Still on the Alternate Path

...I'm not back to knitting just yet...

My spinning class is in week 6 of 10, and I'm diligently doing my homework. Last week's lesson: spinning sock yarn.

Now, this is not so easy. I resorted to the wheel to get it done fast enough (in one week), because my spindling isn't that fast (although I do find I produce better yarn with it - I am able to fix the mistakes much more easily).

We got to choose and then blend (using a drum-carder) different colours and types of fleece for socks. There was lots to choose from, all dyed up by our teacher (who has a fantastic eye for colour!). I picked a teal/green colourway of Blue-faced Leicester and some Wensleydale. The latter has really long hair, feels super-strong, and is quite shiny. It is not soft! Neither of these fibers are superwash.

There was merino and some silk as well, but I am not a fan of these fibers for socks - the merino doesn't wear as well as I'd like, and silk....well, looks beautiful, but after a few washes I've always regretted putting it on my feet. Ends up looking like plastic frizzing out of the yarn.


Anyways, it takes a lot of fluff to make a pair of socks: one shopping bag stuffed full:

 [100 g of fluff for socks]

My carding job isn't the best. Apparently I chased the fluff through too fast, and created little blebs (nepps), which I will have to pick out. Yech. Some people find a kind of "zen" in carding, but not me. Once you start spinning though, you realize that "fiber prep" is a whole art to itself, one that takes just as much time!

Spinning from the carded cloud requires attention. I have to try to get as thin as possible, and also keep it consistent. It's not as easy as spinning "roving", which is already mostly linearly aligned. Apparently one can also "comb" fluff, pull it through a button's hole (I kid you not, this is a special tool called a diz), and then that aligns it into those ropes one usually finds in the stores and on etsy. I'm sure that combing 100g of this fuzz isn't a speed job, either. No wonder they started trying to mechanize this process...

On this wheel, I've already discovered that I'm "out of speed"...to get the amount of twist I would like (which is quite a bit), I've put this puppy on the smallest whorl and I'm treadling like the dickens to get thin singles. Not shown in the picture: those nepps that show up as thick blobs in my nice thin string!I divided the fluff in half and spun up 2 bobbins, so I could double-ply it. This took me several hours to do.

 

[2 spindles of singles]

Looks thin, but I don't think it is thin enough to triple-ply, which is actually what I'd like!

The wheel came with a "lazy kate" to hold multiple bobbins while plying, but there is no tensioning mechanism. So I've laid the thing on its side on the couch and am using pillows to prevent the bobbins from unwinding too quickly. I've put myself and the wheel about 5 feet away from the couch+pillows so there's plenty of room for the singles to "even out" before I ply them. Seems to be working, although again, this is taking hours. The resulting yarn is very, very strong though. I can't pull it apart, unlike commercial sock yarn which one can break with a good tug. I'm hoping this translates into excellent wearing properties!

[double-plying the singles]

When I'm done I will have to measure how much I've got for my 100g (I'm aiming for 400m - that'll give me sock-weight). I'll do that by counting the winds on my niddy-noddy...actually my body-noddy (wind it over my foot & knee, which gives me 1.25m per wind). I don't own a big enough niddy-noddy...

As for spindling, I'm finding that it is hard to get thin enough using a drop-spindle also. One tends to get pretty wary of going thin, because of the "drop" thing - the yarn breaks and there goes the spindle! The more you spin, the heavier the spindle gets, and the worse the problem.

Supported spindling lets me get a lot thinner right away and you don't have the weight problem. I will have to practise this more!

Hard Left!

I'm taking a spinning class!

I'm lucky enough to live near a community center that has a big fiber-arts room, complete with spinning wheels, spindles, and looms of all descriptions. They offer weaving, spinning, and dyeing classes at very reasonable rates.

Now, I'm not really looking for a new hobby, but I would like to learn more about how yarn is made...including where it comes from and all the steps involved in producing it. It certainly is not my goal to "never buy commercially produced yarn", but I'm thinking it could be fun to do-it-myself once in a while. One thing is already pretty clear though: spinning your own yarn is NOT a way to get it cheaper!

So...

I've had 2 lessons so far, and have taken home a "loaner" spinning wheel:

[Louet Julia spinning wheel]

I'm not too interested in learning how to spin on this machine, for some reason the "low-tech" option of hand-spindling appeals more. For starters, spinning wheels are incredibly expensive - the cheapest I've been able to see online is about $300. The one I've got on loan is closer to $500, and if you want something that folds up so you can take it on the bus, then you're going to be shelling out $700. Yikes. This is waaaaay beyond my budget. And learning enough about these things to venture into the second-hand or antiques market is out of scope for me...

So I'm sticking to sticks:

[top to bottom: Tibetan supported spindle, Russian supported spindle, 2 top-whorl drop spindles]

I've amassed a few spindles: drop spindles (sticks with a hook and a whorl at the top) and a couple of supported spindles. These things are much cheaper - the drop spindles are fairly commonly available - I've seen them at some LYS's - and will run you ~$30 each. The supported spindles are harder to come by, but I got mine online, custom made, for a similar price. There are some truly beautiful pieces to be had on etsy...

Spinning isn't very complicated...especially if you do it on a spindle, the process is pretty straightforward. Grab some fluff, pull it out into a thin rope, add twist with either a wheel or spindle, and wind it up. The advantage of the wheel is that the twisting and winding are done in one step. In spindling, you do it in two steps. For newbies like me, it's nice to break it down into separate steps because I can fix my mistakes.

The trick, of course, is consistency. My first week of spinning consisted of producing a lot of what can best be euphemistically described as art yarn:

[art yarn!]

Learning to pull a consistent amout of fluff out, while operating the spinning wheel or the spindle, is not so easy. I can consistently produce blobby stuff that's overtwisted in parts and undertwisted in others!

[overtwisted thin parts, undertwisted thick blobs]

This kind of yarn is really hard to knit. Looks nice on the skein but I find it hard to use effectively in knitting without ending up with "clown barf". Maybe it would look better woven? No...don't get me started on yet another hobby!!

Anyways, after a week of concentrated spindling, I'm getting a bit more consistent:

[spindled, double-ply yarn...]

...and my couch and pants are coverted in hair!

My goal is to be able to make fingering-weight yarn that's consistent enough for a decent pair of mittens or something. The above isn't quite there...but I do see already that the plied yarn I make seems a lot stronger than commercial yarn. I can't break it easily. I suppose this is a good thing.

I've tried (and hence learned about) a couple of different methods of fluff-prep: carded batt and combed roving (or roping). I find the latter much easier to spin with as it's already in "linear form". Making it by hand is quite involved though, as I've been able to learn from the InterWebz. Wondering about how this is done, both commercially and by hand, has led to me wonder where, locally, people with fluff-producing animals, get their fluff prepped...and I've found a couple of places that run basically antique equipment...Birkeland Brothers up the valley here in Abbotsford, and the Custom Woolen Mills near Calgary, AB. These fascinate me - there is so much social history here! A lot of the industrial revolution was focused around mechanizing textile production - and if you've tried spinning you'll know why!! Since my working life revolves around similar industrial processes (paper mills) I'm fascinated by the fiber equivalent. Keeping a machine like this in operation is no easy task, and making money while doing it is even harder. 

I've also tried a bunch of different sheep types: merino, corriedale, and shetland. The corriedale is nice - soft and pretty easy to spin. The merino is a little harder to spin (I think it's a shorter hair) but is even softer. Kind of like the white bread of fiber. The shetland is easy to spin - nice long hairs - but very sheddy and rather rough. I like the colours, but this is outwear-only fiber. Call it the brown bread of fiber.

[spindled shetland]

[yeah, it's underplied.]

Learning about different sheep types is interesting, too. Makes one think about what kind of breeds go into our woolen clothing (and our current fixation on "merino"...), and also where the sheep actually live. Are there even any sheep in BC that are used for fiber? I know of lots of alpacas and llamas in the Cowichan Valley and on the gulf islands...

Makes me want to start a 100-mile-diet for fiber goods...

**update** just found another small fiber-processor : the Gulf Island's Spinning Mill. Looks to be a co-operative which processes local fibers (and has a small, modern setup).

Colourwork Charts in Exel

I sometimes make colourwork charts in Exel. Once you've sized all the little cells in the worksheet to be square, you've got a blank sheet of graph paper. You can colour each individual cell by using the little paintbucket tool and picking the colour you want.

A nice thing to be able to use is the format painter, which is that little paintbrush in the top lefthand clipboard menu:

[format painter is the little paintbrush tool just to the right of Paste]

This little guy is genius. If you select an area in your worksheet, clicking this button copies everything about it (including colours!) and allows you to copy it somewhere else by clicking it again.

Mostly, your designs will be simple repeating motifs. So using this tool allows you to quickly fill a whole row (or page!) with your design:

1. select your design element
2. click that little paintbrush
3. move the cursor to where you want the design to be copied and click again
4. if you want to copy again, immediately repeat step 2 and 3 - that is, click the paintbrush again, and reposition to your new location. You'll see how this works pretty quickly.

...nice...

Now, sometimes, I want to see how my beautiful chart would look in other colours. But, I don't want to have to click every darn cell on the page with a new colour, nor do I want to reinvent the design from scratch in a new colour scheme...there's got to be a way of substituting colours in the whole design! I mean, computers are supposed to be good at this, right?

All righty then, google to the rescue!

And sure enough...Here is a writeup telling you how to replace all instances of black with red, for instance - and this works for Exel 2002 all the way to 2010. So you can go from one colour scheme to the next with only a few button clicks...

[go from brown/grey/black...]

[...to blue/red/pink!]

Basically you use the "find and replace" functionality of Exel. There's a format button on the find and replace tool (use control-H to bring it up), on both the find thingy and the replace field. Click that, and then you'll see that there is a  fill tab. This is where you select your colours...Exel will then dutifully replace all instances of your old colour with the new one.

....Aaaah. Genius....time to crack open my copy of Alice Starmore's knitting chart book (which is all in black&white!)...

Now, if you are going to be doing this on a grand scale for your next Fair Isle sweater design, I'd suggest you start with a colour scheme based on the standard pallette and save that. Use it by copying it and then start modifying the colours. It's a pain to try to match non-standard colours, so for each colour variant it's easiest to start with that standard pallette again.

Loyesaum Supplies

In my quest to recreate the traditional Setesdal embroidered cuffs and collar, I'm trying to get together all the required supplies. Here in Vancouver, a city of some 2 million, you'd think it'd be a breeze. Not so!

I can find the fabric (wool) pretty easily; I've managed to source some nice, blazer-weight 100% wool fabric in black and a nice wine red colour (no green available). And I've got some nice black cotton flannel for a lining.

But, trying to find the right embroidery "yarn", and so-called "waste canvas" is harder. Michael's craft store is useless in this regard; you need a specialty needlework supply shop. So off to the Interwebz again...and there is a bewildering supply of material...what thread count do I need for the canvas? 8.5, 14, or 18? What type of crewel wool? Or do I get Persian wool? DMC? Tapestry yarn? Can I use fingering (knitting yarn) instead? Uh-oh.

This is harder than I thought...so here's my thinking: I'd like to get 3-ply wool so I can divide it for the finer detailing. This means: persian. Hunting around, I find that this stuff means about a 13-count canvas. So, here goes, I'm just going to order from this online store. I'll pick a pretty basic pallette: red, yellow, green, blue, white, black, plus pink and purple. I figure any additional stuff I can fill in with locally-available DMC embroidery floss.

On another front, a friendly knitter on Ravelry who actually lives in the Setesdal has figured out that indeed, their local Husfliden shop does sell kits, and will ship internationally. So I just emailed them as well!! It's truly a global village that we inhabit. I love it!

...stay tuned for more progress!

Center-pull Balls

I always rewind any wool I buy. Naturally this is required with hanks and skeins, but I even rewind the ones that are already in ball-form (usually they aren't really center-pull). For use in my kit bag, I need a center-pull ball that doesn't need to turn itself around in order to deliver its little line of loveliness to me.

If you are going to knit two-at-a-time socks, you'll need 2 center-pull balls, of course.

The good news is, in order to create a center-pull ball, you don't need any equipment. Other than your hands! But, that means you have to finish the job all at once, and you can't stop halfway to answer the phone or cook dinner. So be warned.

Here's how to do it, equipment free. This video doesn't show what to do with the hank/skein, though. My advice: hang it around the back of a chair so it doesn't turn into a tangled mess as you're winding it off. Or, sit on a chair and lay it across your lap, with your knees poking through the center of the hank. Or better yet, recruit someone to stretch the skein over their two hands to help you out.

If you have a 100gm hank or skein that you are trying to divide into 2 balls, invest in a cheap kitchen scale ($25 or less). Weigh the wool before starting, and then periodically reweigh to see if you've got halfway yet. Beats counting windings.

After a few tries at this, I quickly discovered that I wanted a yarn swift to hold the skein and turn it, so I didn't have to flap my arms around the chair or my knees. (I could never convince my husband or kids to volunteer to hold the skein...) So that's technical improvement #1. There are lots of different yarn swift models, from the expensive-but-nice "umbrella" types to cheap homemade ones. Google is your friend here. They all work just fine.

[my fairly inexpensive swift. Notice I use clothespins to keep the hank from liftig off.]

Then you can invest in a nostepinne (or a thick stick or a toilet roll) to replace your thumb as a winding tool. I had my father make me one for christmas, and I really like it. Somehow there's pleasure in learning how to use old-fashioned equipment, isn't there? Here's how to use it.

If money is no object, you can spend big bucks and get yourself a ball-winder.

[ball winder from http://www.woolydesigns.com/]

This is great if you wind large quantities of wool; it produces beautiful flat "cakes". And here's how to do that...I must admit that I do not have one of these. I'm not sure I need one.

Yarn Yardage

Since I knit a lot of socks, I'm always looking for new wool to try. I find it hard, even in a big city like Vancouver, to find decent sock wool, so I do a lot of online shopping. I have learned to read those "yardage" labels to get a better feel for how yarn will knit up. Here's what I've learned.

Any yarn purveyor worth your while should be able to tell you the weight per unit length of their yarn. For factory-made commercial yarns it'll be on the label in units like yd/oz or m/g or sometimes, yd/g. For smaller yarn producers from the internet, they sometimes give you the numbers in yards or m per ball (2 oz or 50g) or hanks or skeins (4 oz or 100g).

Given how you like to knit, set some limits as to what yarns will and won't work for your style and preferred equipment. Start with your favourite yarn, figure out it's "yardage" in m/g, and then use this as a benchmark for yarn shopping.

For example, I prefer to knit on 2mm needles, and I love Scheepjes Invicta. This wool is labelled "210m / 50g", which comes out to 4.2m/g. I also know that Kroy sock wool, which is really at the limit of what I like to knit on 2mm's, is 152m/50g, which works out to 3.04m/g. So this is my "hard limit" for sock wool.

Now, I also have to be able to figure out these limits in "American" units, which are yd/oz or sometimes yd/g. I find, thanks to many unit converters on the interwebs, that
1 yd = 0.9m, and
1oz = 28.3 g, and so
31 yd/oz = 1 m/g

So, my "hard limit" works out to be:
3 m/g = 3.33 yd/g  = 167 yd/50g (ball) or 333 yd/100 g (skein)
3 m/g = 93 yd/oz = 186 yd/2 oz (ball) or 372 yd/4 oz (skein)

anything that doesn't have at least this yardage is not going to work for me on 2mm needles. For thin, everyday socks, I won't use anything that comes in at less than 400 yd/100 g.


I've figured out:
Knitpicks Risata: 3.6 m/g (with elastic)
Knitpicks Stroll: 4.2 m/g (but not tightly plied, so "squooshy" and knits a bit fatter and floppier)
Lang Jawoll (3 ply) : 4.2 m/g (tight ply)
Scheepjes Invicta: 4.2 m/g (tight ply)
Malabrigo Sock: 4.0 m/g (tight ply)
Regia Stretch Color : 3.9 m/g (with elastic)

These are yarns I've tried and work well for me.

With experience, I'm starting to get a better feel for the effect of plying as well. This isn't on the label and you have to actually hold the product in your hand to see it. Plying describes how tightly the wool is twisted during spinning. Knitpicks Stroll line is not very tightly plied, and so it is "soft" or "squooshy". This makes the wool less springy, less elastic, than some more tightly plied products such as Invicta or Malabrigo. I'm not sure it affects the wearing characteristics, but it sure has an effect on how "floppy" the sock feels. Since I don't like baggy or slouchy socks, I tend to prefer more tightly plied yarns.

I've tried yarns with elastic in them - KnitPicks Risata and Regia Stretch are two examples - and they hold their shape beautifully. These yarns can be "hard", and almost artificial-feeling though, especially the Regia. But I've found they have wonderful stitch definition (beautiful for cables) because they have no "halo" - they are not fuzzy. And they wear like iron! They're indestructible and they keep looking good, wash cycle after wash cycle.