SF: Black Mountain Artisans

Also while Salvbard and I were in the San Francisco, we did some exploration of the surrounding area. In Marin county, we stumbled across one of the locations for the Black Mountain Artisans.

Have I mentioned what a good sport Salvbard is? When I stopped in my tracks in front of this shop, he encouraged me in and then patiently waited while I looked at all the amazing handspun. There is something really amazing about handspun. I probably give my own handspun some love too...

I picked up this skein by Feline Fibers. Apparently the artist who made it is one of the major shearers in the area, and she travels around the county in a trailer with her cats. I have no idea what I am going to make with this yet, but it is lovely to squoosh.

3D Printed Brake Knob

So 10 years ago, I wrote a story of when my brake knob on my Ashford Traditional wheel broke. Although I thought I had documented the rubber and steel replacement that Salvbard made for me, digging through my archives has turned up nothing. Bad blogger! If I had realized I would have taken pictures before we went on to version 2.0 here.

Isn't it amazing! He took measurements, designed it, and then 3D-printed it. We totally live in the future. This version took in a lot of my feed back about how the old version tended to be super touchy and over responsive, and the first prototype was so much better than the old replacement, that we ended up not needing another try. So awesome!

Bayberry

New years day I worked on a number of symbolic projects of things I wanted more of in the new year. Among others I went hiking with friends, knit a bit and broke out my spinning wheel.

The fiber is Ashland Bay English Wool top in Bayberry from Pollywogs. I am fairly certain it has been in my stash for less than 10 years... fairly certain. Which just means it is totally time to use this beautifully blended wool. 

After setting everything back up, I spun a full bobbin. I definitely noticed that I was rusty, but the body memory was there.

Currently I am debating a 3-ply to even out the thick-and-thin places a bit, but that would give me a fairly heavy yarn. After I finish spinning all of the singles I will do some sampling and see what I think.

Does anyone have any great recommendations for using some possibly quirky handspun? I will have 8oz of something that i think will be between a worsted thick-and-thin (2-ply) and a bulky 3ply.

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Spinning Wheel

Seriously, I was not sure if I was going to make this week's Illustration Friday post, but as the prompt was "wheel" it seemed like it would be a shame to miss. My poor Ashford Traditional has not seen any use in longer than I want to discuss, but at least it can have a brief moment back on the blog.

Crayola colored pencils in aqua green, black, light brown, mahogany, maroon, yellow orange in Moleskine

I admit that I want to fuss with this one still, but just getting it out for the week was the important thing. I had lots of trouble with the color, and looking at the scan it could use some more color built up on the treadle. But hey, more practice with color is always good.

Now I just need some time to do some actual spinning on my wheel as well. We will see.

Crocus Yarn

We aren't quite to crocus season yet, though I did notice that with the snow melted from my yard, the hyacinths and daffodils are just starting to poke up through the soil. Despite that, I am totally ready!


Having the spinning wheel in the living room has been fantastic. I broke out some fiber that I had received in the Somerville Yarn Swap. (And yes, I have been dipping a lot into the old stash recently.) Total between the four colors, I have 235 grams of superwash wool. The colors are a little more accurate in the above picture.

This is the first skein that I have plied so far from what I have. Given that I have found my singles have been tending more to the fine side, I went with something a little different and made a 3-ply. I wasn't sure if it would muddy the colors too much, but I have to say that at least pre-knit-up the yarn maintains that feeling of mixed crocus colors well. Neat!

Sunny Skies Handspun

Here at casa de omly, I have been trying to get back into a bit of spinning. To that end, I moved the spinning wheel to the living room, which has been great. It also meant that it was time to post an old finished spinning project.

This was some fabulous drum carded merino from Mind's Eye Yarns. Since I am always a little surprised by how the roving goes to finished yarn, I even remembered to take a "before" picture for contrast. Isn't it pretty?


I wasn't sure how the little bits of yellow would work out in the finished yarn, but I don't think it worked out poorly. (Click the picture to see it more up close.) The colors make me think of sunny skies, something we have not had nearly enough of recently in the Boston area.

Yardage: ~360 yards
WPI: 11 wraps per inch (DK weight)

The 3 finished skeins are super lofty. It is lovely and soft, but it is the sort of yarn that I wouldn't use for anything that would get a lot of wear. They might make a nice scarf though. Any recommendations of scarf patterns that are fabulous for handspun out there?

Green Handspun

Happy Evacuation day! Well ok, if you are not in the Boston area, you are probably celebrating St. Patrick's day. And in the spirit of the latter it seems a good time to share my latest handspun, actually finished up during the Olympics, but now soaked and twisted into finished hanks.

I started with this lovely 4 oz braid of superwash roving from Mind's Eye Yarns, which I am pretty sure I bought 2 years ago at a Gore Place Sheapshearing Festival.

I spun most of the singles during the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. They are a bit finer than I usually do and could have possibly used a higher twist. It gave a nice lofty final product though.

The three final skeins add up to 299 yards of a DK weight yarn. This yarn is lovely and soft. I would like to think I will make something for myself out of it. (Perhaps the yoke of a sweater?) I seem to have a poor record for actually knitting most of my handspun though. Got any great recommendations of patterns to inspire me to get this on the needles?

Mitered Mittens

I have been trying for the last year or so to knit more from my book stash. I have all these wonderful pattern books, and I really wanted to be using them. Additionally, I have been spinning again the last few months, which has motivated me to think about knitting my handspun.

So it was only natural that these two thoughts would collide. The result is a pair of super-fun mittens. This yarn was spun back in July, and was a single stand of handspun plied with a strand of silver sparkly sewing thread. It is always neat to watch how handspun will knit up , and the way the roving had two strands of differently colored pencil roving held together gives this a heathered look, similar to what it had been if I had plied two singles together.

Pattern: Mitered Mittens (May) by Elizabeth Zimmermann
Pattern Source: Knitter's Almanac
Needles: US 5 / 3.75 mm
Yarn: my handspun

Modifications: My mitered sections were only slightly larger 13 stitches each, because my handspun was finer but I have small hands. I did a shorter cuff because I was worried about running out of yarn in the same color sequence. Also I made a thumb gusset similar to the ones done by Kathryn Ivy. And finally I did a more rounded area by the fingers.

I was a little worried when I spun this yarn that the sparkle would be too garish, but it really just adds a little interest and fun. This pattern was great for really highlighting an interesting yarn, and I could see myself making it again.

Watercolor Hat

Knitting with handspun is always an adventure. Sometimes you just have to accept the quirky, irregular nature of it, and this hat does a great job playing up the watercolor painting of this yarn, both in color and texture.

Pattern: Robin's Egg Blue Hat by Rachel Iufer
Needles: US 10½ / 6.5 mm
Yarn: my handspun
Button Suplier: Windsor Button

This is a super cute (and free!) pattern for bulky yarn. The seed stitch band (done flat through the rest of the hat is done in the round) is particularly good at mixing up variegated yarn. And it is a great chance to use huge, fun buttons.

Dyeing In the Ball?!

I am pretty sure I originally spun this yarn in 2006, but I can't find any reference to it in my archives. It started off just as a white fleece, which I spun into a crazy thick and thin bulky two-ply. Then I tried to dye it with cake dye, but I didn't have a concentrated enough die bath and/or the wool was not fully wetted. The result was disappointingly pale areas of blue and pink on a white yarn.

Then I decided that I really wanted to knit this yarn, but I just didn't love the colors enough to do so. Solution? Overdye! (Sorry, I really wish I had a pre-over-dyeing picture. As I said, I thought I had blogged these before....)

I had been wanting to try this technique for dyeing a yarn directly in the ball, and this seemed like a good oppurtunity. It is not just an illusion of the photograph, the top of each of these really is a little greener and the bottom a little tealer. (Is tealer a word? I guess it is now.)

You will see this yarn again shortly as I have already cast on with it.

Changes

So last summer I was spinning some of this beautiful merino/tussah silk blend. In fact I even blogged when I finished the first skein. After finishing one ply and then plying it on itself, I had that lonely skein that had to wait a full year for me to get around to finishing the rest of it.

In that time I have done a lot of spinning, particularly early this summer. Right after my spinning wheel's accident, subsequent surgery, and then repair it took a while for me to get the feel of how the tension worked. It was a lot touchier, which meant it was hard to get just the right tension on the flyer.

So here are side by side, the two skeins I ended up with from this roving. (You can click on the picture to make it larger.) The one on the right with the green ties, is the one I finished this summer, while the one on the left that you can't see the ties is the one I finished last summer. The newer yarn is a lot more even, but also softer spun. I know that my roommate really likes the first one, which has a lot more twist to it.

While I tend to think of myself as a product knitter/crocheter, I am a process spinner. I am far more interested in actually doing the spinning than what specifically what I end up with when I am done. (In fact I have knit with very little of my handspun. Maybe that should be a goal for this coming year.) So the change was interesting, but I wonder if could make the first kind again anymore... Any advice from other spinners out there?

Evening Star

As we have continued to get clammy, wet days, I am still spinning. Doing this much spinning back to back has been really great for improving my spinning skills. This is probably my most even single while still getting a fairly lofty yarn.

Yardage: 210 yards/192 meters (4 oz/110 g)
Weight: worsted
Fibers: merino and tussah silk plied with metallic polyester thread
Roving Supplier: Mind's Eye Yarns

I loved the purple-charcoal of the original, which reminded me of the evening sky. To emphasize that impression, I wanted to try including a strand of metallic thread, similar to the last yarn I spun, but this time with the thread included with two singles instead of one.

That is where I ran into a little bit of unexpected difficulty. Since the thread was so much thinner than the single, it tended to move towards the core of the yarn when I used an even amount of tension on each of the strands. Sample, sample, sample! (The spinners equivalent of swatching.)

There is still a fair amount of variation of tension in the thread as I learned, but what I ended up doing was let the two singles begin to get a little twist around each other just before (maybe half an inch/a centimeter) the thread was plied in. This worked ok, but if anyone knows of a better technique I would love to hear about it.

Clown Barf

Normally I don't spin much in the summer, but this one has been so cool and wet that I have made an exception. Plus I am trying to convince myself that hand-spun takes up less space than roving, so this is practically making my house-packing easier, right?

A few months ago I had picked up this amazing 100% merino pencil-roving by Zitron, part of their Artfelt line, at Mind's Eye Yarns. Seriously people, this stuff is super fun to spin. And like Zitron's infamous Trekking XXL, you get the most lovely long color transitions.

Since I wanting to maximize my yardage and not dilute the brights through plying with a non-matching strand, I opted to ply with thread instead. This was a new technique for me, though it is just as easy to do as it sounds.

The silver metallic thread that my single was plied with is a metallic decorative sewing thread made by Coats and Clark. I had picked up a few spools from local quilting store, who had them on clearance. Apparently they are changing the put up, but also possibly the formulation. I hope they don't change it too much though, as it has good flexibility and a nice feel to it compared to many metallics.

The title of the post is mostly tongue in cheek, because I do love the end result. But when I saw how bright the end result was going to be, I knew it needed the metallics to push it over the top. I have no idea what I could reasonably make with this that would actuallly get used, but for now I am happy just to pet and admire it.

Hayfever

This has been a terrible season for pollen allergies, so this past week of rain has been welcome for Salvbard, who is a pollen-sufferer. I was a little disappointed by how this yarn spun up color-wise, but I teased that it was pollen-colored, just like everything else outside.

Fiber: 4 oz merino
Yards: ~120
Weight: worsted - bulky
Supplier: Mind's Eye Yarns

I had tried separating this roving into strips to make the colors blend less, but I had so little success that I ended up just doing this as a two ply. I am a little embarrassed by how long this has been on the wheel. I just reached a point where I just couldn't get excited about finishing it.

The end result is a very soft yellow yarn that makes me think of baby things, except that this would be handwash only. Anyone out there got any good ideas of what to do with it?

Slytherin Spinning

Do you remember this?


These days it is looking more like this:

I finally have the required yardage to pass on to the next person on this project, but I think I am going to spin what I have left over to... just in case. And although the majority of the yarn came out at least okay, about a third of the yardage is a little more loosely plied than I would like. I think I may end up running it back through the wheel to add a little more twist to cut down on the splity-ness for the "Chasers" in the Harry Potter group project.

Quick, Empty the Bobbins

It is funny. Like clockwork, the weather starts getting a little cooler, and I bring my spinning wheel out of its summer retirement. When things are hot and sticky I just can't stand the clinging wisps of fiber, but in the Fall things are completely different.


Today I finished up a bobbin of blue merino/tussah silk, and plied it back on itself to make a 2-ply. The resulting skein is a little smaller than I would like, but I will get to the other 2 ounces soon. For now I needed room on the bobbins for this:


Some lovely dark emerald (slightly more so than shown here) wool that I picked up from Lucy at Mind's Eye Yarns this week for a different sort of craft-a-long. Over on Ravelry, there is a HP Knitting/Crocheting House Cup group, and I was lucky enough to get to participate in the Quidditch. Very exciting! I am a Beater (think defense) for Slytherin, so I will be helping spin the hand-spun for our project. Now to work! I need 280 yards of worsted, so it shouldn't take too long if I stay focused.

Work Fiber

Salvbard came home from work with a surprise this week. Fiber!


Apparently one of his co-workers has some sort of connection with a llama farm, but there was also a bunch of angora fiber and Romney too. It is all already washed and carded, and I love the natural colors. To the spinning wheel!

An Unoriginal Handspun Hat

Apparently I am drowning my sorrows over the Aran sweater in quick knits from handspun. Today's project was made from the first handspun I ever made on my wheel: a bulky merino/tencel blend.

Yarn: bulky handspun in merino/tencel
Fiber Supplier: Mind's Eye Yarns
Needles: US 10.5/7.5 mm
Pattern: An Unoriginal Hat by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Modifications: did an extra set-up row, skipped rows 4, 6, 8, and 10 of the second pattern repeat and completely changed the decreases

And if you have a moment, consider stopping by Eileens's new blog. She just made her very first post and asks for knitting ADD/too many WIPs advice. Share the fiber blog love!

Snowy Day Knitting

They closed Chiquita's school early today, which was just as well because by the time we got home the snow was really coming down. It was the perfect weather to stay inside, drink hot cocoa, and knit.

I wish I had a better picture to show you the scale of the snow. The footprints here are at least 8" deep, and all that snow only fell over the course of a few hours. In fact it is still falling now.

Yarn: my handspun, a worsted weight
Roving: merino/tussah silk from Mind's Eye Yarns
Needles: US 8/5.0 mm
Pattern: Top Down Hat
Modifications: cast on 8 sts inititally and added ribbing to the bottom

This yarn was one I was not totally happy with. I knew I wanted it to ultimately be a gift for my aunt, but in trying to get a funky yarn, I just ended up with something with overspun places. Knitting overlooks a lot of minor imperfections in handspun though, and the hat is cute.

Merino/Tussah Silk

The nice thing about the cooler weather is that I have been able to rediscover my love for spinning. This is good, since Salvbard had just been noting that all summer and then through September and October I hadn't touched my wheel. It isn't that I love her any less, but it isn't until the weather cools that I really love to spin.

This is what I have on the bobbins at the moment: some lovely merino/tussah silk from Mind's Eye Yarns. It is absolutely lovely to spin, but I am not sure how much of a tight twist is needed with this sort of blend. It is my first time working with silk at all. Any experienced spinners out there with some advice?