From Sheep to Shawl

I've had my spinning wheel for almost 45 years now, but haven't done any spinning for a while. I also have a lovely fleece that's been waiting for me to work with it. So...

First I dyed some of the fleece. I used a crockpot and did three different pots of dyes, using regular red and yellow grocery store food coloring, vinegar, and water. One pot was for red, the second was yellow, and the third a mixture of the two colors for orange. Here are the yellow and orange batches after being carded and piled into baskets. 

I also discovered a bag of blue wool from the same fleece that I had previously acid dyed. Starting with the red dye batch (which turned out pink), I carded some of that, then blended and carded some of it with orange, then carded pure orange, then blended and carded some orange with yellow, then carded pure yellow, then blended and carded yellow with the blue, and then carded up the rest of the blue. That sounds confusing even to me. 

I ended up with these seven yarn colors: Pink, pink/orange, orange, orange/yellow, yellow, yellow/blue, and blue. Here is everything all spun up and ready for knitting.

Using my current favorite pattern called Easy Peazy Shawlette, I used most of the yarn to knit this small shawl, which will be the perfect size when we finally get some cooler weather. In this photo it has been washed and pinned while damp to the bed for blocking. Just out of the frame, an invisible Henry the cat is waiting to snuggle up on the damp shawl for a nap. 

Here is a close up shot so that you can see some of the color variations. Henry liked the pink part best and spent a couple of hours sleeping on it and helping it to dry.

Spinning Kai: All Done!

See the complete series of posts on spinning Kai Llama's fiber, from fleece to yarn. 

After spinning, plying, and skeining the llama fiber, I washed the skeins gently in warm, soapy water. The thing to remember with wool, and presumably with llama, is to avoid agitation in the water and to keep the water temperature constant when moving the skeins from soapy water to rinse water. The skeins may be very gently squeezed to remove water, but must never be wrung out. As a matter of fact, if you want to make felt, you just alternate hot and cold water and agitate a lot: To keep yarn fluffy and intact, just do the opposite. 

The damp skeins are then hung up to dry. Single strand yarn must be weighted at this point to help set the twist; with plied yarn weighting isn't necessary. 

The Kai yarn looking very decorative while drying

A bunch of Kai

When dry, the skeins can be twisted with the ends tucked in. I have labeled each one with the yardage. I wanted to share some alpaca and soft wool with Danni, so I am also sending along the skeins below.

Plied alpaca on the left, very soft wool singles on the right

The llama, alpaca, and wool yarns are all boxed up, addressed, and ready to go down to the Post Office and off to Danni in Oregon. I can't tell you how relieved I am to have this project completed! Besides that, I just discovered that this will be my 1000th post on The Zees Go West--what a great feeling of accomplishment!

Polishing Off the Projects: The Log Cabin Blanket

Log Cabin Blanket
Knit with yarn left over from Knit for Kids sweaters

A couple of weeks ago I woke in the night to a feeling that I hadn't experienced since retiring: I was worried about getting through all the stuff that I needed to do. I had made promises to other people and to myself and was feeling pressured about getting things done. 


In the morning, I glanced at my horoscope and this is what I saw: 

"You have a lot to get done, but you will get it done. 

Simply focus on one project after another."

Well! I never look at horoscopes, let alone let them guide my days, but this one was just perfect. Never mind that it could apply to anyone, especially during the holidays when we all feel a little pressure of one sort or another. 

I got myself back in order after seeing those words. After all, I am retired, and my time is my own. I take on projects because I like to do them, and I have convinced my family that gifts that are received on dates other than Christmas or birthdays are not late gifts, but wonderful surprises. There is no need to get in a swither!

Since that lovely Horoscope Day, I have lined up the projects and finished them off, one by one. I have remembered to enjoy the journey and to stop fretting about the destination and, in doing so, have found that one project after another has been completed. The llama fiber is all spun and goes into the mail today; the log cabin blanket has been assembled and is keeping me warm; socks have been knitted; the dining room has been painted, curtains have been sewn, and so on.  What doesn't get done today will eventually get done. 

My horoscope promised me, and it must be so! 

Spinning Kai: Plying and Skeining

This is the process of spinning Kai llama's fiber, continued. You can see all the previous steps here.

Once the yarn is spun, it winds around a bobbin. When each bobbin is full, I replace it on the spinning wheel with an empty one. The full ones go on this holder so that the single strands can be plied, or twisted together. The strands are plied in the opposite direction that they were spun, so if the wheel was turning clockwise to spin the single strands, I turn it counterclockwise to ply the strands together. 

In this instance, I am making two-ply yarn, but three or more strands can be plied together. Most commercial knitting yarn, of the sort that I used to make little kid sweaters, is four-ply. 

In the photo below, I am controlling the amount of twist as the two strands are plied together. 

In the next photo, you can see (although the focus is poor) how the strands go together.

Next, the plied yarn is wound off the bobbin on the wheel and onto the niddy noddy, a nice old-fashioned tool that holds the yarn taut while it is being wound into a skein. I measured the length of one wrap around and found that it was about one yard, so I counted as I wound to get a very approximate measurement for the whole skein. I wanted Kai's yarn to end up in 50-yard skeins, but there were a few odd ones from the end of each bobbin.

Once the skein is made, the beginning and the end are tied together, and the skein is secured in several places with some string. Then the skeins are all ready to be washed. Stay tuned--we are getting near the end of the process!

Spinning Kai: Spinning on the Wheel At Last

For the previous posts on the Spinning Kai project, click here.

It seems that this project, spinning up a bunch of llama fiber for Danni in Oregon, has taken far longer than it should have. Of course, life has intervened, and it wasn't just a matter of spending a straight week working on this pile of fiber. There were trips to be taken, friends to help move, blankets to knit, people to entertain, dinner parties to give and to go to, and so on. In other words, this project has been done in classic New Mexican Time--slow and easy. 

At last, all the fiber was picked and carded. I had split the fleece that Danni sent into two parts, half for Danni and half for me. When Danni's part was all carded into rolags (fluffy rolls of fiber), there were four or five baskets full of them. Here is part of one basketful in the photo below. This was before Keeker the cat decided to take a cozy nap in the basket. Ah, well, never mind. Kee enjoyed herself and the fiber was no worse for the experience. 

The spinning wheel, which I had heedlessly stored out in the garage, needed weeks of coddling and oiling before it consented to work again. Never again will I treat it so carelessly: It will live right here inside the thick adobe walls of our little desert house--no more parching and baking out in the garage. 

At first, when I couldn't get the old spinning wheel to work at all, I imagined that I might have to buy another wheel--very expensive now--in order to keep my promise to Danni. Then I thought I might have to use a Navajo spindle and do the whole thing the really, really slow way. However, the situation resolved itself as so many things do--I oiled and oiled and oiled every part of the spinning wheel, and when nothing worked, just left it for a while. Amazingly, when I returned to the wheel a few days ago, I found that with a few quick adjustments, it worked just as well as it ever did. 

Although the wheel isn't spinning yet in the photo above, you can see that I have attached the end of the rolag to the leader yarn, and have begun to draft it--pulling the rolag back and back, and back some more, feeding out the fibers in a "V," then allowing the spinning of the wheel to apply twist, which evens out along the length of the fiber. When it is all fairly even, I let it feed in through the orifice and around the bobbin.

It's a soothing thing to do, once you have the hang of it. Your foot rhythmically treadles the wheel which spins around, and you alternately pull the fiber back and feed it in. In my younger days, I found it very relaxing. Now I find that after a few hours I get a little achy, but it's still a pleasurable thing to do.

Now that all the fiber has been spun, in the next few posts I will show you the final steps in this process--plying, skeining, washing, and setting the twist. My sister keeps observing that it is ridiculously labor-intensive to make yarn this way, and she is right. However, it's a wonderful thing to know how to do.

Here is a very quick video that shows a newer version of the Ashford Traditional Wheel, which arrives as a kit, is put together, then put to work. The spinner in the video uses the short draw technique of spinning, where the hands of the spinner are never very far apart.

I use the long draw method, demonstrated by the spinner in this video.

Hand Spinning: The Spindle

Georgia asked in a recent comment about "the spindle" and where that might be located on a spinning wheel. This is the very question that I wanted answered when I first took spinning lessons, because I had been brought up on those fairy tales where the heroine pricks her finger on a spindle. When I was a child I had no idea what that might be. I think now that I had wrongly pictured a distaff, which is the tool (often fastened to the spinning wheel) that holds the unspun fibers.

I'd like to answer Georgia by showing you all some visuals that demonstrate the evolution of the spindle. The first is a video showing a drop spindle and how it is used.

Here is a photo of my Navajo spindle, which is an elongated version of the drop spindle that is used while supported: The spinner sits in a chair or on the ground, the end of the long stick rests on the ground next to her while she rolls the other end across her thigh. Click here to see a photo of a Navajo woman spinning.

In this photo, we have turned the Navajo spindle sideways, so that you will see how such spindles eventually evolved into large walking wheels, where the fiber is spun off the end of the horizontal spindle, then walked back and wound on, as shown in the following very elegant video of a walking or great wheel in use.

Later spinning wheels were designed to enclose the spindle and surround it with a bobbin, which was fed through an orifice at the front of the wheel. I will show you more about that next week.

I hope this make things clearer. By the way, the carding of Kai's fleece is continuing and I am making great progress. Next week we spin!

Spinning Kai: Carding

For all the posts on Spinning Kai, click on the "Hand Spinning" tab at the top of the blog under the header photo.

I've heard it in the comments, in emails, and on Facebook: Some of you have been asking about the next installment of Spinning Kai. Here it is, and I hope you will forgive me for taking so long to post it. Hey, what am I saying? This is a long and picky process. 

Once the fiber was washed and then teased out, it needed to go onto the cards in a process called charging. That just means I spread a handful of the teased fiber across the card that I hold in my left hand. I was taught to mark the cards "left" and "right" and to always use them that way, so I do. 

The left card is held in my left hand and rests on my left knee, and my right hand moves the right card across the left one to brush, detangle, and straighten the fiber. In the first photo, the fiber has been carded with both brushes a couple of times. That fiber sitting between the cards in the photo is there to remind you what the teased fibers looked like before carding. After four or five good brushings, the fiber is transferred to the right carder, then the brushing continues. I was taught to transfer the brushed fiber at least four times. 

The point of all this carding is to get the fibers going in the same direction; pretty much the same results you would want when brushing out your own hair. Here it has been transferred back and forth, and back and forth again.

There is a delicate little move you make to get the fiber unstuck from the wire pins, then you roll up the combed fiber into a rolag. I am finding that wool rolags are easier to make into clearly formed, neat rolls; it seems to me that the llama fiber is formed differently from wool. An extreme close up of a bit of wool fiber would show overlapping scales that tend to stick together (thus the tendency of wool to felt). I'm just guessing here, but handling this llama fiber makes me guess that it is more smoothly formed and that it also has less crimp than wool fibers.

I just checked my theory about the fibers and it appears that I was right. You can look at a microscopic comparison of alpaca, llama, and sheep fibers here: http://www.britishllamasociety.org/Activities/Fibre/Fibre.html.

Anyway, that's my excuse for these wobbly-looking rolags. They will serve their purpose, however, which is to give the hand spinner (me!) a well organized handful of fiber with the hairs parallel to each other and at right angles to the orifice of the spinning wheel.

My goodness! It doesn't seem so technical when I actually go through the process. I needed to look at the Wikipedia article on carding to help me pull together the description of and explanation for what my hands do so automatically--it's a little bit like being asked to write down a recipe when you've been making it without thought or measurement all your life. When I think of it, I've been doing this process with fiber for almost 40 years!

Here is a basket of the rolags that have been made so far. It will be a while before the next installment on Spinning Kai, since there is still plenty of teased fiber in the inelegant garbage bag (below) yet to be carded. It may not look like that much, but it will make a lot of rolags.

My Spinning Wheel

While we're waiting for me to tease the rest of Kai Llama's fiber (see Spinning Kai: Teasing) and get it ready to spin, I thought you might like to see my spinning wheel.  It's an Ashford Traditional Single-Drive kit wheel, made in New Zealand.

Although I specify "single-drive," I believe that was the only kind of drive available back when I ordered it in 1975 or so. Now there are lots more choices, and even the traditional wheel that is sold today looks a bit different in design.

I assembled this wheel completely by myself, and that made me feel very proud, as it was the first time I had ever attempted such a project. You can see the assembly directions here. By putting it together, I handled every piece and understood its function, and how it was connected to the next piece. That knowledge came in handy when I later needed to adjust or tune up the wheel.

Way back then, the kit cost $95.00 delivered to the closest spinning and weaving shop, which was in Puyallup, Washington. I see that unfinished wheels cost between four and five hundred dollars now!

One of the things I have always loved about spinning is how the names of the parts of the wheel hearken back to another long-ago time: The maidens, the mother-of-all, and the footman. You can see a diagram of a wheel and its parts here.

If you are thinking of getting a wheel, I would recommend that you buy a kit and put the wheel together yourself. Another suggestion: Don't store the wheel out in a hot, dry garage like I did. It's been a real job to get it back into working order after it was exposed to such extreme temperatures! Never again...

Spinning Kai: Teasing

Once Kai Llama's beautiful fiber was washed (see Spinning Kai: Washing the Fiber) and had dried nicely in our hot New Mexico sunshine, it was time for some teasing. 

Teasing any kind of animal fiber by hand is slow business. As you can see in the photo above, a lock of fiber is grasped and the single fibers are pulled away from the lock, several at a time. When done correctly, most of the inevitable bits of dirt and vegetable matter will fall out and you will be left with a lovely pile of fiber that is ready to card.

My sister (aka Auntie Bucksnort) is both patient and meticulous, and her fiber teasing is next to perfection. I'm afraid that I am impatient and eager to get on to the next steps, so my pile of teased fibers always has some "stuff" still in it.

Never fear, there will be other chances to get the last little bits out--first, when carding; and then again when doing the actual spinning of fiber into yarn.

You can tell Gracie is concentrating on doing the best job possible

Gracie came along to help out. She is kneading the clean unteased fibers; the teased mass of airy stuff in the basket in the background is ready for the next step that I will be showing you: The Carding.  Give me a few days to finish the teasing, and I'll be glad to show you how that is done.

Spinning Kai: Washing the Fiber

This is Kai after her haircut. I swiped this photo from Danni's blog here.

A couple of weeks ago I showed you the luscious chocolate-colored Kai Llama fiber from Danni's place in Oregon (see Getting Ready to Spin). I've been working away, preparing the fleece for spinning. It's so nice to be able to work on it outside, because it can be a messy job.

Here is the fleece, just as it came from Kai.
Danni offered to sort the fleece, but I said to just send the whole thing.

On our hot summer days the water straight from the hose is nice and warm.
The fiber got a short soaking.

This mesh chair was a handy place to dry the fiber, since it could drip on the patio

The next step, hand picking or teasing, takes patience and a lot of time. I will show you what that looks like in a few days.

Getting Ready to Spin

When Danni at Critter Farm in Oregon said she was looking for someone who might like to spin some fiber from her llama, Kai, I jumped right in to say that I would love to try.

I am a spinner from way back--I used to be co-owner of a spinning and weaving shop in Washington state. I've been dragging my spinning wheel around with me as we've moved from state to state, but I haven't used it much in recent years.

Now that I have a bunch of lovely fibers, it's time to dust off the wheel and get to work.

From Kai, the llama

The first two photos show Kai's fiber (it isn't actually called wool, as I understand it), straight from the llama. Lots of things will happen to it before it gets spun, and I will document the process in upcoming posts. As you can see, the fiber is made up of longer hairs and a soft undercoat. 

Kai's fiber from underneath

Some time back, Beez brought me some wool and some alpaca from a customer of his whose business was processing wool. The bags he rescued had been tossed aside and were going to be thrown out. I'm sure this was because they didn't match up with the large batch of wool that was being run through the mill. Although they were rejected by the wool mill, they are perfect for a hand spinner.

Alpaca

The alpaca is a lovely toasty shade, a little lighter in color than the Kai fiber. 

White wool

The wool is fine, long fibered, and clean. Of course, "clean" is relative with all newly-shorn animal fibers, and the first step will be to pick through and remove vegetable matter, dirt, and other goodies. Then the fibers will be sorted, washed, teased, and carded before they can be spun. I'll be glad to share the experience with you. 

All three together