin longdraw, but it just kept breaking and then the end would get sucked into the orifice and I’d be cursing at it while trying to find the end and keep a kitten from putting his paw in the flyer.
So I decided to add tussah silk. I am of the firm opinion that any fibre can be improved by the addition of tussah silk. Here’s some pics of the carding process.
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1) cashmere lumps on carder. I always put longer stapled stuff on with the ends of the locks hanging over the edge of the carder, even though this was short fluffy stuff, I still put it in the same place as normal.
2) tusssah silk on top, a very small amount 3) stopping to watch oliver cat attacking a towel 4) carded fibres. If you don’t know how to use carders, there is an awesome explanation here. In fact her whole blog is awesome, what are you doing reading my blog? hers is about a million times better. seriously, check it out. 5) pretty rolags |
The rolags probably had around 10% silk, hardly anything really, but just enough to give me a few longer stapled fibres to hold the cashmere together. I also had a minor epiphany while spinning and realised that while i can do huge arm’s length drafts when I’m spinning wool longdraw, I can’t do that with cashmere, I need to scale down my movements in proportion to the staple length, so drafts of 6-12″ work a lot better here. I was also not doing proper english longdraw, I have no idea what I was actually doing, other than it involved both hands, the back hand doing the drafting as usual, but the front hand smoothing out lumps and supporting the yarn.
I only spun up a couple of rolags before plying, I just wanted to see what the end result would be like, and here it is, hot off the wheel:
It’s not very exciting looking, being just a browny colour, but that’s about 20 metres of 2 ply laceweight, and it’s awesomely soft. Since taking the photo I’ve soaked and abused it, and it’s started to bloom nicely. Oh, and another amazing thing…I spun almost exactly the same length of yarn for each ply…I only had one inch left over on one of the bobbins at the end…I was shocked!
 The very very observant of you might have noticed in the bottom corner of the photo of oliver, you can see this book, which i borrowed from the library today, as I am trying to learn to weave, after getting a loom from Nik for my birthday. It’s not actually my birthday yet, but I still have my loom, and a bag of sticks and bits of stuff I have no idea what they do. I will write about it on here at some point, but this entry is long enough for now!
The other day I entered one of those ‘post a comment and be entered for a prize draw’ contests on this lady’s blog, which she kindly ran to celebrate getting 100,000 hits…and I won one of the prizes. A very pretty looking lump of grey romney roving is on its way to me. Thank you so much Kathleen!
 An update on the free fleece adventure:
 I decided to try and rescue some of the jacob that i thought had been washed to death by dumping it in a bowl of hot water with a ton of hair conditioner in. I then did a few rinses (one with vinegar in to return the wool to its happy pH). The water turned brown, almost the same colour as when a fleece is washed for the first time, I assumed it had been already washed as it was so dry and wiry, but a lot of gunge came out, so now i’m unsure as to what had been done to it before it reached me. It’s still a little matted in places (does jacob felt easily?), but an awful lot better than it was before, I carded up a bit and did a test spin. Prepping it wasn’t fun, it was very lumpy and neppy and gross, there was a lot of waste, but i managed to get 3 nice rolags and a relatively even yarn (though i was still picking out the odd lumpy bit as i was spinning). I’ve never worked with jacob before, but i’m starting to think more and more that my dislike of it is due to this particular fleece rather than the breed as a whole. I’m participating in a fibre study group on ravelry, jacob is one of this month’s fibres, so i’m taking pics of my progress for that…I shall make sure some of them find their way here too once i get them off the camera.
Yesterday I collected a big pile of fleeces from a very kind raveler who no longer wanted them (isn’t Ravelry awesome?). A few other people were interested in the fleeces, but were unable to collect them, so I (foolishly?) offered to wash them and send bits out to people to try. As I’m sure it’ll take me a while to work through them all, i thought i’d chronicle my progress here so the people who want some can see what i’m up to.
 The first fleece I got out of the bag was a Jacob/Wensleydale cross, its a pale grey colour with beige tips. This was the cleanest fleece i’ve ever seen in terms of VM, and the dirtiest grossest fleece i’ve ever seen in terms of grease. It had been rolled up nice and tight so it fitted in a pillowcase, and when i got it out it just wanted to sit there in one big congealed sticky lump. With a lot of coaxing I managed to get it unrolled, and pulled off a chunk to wash. I currently wash my fleece in a plastic laundry basket in the sink. I used to use the bath, but it took too long to fill, and it made my back hurt bending over to move the fleece around. With the current method i can fit about 1/3 of an average sized fleece in at a time, which is also the amount that fits comfortably on the drying rack, so it’s all good. Here’s some pics of the fleece i just mentioned, after washing, while drying in the sun.
Look at these little curls, aren’t they cute?
 
After washing, the fleece was transformed from a sticky lump, into a lovely light soft huggable lump. I’ve never prepped a longwool fleece before, so I didn’t know what to expect, but it’s very smooth and soft, and there’s much less grease left in it than there is in other fleeces i’ve washed, even though i followed the same procedure I always do. I spun a small sample, and the closest thing i can compare it to from my past experience is working with BFL tops, but with a longer staple length. Here’s a pic I took of one of the locks after it was washed and i’d finger-combed it. there’s a clothespeg there, partly for scale, and partly because the camera doesn’t like focussing on almost white fibres on a white background.
The next bag had similar contents, another jacob/wensleydale cross, but this time white. It had also been compressed into a very smal space, and was rather oily, but much less sticky than the last, and it rolled out nicely.
This one has cute little curls too
With this fleece I was given my first experience of suint; the bottom inch or so of the locks were really really yellowy coloured compared to the rest. I was concerned that it might be stained, I’ve never had a suinty fleece before, so all i knew about it was that it’s sheep sweat, and it’s yellow. Here you can see the edge of the fleece rolled over so you can see the bottom. The colours are a little off cos it was bright sunlight, in reality it was a little yellower.
I pulled off a chunk of the fleece and washed it as normal. I was pleased to notice the yellow colour had almost totally gone after the first hot water soak, even before the addition of detergent. It’s now all clean and on the rack to dry.
 The next bag I opened contained jacob fleece. It had already been washed and separated into 5 or 6 carrier bags, here’s the contents of one of the bags tipped out into the light tent:
It’s not actually an intact lump of fleece, it’s been torn into smaller pieces, and it’s already been washed. It’s soooo dry though. When I wash fleeces, I always leave a little of the grease in (well, using the method I use, some of the grease always remains, it would be hard to remove it even if i wanted to, but i don’t, so its all good). This stuff feels like it doesnt have any left in it at all. I read a tip somewhere that the wool should be lightly spritzed with olive oil/water before spinning. I may have to try that, as I tried spinning a bit of this, and really didnt enjoy it. It might be just that Jacob fleece is very different to what i’m used to working with, it certainly has a lot less crimp than the Norfolk Horn I have, and is less fine, but i think it was mostly the dryness that I didnt like, so I will try the oil trick and report back.
 The final fleece is a white one, unsure of the breed. It’s been washed in a similar way to the jacob, so it’s in small pieces and is very dry. I might try it, but I have a lot of white fleece already from the Norfolk Horn, which still has a little grease in and suits my style of spinning a lot better. I’m happy to send bits of this miscellaneous white fleece to someone else if they want to have a go with it….message me on ravelry and let me know. I doubt i’ll be reporting on it here again though, cos it’s really not that interesting.
And that ends the first instalment of the free fleece adventure. Thanks again to the kind fleece donor. I shall report back as more washing and spinning is completed.
First, let me begin with a photo of my wheel. It’s a Haldane Lewis, and I love it dearly.
 
Unfortunately, as my spinning is improving, I’m learning more about the limitations of my wheel. The first is an obvious one; Haldane wheels are no longer made, so getting spares is hard. Spare bobbins cost £15. While I would love more than 3 bobbins, I don’t want to spend that much money on them, so I will just have to make do. The next problem I encountered was the ratios. The two whorls give 6:1 and 8:1, which was fine when i was starting out, but now I’m spinning more laceweight yarn, it’s really hugely annoying. I’ve been looking out for other wheels on ebay, thinking I could maybe get an old ashford and buy the lace flyer kit, or a random old wheel I could take apart and make smaller whorls for. Sadly spinning seems hugely popular, and wheels on ebay go for silly amounts. I then thought I could perhaps glue a chamfered-edged disc onto the back of the whorl i have, but i really didn’t want to ruin the wheel, as its just so beautiful. Its a shame though, as there’s plenty of space there on the flyer shaft, as you can see here (as well as a sneak peak at the baby alpaca/tussah silk I am spinning up at the moment.
 
I though about trying to make my own replacement smaller whorl, but realised my metalworking skills were sadly lacking, there was no way i’d be able to make something that fitted onto a reverse threaded shaft. Then, one day, while looking at my meccano swift, I realised that mecanno has perfect wheels for this, they have a collet attached so they can be tightened onto the axels, and they have a groove in the outside for a driveband. I checked, but the collet was wayyyy too small, designed to fit on an axel of around 3.5mm, and it wasn’t big enough to bore out to fit my flyer shaft. Still, i realised that the idea was sound, I just needed to find the right sized collet.
Yesterday, I was in the model shop in the city, looking for something they didn’t have, when I thought i’d go look for collets…and I found some. I was fairly sure the ones I found were too small, I asked the guy who worked there, and he said it was the biggest size the supplier made, so I bought some on the offchance that they would fit (I stupidly hadn’t bothered to measure the shaft at any point). What I didn’t realise was that the part of the shaft I see most, where the bobbin goes, is actually wider than the part behind the whorl’s screw fitting. So the collets I bought fitted!!! I grabbed an old toy wheel, bored a groove in the edge of it, and glued the collet to it….an instant new whorl! I used a countersink bit to widen the hole at the non-collet edge, as the thread stuck out a little beyond the whorl and I wanted it to sit flush…as it is, I need to widen it a little more. I also thought the groove might be too small, and on testing realised I was right, but it didnt matter as the drive band wants to sit in the groove between the edge of the wheel and the back of the whorl anyway. So now I have a snazzy new whorl that gives me a ratio of about 11:1. It cost me less than £2 to make, and i have 3 collets left to make others!
Okay, so it’s not as pretty as the rest of the wheel. I do plan to make another stained a similar colour, and varnish it before sticking the collet on, so I don’t have to get the wood saturated with superglue. With a few minor design adjustments, I can see myself being very happy indeed with this new addition!*
*or at least, very happy until I lose the allen key that tightens it up, then I will be cursing myself and my bright ideas when I can’t get the bobbin off.