Socktacular Experiment, vol 2

Right. So a while back, I purchased a bunch of single-breed fleece "tasters" - 50g each - to spin into socks.

I've done 5 of the 7 by now, and it has been an interesting spinning experience. Here's a summary shot:

[top to bottom: Clun Forest, Romney, Texel, Southdown, Suffolk]

For starters, you can see that the colour "white" is quite different for each breed. The whitest is the Texel, which is really quite blinding. The Romney has a distinct yellow cast and the other three are rather close together - a greyish white, compared to the Texel.

Just to recall: these are all commercially prepped rovings (ie. carded, not even pindrafted) from the same mill. These are all classified as "medium wools", ie. not fine and soft like merino. The mill does not provide a micron count.

Here are my spinning notes so far, in order of my spinning them. They were all spun longdraw, true woolen style.

No.1 : Texel

Man, springy stuff! The fluffiest yarn I have ever spun, and I'm not sure it's suitable for socks. It is very fine, a little nebby, and the result is exceedlingly woolly and lightweight. It's very white and has no lustre at all - chalky white. I'd love to make a sweater out of this, it would be like wearing a cloud!

The yarn is underplied, so will have to go back through again before I knit anything with it. 

[Texel, up close. You can see it has too little ply for sock-use]

No.2 : Suffolk

This is an official downs breed, and is again springy, but not as blindingly white as the Texel. It feels coarser.  The roving was less nebby than the Texel, so an easier spin. 

No.3 : Clun Forest

I busted out the spinning oil on this one, just for fun. The first two didn't really need it, but I wanted to see if using it made any difference. The answer: not really (although I have had situations where a little spinning oil really helped!). This breed is definitely the coarsest so far, and feels almost wiry. I wound up spinning it a little on the heavy side. 

No.4 : Southdown

Very fine fiber. It's finer than the Texel and softer. Also, much nebbier than the others so much more work to spin. I did not enjoy this much, it was a lot of work. And I'm not convinced it'll be good for socks, without nylon...

No. 5 : Romney

OK, this is totally different stuff from the fiber I've spun up (mostly from the UK). It's about the same coarseness as the Clun Forest, and not as springy as the others. It has a very distinct yellow cast to it.

[Romney, close-up]

The last two are a Cotswold and a Dorset, which will be on the wheel shortly. Thereafter, the knitting starts!! Stay tuned.

Not Knitting Socks...

I have been bitten by the cable bug.

I started with a pair of cable socks, but these are a disaster, because I can never get them to fit right. It takes me multiple tries...right now, these are awaiting frogging:

[too-small socks awaiting their frogging]

The yarn is Tosh Sock, which I'm not in love with. The colourway (cove), yes, but the quality of the yarn....no. This particular skein fell into short ends - it had breaks every few meters. Very frustrating to knit with, and hence I'm not in a rush to frog them, either. So they will languish for some time....

Meanwhile, my urge to cable has not diminished. So I've been knitting an Aran sweater for my son's birthday:

[St. Enda sweater for my son]

This is my first Aran, ever! The pattern is one of Alice Starmore's (St. Enda), and is truly spectacular. I made some very minor modifications: managed to carry the small cables on the cuffs into the main body, and modified the neck by making it really long and folding it inwards. 

The beautiful yarn is from a lady in my knitting group, she bought it in Scotland or Ireland decades ago and it had been languishing in her stash. She wanted to give it a good home...it truly is wonderful stuff. Not soft, but a nice crisp yarn with good body.  Heirloom quality that won't pill or sag. The colour is impossible to photograph, it's a dark teal/green with lots of flecks in it. 

I'm now knitting an Aran for myself - my own "design" (ie. just pick a few cable patterns from your nearest stitch dictionary). Again it takes some time to get the width right because even knitting up swatches isn't really good enough...I usually start with the sleeves (in the round) and use them as giant swatches, but even so it took me 3 times to get the back width correct. 

[Misty thinks it's hers]

This yarn is from Beaverslide Dry Goods - their Fisherman's 3 ply - and it is quite soft, with little elasticity, so not as nice to knit with as that green stuff, above. My hands get quite tired from it. But the cat seems to like it. It's spun in Alberta from Montana merinos, so pretty local.

Finally, I have my eye on this beautiful design, which I'm hoping one of my menfolk will desire as much as I. I'm thinking of using Briggs and Little, which is a Canadian yarn I've recently tried for the first time - very springy and woolly.

Icelandic Souvenirs

So during our epic trip to Scandinavia this summer, my younger son and I visited Iceland. We had spectacular weather, which no doubt contributed to the very positive experience we had there. It's a lovely country - expensive though - with absolutely amazing scenery. And of course, lots of sheep. And woolly sweaters. And very tasty lamb!

[leg of lamb ready for the BBQ on our last day in Iceland]

During our 6-day trek (the Laugavegur, which is quite famous), we saw quite a few semi-feral sheep on the hillls around us. The sheep are tagged - they aren't "wild", but left to run loose in the country. In September the farmers collect them all, in a sort of public roundup called Rettir, which naturally involves a lot of drinking!

The sheep we saw were usually in very small groups of 3-6, apparently a mother or two, her lamb(s) of the season, and a ram. They eat their way through the landscape. They were shy so I couldn't approach very closely. While there were white sheep present, not all were white - not by a long shot! Unlike in Canada, are no natural predators in Iceland. The biggest predator they have is the arctic fox, which can't down a full-grown healthy sheep.

[icelandic sheep in natural habitat]

[these were 2 days' walk from anywhere]

We visited an open-air museum, a sort of pioneer village affair where they had collected old houses and people in costume did traditional crafts. You know the type. They had sheep there too so we could get up close. These sheep struck me as smart, independent,  tough little "four-by-four" types. The ewe (below), was using her foot to pull the fencing down so she could get her head through. The ram - with 4 horns!! I didn't know Icelandic sheep could have 4 horns! - followed us around after we fed him apparently much tastier grass from our side of the fence. 

[icelandic ewe attempting escape]

[BFFs now that we have fed him]

Iceland has been experiencing a tourist boom since their currency crashed in 2008 (thanks to the global  financial crisis), although the prices have come back to eye-watering levels by now.  Like most of the tourists,  my son and I both bought sweaters - not the full-on traditional round-yoked ones - those are much too warm for Vancouver winters - but slightly lighter-weight ones in non-traditional patterns. There is so much choice in wool wear in Iceland! I found the prices reasonable, too - CD$175 or so for an excellent-quality 100% wool sweater is not bad. I mean, Norwegian Dale sweaters will cost you double that! The sweaters are very, very light and very warm. They aren't particularly soft but they are very fuzzy. Some of them come with a little bristle-brush to keep the fuzz looking nice. I've been wearing mine a lot, now that the fall rains are here.

I did not buy any knitting yarn, I didn't have much room in my backpack and I can get this stuff online (there's only a single yarn mill in Iceland, so it's all the same yarn) at reasonable prices. I do have some ideas in my head, inspired by the country!! Apparently, thanks to the offshore demand, there's a yarn shortage now!

Socktacular Experiment

A while back (several months) I ordered a batch of "medium wool" single-breed rovings from a mill in Carstairs, Alberta. This isn't exactly a local mill - Carstairs is about 1000km away from me - but I thought I'd give Canadian sheep a try.

I was able to get a taster pack of 7 different breeds (all wool comes from SK, AB, and BC). The prep is carded ropes, not pindrafted. All the wool is white and I got 2oz (ie. 50g) of each - which is enough for a single sock. Heheheh...yep, I'm going to make 7 single socks, same spinning, plying, and knitting for each, embroidered with an ID marker, and then I'm gonna mix and match while wearing them. Ha. That should sort out the best breed, don't you think???

[taster pack of sock breeds]

[breed number 1 on the wheel]

The breeds I got are: texel, romney, dorset, cotswold, suffolk, clun forest, and southdown. As I said, all from Canadian sheep, and none of them bred for their fiber. Canadian sheep are mostly meat sheep, especially in commercial flocks (of which there are only few, Canada's not a big sheep country - too many predators). The mill I bought from is profit-driven and not a hobby or co-op operation, so they buy cheap fiber in bulk. They are not in the business of buying single fleeces from hobbyists.  The only trouble with buying roving from this mill is that the shipping is extremely expensive - thank you Canada Post. That means I won't be doing a lot of it. 

Anyways, I thought this might be a fun thing to try. Spinzilla is coming and this is going to be my project - see if I can get through a bunch of this roving. I've started on the Texel and it is a very different spinning experience from all the commercially combed prep I've been using - it's got a few blebs so takes some attention, but it's possible to spin fine, wooly singles. Man, are they wriggly! The Texel is extremely springy. I'm keen to compare the Canadian southdown with the stuff I've used from the UK. Also I 'm curious to see how the Romney fares, as that's my current favorite!

I'm aiming for 4-ply socks. We'll see if I'm able to do that - lately I've been slipping to 3-ply as I'm finding that the knitting makes a huge difference (as in: very tight gauge knitting can compensate for the lack of the 4th ply).

[ Texel single with commercial sock yarn as comparison]

I'll keep you all posted with how these spin. It'll be some time (as in, months!) before I can make any conclusions about how the socks wear...

Where've I Been?

So it has been a while since I've posted! I've been on vacation, doing an epic trip through the scandinavian countries: Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. I tested out some handspun hiking socks, saw many woolly critters, visited museums loaded with folk knitting and assorted handicrafts, and purchased some materials for new projects! I'll be sharing bits and pieces here over the next few weeks.

But let's start with the results of some hiking sock tests. I have 2 pairs of handspun, handknit hiking socks:

[4-ply local Romney knit into hiking socks]

[...and these Southdown 4-ply ones, recently completed]

The orange Romney socks have been hiking before. The pink ones I finished right before this vacation. I knit them up to replace similar (blue) Southdown socks that got shredded on the Appalachian trail last fall. Those blue ones were my first-ever handspun socks, so I thought perhaps the problem was my spinning technique (the socks were not very uniform), and I so made a new pair. Anyways, these two pairs of socks went with me to scandinavia for some serious testing...

My family and I did a 6-day trek on the Laugavegur trail, which is among Iceland's most scenic. It was a "supported hike" and we hiked about 15km per day with day packs (so, lightly loaded) on pretty mountainous terrain (through some amazingly spectacular scenery: if you like to hike, I can recommend this trek), but with excellent trails. Then, while in Norway, we did an 8-day trek through the Hardangervidda. This tour was from hut to hut, and food was supplied, but we did have to carry all our clothing - so I was more heavily loaded than in Iceland. The terrain, while flat, was much more uneven and wetter than in Iceland, which made for very exhausting days and a lot more strain on the feet. I certainly felt them much more on this trip!

I wore each pair of hiking socks for 3-4 days, and then switched to the other pair. (They did get washed between the two hikes.) This sounds gross, but in fact pure wool socks are pretty good about repelling odours. My socks did not stink! My feet stayed warm and dry; not sweaty. I got zero blisters. Both handspun pairs provided excellent cushioning; I did a test day just in the city with a pair of Asivik trekking socks that I purchased in Denmark, and these were nowhere near as comfortable (far less cushioning).

[Asivik brand trekking socks]

OK, so the results:

Both pairs developed holes. The Romney ones after the last day in Norway - so after a ton of abuse - but the Southdown pair after a mere 3 days of hiking in Iceland. I had to darn them basically right away! In other words, the Romney socks outlasted the Southdowns by about a factor of 3, taking into account that the Romneys have seen trail action before. 

So, sadly, the next time I make Southdown socks, I will be adding nylon, at least in the heels and toes. The pure Southdown fiber I can get my hands on (which is from the UK and commercially processed) simply isn't long-lasting enough for my tastes. The Romney is of local provenance and so likely coarser than 30 microns, and this seems to make a big difference. I have not tried UK Romney (yet); that may be finer that what the local shepherds here in BC are providing. The socks are not as springy as those made with Southdown; they feel smoother - and they are sure a lot tougher!

Sheep Stories, volume 8

I visited a small local spining mill a while ago, and have since started to wonder how the different types of commecially-prepared rovings are made.

In that small mill, cleaned fleece was carded to make ropes that could immediately be sold for handspinning, or could be spun by the mill's spinning machine. Or, they could be fed into the pin-drafter. Pin-drafting machines use carded input. They use a couple of rows of really nasty teeth to straighten out the roving, which is then coiled up into a nice-looking rope. The pin-drafted rovings could be sold or spun as well.

I suspect that a lot of small mills in North America have pindrafting like this; they can produce carded preps and pindrafted roving, which some will call “combed” or “worsted”, although it’s not really if you are a purist. Mills like Jagger in Maine, Morro in CA, and the small mills around me here in western Canada have pindrafting equipment of this type, some of it "vintage"! You can handspin a “semi-worsted” yarn from this type of prep but not a “true worsted”, again if you are a stickler for technical details. That's because of the initial carding step. True "worsted" prep goes straight from fleece to combing, no carding at all involved.

The combed prep you get from big distributors like Louet is different. True “worsted” or “topmaking” factories use a combination of “gilling boxes” and combing machines to produce even more aligned fibers. There’s no carding done, not even as a prepatory step, like in pindrafting. I've never seen this type of equipment, and Googling it hasn't made me any wiser in terms of how it functions or what it looks like.

It used to be that only long-fibered wools were combed - in the UK, special "longwool" sheep were bred to support this industry - but nowadays even shorter, crimpier fibers can be combed. Merino is not a longwool, but it is put through this process to give smooth tops.

There are some smaller worsted mills still operating in the UK. I’m hunting for “topmaking” mills in America, but there are not that many. There’s the Maine Top Mill and Chargeurs in Jamestown SC, and that’s all I can find on Google. It seems this was once a thriving industry in the US, but it died out early in the 1900’s.

Finally, here is a cute Popular Science magazine article from 1891, which was written when the wool processing industry in the US was booming. It gives a nice overview of the then-recent developments of the machinery, and how processing was done.

Sock Fiber Review - 3

More fibres I've tried for socks...
 
Polypay

 [polypay sheep]

This is a "modern" dual-purpose breed of sheep, developed in the US in the 1970's. It's a mix of Finnsheep, Dorset, Rambouillet, and Targhee. The roving I got was from a lamb (ie. its first clip!) and therefore probably finer than what an adult sheep would provide, although Polypay sheep are bred to produce "fine" wool. It's commercially combed top, very springy, and reminds me of Southdown - but much finer. It's quite easy to spin. I did a 4-ply cable ply because I'm not convinced that this very fine fiber is going to be as long-lasting as some of the coarser fibers I've been spinning.The resulting yarn is soft, elastic, and very poofy. Now that I'm done with it, I think it's not suitable for socks, it's just so soft! Perhaps adult polypay fleece is stronger, but this is not going to be knit into socks! In fact, I knit a shawl with it, which turned out "meh" - didn't drape as well as I'd like. Very soft, but because of the boing factor, probably best suited to hats, mittens, and casual sweaters.

[ polypay lamb fingering, 4-ply cable-ply ]

Exmoor Blueface

[exmoor blueface sheep]

This fiber I got from my favourite Etsy shop in the UK and is also available here. The sheep - called "mules" - are from an Exmoor Horn ewe and a BFL sire (read my post on sheep breeding for more about mules), and they come from the Exmoor area in Britain (which isn't very big),  in the bottom left hand corner of the country. The Exmoor area been part of the wool trade for centuries, with a variety of breeds (Exmoor, Dartmoor and Cheviot) grazing the "moors" or high, treeless hills. I looked up Exmoor Horn sheep in my copy of The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, and it appears these are meat sheep, not really known for their fiber.  What I got is long-stapled and not as crimpy as the downs breeds, although much curlier and crisper than the Border Leceister and BFL I've tried. It's not as fine as BFL, so I'm thinking it'll be harder wearing. The yarn is definitely more elastic than the Border Leceister - and also the BFL- but not as springy as Southdown. So far the socks are knitting up very nicely, they are cushy and elastic. I'm really liking this. Definitely a breed to add to the sock repertoire!

 [ exmoor blueface sock yarn, 4-ply cable-ply ]

I've been able to get my hands on some 40/60 Exmoor Blueface / Zwartbles blend (thank you HilltopCloud!) and this has also been very nice to work with.  This is a bit coarser and tougher than the Exmoor Blueface above, but it makes lovely hiking socks. Again, something to add to the repertoire.

[ exmoor blueface / zwartbles blend socks, 3-ply chained ]

So far, I've been enjoying my experiments with these dual-purpose breed fibres. It's very elastic "out of the box" and I really enjoy knitting with it. I've not been successful in getting dress-sock grist with this stuff yet (still trying!) but the hiking socks I've knit up feel indestructible!

**update** the  Exmoor/Zwartbles blend (I've used this 2x now, still loving how it spins and knits up!) is prone to felting. It's probably best hand-washed. Sadly, since I refuse to handwash laundry items (maybe in my retirement I will find the time for this activity?), this blend is going to have to come off my list of useful sock fibers...

I Visit A Fiber Fair

Yesterday the Lower Mainland Sheep Producer's Association (LMSPA) held its annual sheep fair at the Cloverdale Fairgrounds, about 30mins south of Vancouver. Took me a while to find the right hall; the Fairgrounds are pretty big and I visitied the Forklift Competition and a horse show (for horses pulling those little racing carts) before finally hitting the right place (first clue: sheep baa-ing!).

The fair is a fairly small event, aimed at showcasing locally produced fleece. This was apparently the first year it has been held in Cloverdale.

There were a few sheep present, including a couple of Shetland sheep, which was interesting because you could really see that they were much smaller than the more modern breeds next to them.

[shetland sheep]

There was a sheep-shearing demo as well, with a skirting table to show how the fleece is trimmed after it has been removed from the sheep.

Most of the fair was given over to bags and bags of raw fleeces, from all kinds of breeds, which had been graded by judges. The bags were all there to be auctioned off, so you could feel the fleece and decide which ones you wanted to bid on. The judging sheets were on the bags so you could see for yourself how the points had been awarded, which I found quite interesting. There was quite a bit of difference between the different bags, even if they were from the same breed of sheep. The starting price for a bag ran from $40 to $80 (for about 10-15 lbs of raw fiber).

[bags and bags of fleece!]

[fleece judging sheet]

I didn't stay for the auction - I don't have the equipment to deal with raw fleece - or the time, to be quite honest - but I love learning about this type of stuff. There was a lady there from the Custom Woolen Mills in Carstairs, AB, there as well, and I chatted with her about her fleece supply. All of what they sell under their own label is from BC, AB, and SK - they do not import fleece from international sources. The different provinces provide different breeds: apparently there is quite a bit of Romney on the west coast (a breed developed in the marshes of the UK, suitable for our climate!!), while in the drier and colder prairie provinces you'll get more of the downs-type and merino-type sheep. They buy from larger suppliers so that they can get consistent supply, and also for lower prices (they could not support a spinning mill on the prices being asked for at this auction!).

There were some vendors with bags of carded and combed roving, some from local supply, so I did pick up 100g of local mainland "GKW" (God Knows What breed), which I hope to spin up for socks. I need to learn how to judge if a specific roving can be spun up fine enough...will have to read up about how to do that.

[local fleece, locally dyed]

Quite an enjoyable way to spend a few hours!

In Which I Visit a Spinning Mill

I live in a big city, but not too far from us is countryside. In that countryside there are many hobby farms (and "real", for-profit farms as well), some of which support small numbers of fleece-producing animals.  There are some sheep, some llamas, and quite a few alpacas (for some reason these appear to be popular here on the west coast).

And, because these animals need to be shorn at least once a year, for health reasons (like clipping their nails), these farmers support the existence of a couple of fiber mills. Not a luxurious existence, by any stretch; more on a "home business in the country" sort of basis.

I went to visit such a mill recently. It was quite a drive into the country, on some back road, to a barn surrounded by chickens.

The mill is run by a lady called Anna. She handles and maintains the machinery (all of it well-used, decades old), grades and washes the fleeces, cards and spins it up, and does some dyeing as well. She has contacts with many local animal-owners, and her business is based on either processing their fleece for a fee and returning it to them, or buying it from them and then selling the resulting product.

The input she gets from the small hobby farms is quite variable. The most popular breed, apparently, is Vancouver Island "GKW" or "God Knows What". There is also a lot of fluff that is not of very high quality: matted, coarse, or weak. Because of the large variability of the input, she has to spend quite some time setting up her machinery for each new batch. This eats into profits in a big way.

Anna washes all her fleeces and picks them over to remove most of the VM (vegetable matter: straw, dirt clumps). This is dirty work.

Then, they go into the carder, which is rather a narrow affair (1.5m or so) with many carding rolls. It produces a fine web of carded fleece.

[the carding machine, input side]

[carded rovings coming off the carder]

The rovings can be sold, or fed directly into the spinner, or can be further processed in the pin-drafter, shown below. This thing is a sort of automatic "comber", with a couple of layers of really nasty teeth that straighten all the fibers out.The pin-drafter is a temperamental beast which takes a lot of time to manage. One has to watch it constantly or it will get plugged.

[pin-drafter. The white fiber is coming out of the teeth and being wound into a spiral]

Finally, here is the spinner, which I found the most interesting. One can vary the speed of the front and back rollers (those 2 rows of orange rubbery wheels near the top of the picture) and thereby change the rate of twist insertion. The drafting length is limited to the distance between the two rollers, so Anna's setup can't handle longwools (longer than about 15 cm). She can play with the machine's settings to get high-twist, fine yarns suitable for weaving and for socks, and also lower-twist, thicker yarns. The spinner doesn't do well on Aran or Bulky weights though. It's really tuned for fine yarns.

[the spinner]

She can spin up to 12 bobbins at once; while I was there she set it up for a 3-ply yarn.  Anna spends most of her time doing carding, as this is the most profitable part of her business. She told me what her hourly wage worked out to be for the spinning machine; it was well below minimum wage. Yikes!

I bought some spun yarns from her (a local oatmeal-coloured DK Romney with a lovely sheen to it, and a Dorset sock blank) and will be knitting them up soon. I learned of a local "fibershed" event coming this spring that I will certainly be attending!