Using up leftovers

This month (September) we experimented with 4ply cable yarns for our online Experimental Spinning session. Four ply cable yarns are basically two singles overplyed together,  twice, then the two resulting overplyed yarns are plyed together in the opposite direction.

A video that was recommended on the day is Wool n' Spinning presents Cabled Yarn by Rachel Smith. Lots of good information and hints.

I decided to use up some leftovers and came up with these yarns.

I was quite happy, so did a bit of a deep dive into my leftovers and came up with these:

And I finished with these yarns:

I made mostly 4ply cable yarns, but I did have a S spun single that I added to the end bits of my plying creating a few 3ply yarns. All sorts of matching yarns. They do need washing as the singles I've used are quite old.

I'm very happy with all of these and they'll end up being used in the mitred square rug that I've been working on. I've stopped that for the moment as I've run out of little bits of handspun yarn and I really should be moving on to other projects. It has been a bit of a distraction, however pleasant, and I should get on with Stuart's jumper and weaving the plastic rugs for my residency in Ivanhoe.

 

August Experimental Spinning - Fractal yarns

Fractal Spinning is another way of spinning a multi-coloured top to get a mix of colours. It's based on the idea of fractals and indicates an ever diminishing division of colours. 

I decided I'd like to see what happens when you use the primary colours, red, yellow and blue. This should be bright but I was hoping for some optical colour mixing. I had the separate colours and created a run that consisted of the three colours four times.

I split it all in half and spun the first half. Then spun further splitting the remains and spinning half until I had this left for the last sequence.

Which gave me the following two bobbins, which I then plyed together.

A fun and gorgeous yarn, not as much colour mixing but not as starkly bright. 

For further reading have a look at the Schacht Spindle Company website (www.schachtspindle.com) for articles by Benjamin Krudwig exploring this topic.

Also suggested by members of Experimental Spinning:

1. Spinning a Rainbow-Fantastic Three Ply fractal ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIqr00PwvRA )
2. Fractal Spinning Preep and how to - craftymisfits Tour De Fleece Weekly challenge ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTYEZwVSIxo )

Five on Friday - what on earth have I been doing?

Well, I have been overseas, and yes, there will be photos, but I'm still sorting them out!

Here are my Five on Friday. I have started working well this week and am feeling active, we arrived back at the end of July after 6 weeks away and it's taken 4 weeks (or more!) to get my act together.

From the last experimental spinning, where we worked with Blending boards, I've spun up this, and it's nearly finished! We're at experimental this Saturday (the 5th) where we'll be spinning embroidery threads and the rooms will be buzzing with activity as the Handweavers and Spinners Guild has a Spinning Open day from 11 till 3pm.

I need to practice my weaving and thought I'd try something simple! A spaced warp with a separate warp for a little bit of seersucker. Warp looks good.

Actually weaving very nicely, except the seersucker is just a softness, rather than a bubble. Maybe when it's washed. 

I'm not supposed to buy anything this year, but couldn't resist the amazing fleece from Andyle when the Black and Coloured Sheepbreeders came to the guild. One of the few meetings I attended. It's been sitting in my car.

Thought I'd better spin up said fleece. It's gorgeous, happy so far.

 And I did fit a bit of knitting in as well.

Lace at Experimental

I always love the challenges that each session of Experimental Spinning brings, this time lace was on the agenda, courtesy of an article in the latest edition of Ashford's magazine, 'The Wheel'. It described a method of add those odd bits of lace to your spinning in quite a wild way. Not being a lace girl, cutting up lace seemed like an appropriate thing to do!

We had plenty of lace with a donation from our craft outlet volunteer, and lots from all our stashes.

The first part involved cutting up lace, taking lengths of wool top and threading the top through the lace.

You end up with a pile of lace and tops, like this!

Spinning isn't difficult, or slow, though having my lovely poly wheel with  big hooks certainly helps and even with that, there is some lace that is stiffer than others and does get caught. As I was going to ply this with a fine single, I hoped I could smooth those pieces of lace that had moved or were scrunched up too much, as I plyed.

That proved the case and the plying was done quite nicely and I ended up with yarn that is really quite sweet!

The lessons learnt....

I think that because the pieces of lace were quite short, when I plied they tended to keep sticking out rather than get wrapped. I think that the longer pieces would have been more twisted from the spinning, making the plying easier.
 

For further experimentation:

Trying to get the pieces of lace closer together, for that full-on lace look!

Dyeing would be interesting! All those different fibres!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this yarn, but it was fun! For such an over the top look, it's not difficult or particularly slow.

Plastic spinning

As I look forward to Experimental Spinning on Saturday, I realise I haven't even said anything about last month, and, we had such alot of FUN!

It was a plastic month. I've spun with plastic before and got some great results.

This time I had an ulterior motive as I wanted to have a go at combining some stashed acrylic yarn. Yes, I'm the person who everyone gives it to, and, I just can't say no.....

Even to pink!....

What I wanted to do was spin plastic around the acrylic and see if the colour would show through but be a bit more subdued. The result is not too bad...

Now, I hear you all ask, what are you going to do with it? Well may you ask...but I want to make some more nests....

Anyway, there were some amazing yarns created, combining yarns and plastic. We did discuss what you might do with these yarns and thought that things like little bags, you know, for phones and other young stuff! might be fun. I am looking forward to seeing what the others come up with.

Experimental Spinning Christmas tree

For over 10 years now, the first Saturday of the Month has been Experimental Spinning. I haven't tired of playing with spinning and enjoying the company of fellow experimenters. Over that time there has developed a number of traditions. Christmas is a prime example.

We've fairly recently started celebrating our Christmas meeting with a fibre sandwich, and to keep up the interest, we've decided on a theme for each year, this year it's the Christmas tree.  Think tree, decorations and tinsel!

 First was a layer of green, followed by brown, just a little, for the tree trunk. Then we loaded on the tinsel, silver and silk. In the middle, it's kept in check and is a surprise when you spin it. Then layers of red and green fibre, all added up to an amazing fibre sandwich. And very Christmas tree like.

I still have to contemplate how I'm going to spin it. Split it up, card it together or just go with the flow.....or maybe a bit of each?

Yes, it's yarn!

For nearly the last 10 years, every 1st Saturday of the month is Experimental Spinning at the Handweavers and Spinners Guild. Yep, next meeting on the 1st September we celebrate our tenth (oops) birthday. I've been convening the group for all that time and would miss any of it. We continue to have fun and explore all sorts of yarns, fibres, colour and, of course, ideas. If you want to come along and help us celebrate this momentous achievement, don't hesitate to come along, we'll be there with cake and spinning wheels and a few games, from 1 till 4pm.

For the August meeting we attempted, successfully, I may add, tail-spinning. Lexi Boeger in her book 'Intertwined' describes it. Also many years ago we did a version where you spun the locks together, Lexi describes using a core yarn, which is much easier!

I chose English Leicester, which has an amazing crimp, giving you that lovely curly lock look, with a sheen that dyes beautifully.

We all managed to create amazing yarns and the most interesting part was that the yarn wasn't very overspun, which was a surprise, as it is not a plied yarn. This yarn lends itself to being used just as a decorative yarn without having to be transformed by knitting.

Next time I want to try a variegated fleece, Jen did a fabulous grey skein which she wore to coffee. There were also wonderful colours, with dyed mohair being a standout.

Loads of fun!

Experimental Spinning

I continued spinning my 'water' yarn and finished it in time for the 10x10 challenge at Experimental Spinning.

I filled a bobbin with 'water' and on another I finished off the top spinning finely, which I plied with the thick, then Navaho plied the remaining fine.

  

After all that I had these two skeins:

I am very pleased with the contrast between the two yarns and feel that I've managed to capture some of my original thoughts about the nature of water.

In search of further inspiration I went in search, through the magazine stash, of pictures of water and discovered, not surprisingly, that water displays itself in many forms. Here is some of my selection for your inspiration.

Isn't it amazing! The colours, the texture and the possibilities that might be revealed with further exploration. Hopefully, I'll manage to use these well in the creations for this year.

One HOT Sunday

Last Sunday was the Handweavers' and Spinners' Guild Yarra Bend Spin-In, which is held every year on the last Sunday in January. Not a great time to spin, it is Summer, but was inaugurated in the Bicentenial Year and as Australia Day is January 26th.....Anyway it has become an annual event, I've only been attending on and off for the last few years.

It is lovely to sit next the the river, the Yarra, under a large shady tree with friends, old and new, and spin. This year is was predicted to be HOT. I did go, as did a number of stalwarts and it was lovely. I did leave at lunchtime, so beat the worst of the day. I had lunch and a movie with hubby; highly recommend 'The Kings Speech'!

I was working on my 10x10 challenge for Experimental Spinning which consisted of some Ixchel Angora/Merino blue top which I had purchased TWO years ago at Bendigo during the Australian Sheep and wool show and which I really needed to use as I still have this years purchase.

Water, was my theme, it seems to preoccupy all of us at the moment, though today has been replaced with thoughts of wind and those that have to face it.......

I decided to wrap the top around a cotton core thinking about water, it's smoothness, roughness, waves and calm. I like it so far.

I do have to finish it and ply it (with what?....don't I always have this problem?) by Saturday.

Oh well,

When too many fibre sandwiches are not enough!

I know I haven't been blogging much. I'm taking more photos of all the work I'm doing, so that's a start! or should I say 'restart'. I've just unloaded them from the camera and I do have a couple of things to show you.

I did decide to make this post about Experimental Spinning, our Christmas meeting, held on Saturday and our, now annual, fibre sandwich, and, I'm not going to change that decision.

This year the theme was 'Christmas cake'. Much brown fibre was spread out, much chatting, all sorts of 'fruit', mostly reds and greens, more chatting, and finally, we put a layer of 'icing' on the top and more decorating with holly and pink icing.

We did think it looked like a Christmas cake!

We split it up and celebrated with a real home made beautiful sponge cake, coffee from Filous, and other delicious things. Some of us started spinning our Christmas cake and a lovely day was had by all.

I went home and finished spinning. For some reason, fibre does 'speak' to you, the sandwich demanded to be spun finer than I would usually, so when I finished it at home, I navaho plied the yarn to retain the different layers. Ooops, forgot to say, that we seemed to create four layers as we were piling up our fibre contributions. There were two 'cake' layers, a 'fruit' layer and an 'icing' layer. I decided (what alot of decisions!) that I would card each layer and spin them. Navaho plying just made sense.

Here, it is, and I'm happy!

Spinning red!

This Saturday was Experimental Spinning day and after returning from a very short sojourn at the beach house at Phillip Island, put a load of washing on and headed off.

We were working with 'red'. So we carded all our leftover bits of red, tops, yarns, fabric bits, silk, cotton, whatever we felt like and whatever we had on hand.

I started with a mix of merino and flax and added more! The beauty of working with a colour is that it all matches, and, more importantly, you see the range of colour that we call 'red', in this case. It's always fun and we always end up with gorgeous yarns.

I kept some of the flax/merino mix (from First Editions, of course) and spun it finely, then plyed with the fun stuff. Love the yarn.

Border Leicester vs Bamboo - wool wins!

We explore a variety of fibres new and old at Experimental Spinning. The last two sessions have provided a real contrast to explore.

Each year the Australian Sheep and Wool show, held in Bendigo, has a feature breed. This year it is Border Leicester.

For the last few years, the hardworking Woolcraft committee have been able to obtain donations of the particular fleece for people to try and the results have been displayed at the show. The Experimental Spinning group of the HWSG have been one of the recipients. It's an excellent opportunity to try a variety of different fleeces, most of which we wouldn't normally spin.

We did really enjoy the experience and the results have shown us that this fibre is lovely to spin and is not as harsh as you might think from a reasonably strong fleece.

I decided that I would try and spin a coil yarn. This is the latest 'in' novelty yarn and there are a number of teachers focusing on this yarn. At the guild, Janet de Knoop does wonderful yarns and is a lovely teacher who I managed to catch at Harrietville.

The yarn is really a take on the traditional bullion yarn with a couple of modern updates. The single doing the coiling is a slubby yarn and it is this slub part that is coiled. This gives a more rounded look as it changes in thickness. The trick with the slub is not to make it too thick just thicker that the regular part of the yarn. This means there is some nice twist in the slub making it neat. However, with a thicker slub it is a fluffier, lest defined coil. Fun nevertheless!

The other trick is not to use a binder to anchor the coil, as is done with a bullion yarn, but using the core yarn to wrap just before and after the coil, thus anchoring the coil. A nice twist that really allows the coil to stand out.

My version is all handspun from fleece. This makes the slub slightly harder to control and I didn't quite get it right all the time, and, it means that the core yarn is handspun, which I think gives a nicer overall look, but that's without colour!

It also meant spinning in the grease, something I generally don't particularly like. The fun however, is in the washing when all the dirt, swint and lanolin are scoured out. Well most of it and the underlying colour of the fleece is revealed.

Extremely happy!

Not so happy with yesterdays effort with bamboo.

Bamboo is one of those new environmentally friendly fibres. This does depend on the process used in production. There is viscose bamboo, which is made in the same way as rayon with chemicals breaking down the fibre and being extruded to created the fibre. The second is done in the same way as for flax, the major issue being about the use of water. This is more environmentally friendly. Bamboo, itself, is very fast growing and has some excellent properties as a textile, but again, which company doing what. There is little way of knowing what you have.

We decided that as the fibre we were using was short that this had been produced in the more traditional manner, as extrusion tends to create long continuous fibres.

In its raw state it is not pleasant to touch. Very difficult to spin and then difficult to spin evenly. I even managed to have breaks when plying. NOT happy! The final yarn is soft to the touch and is likely to take dye very well.

So, further experiments combining it with other more spinnable fibres are worth exploring. I will also be looking at some of the commercial bamboo yarns to see if I can get any hints.

And, then, what's this rubbish? Well it is. It's the stuff you get when you sort out and flick fleece. There are short cuts, dirty bits, all sorts really. What am I going to do with this? That's what I'm usually asked by beginner spinners. We'll happily throw out all the packaging we do, but wonder about the leftover from cleaning fleece for spinning!

But a challenge has been sitting there for awhile. A spinning friend did collect the same sort of stuff from one of her dyed fleeces, ending up with a bag of colour fluff that she then carded to create a really fluffy fun yarn. I'm going to take it a step further and start with the raw stuff, then dye it and then combine with with something else? A fun challenge!

I'll keep you informed!

Spinning Cassette tape and other tangles

Last Saturday was Experimental Spinning and the topic we were covering was spinning audio and video cassette tape.

I've been a bit remiss with blogging about this one, so I'm going to rectify the situation. However, thinking about this spinning raises more questions than it solves.

We didn't have many of us spinning, so were not able to explore alot of options. I used audio cassette tape and plyed it with some white top. I wrapped, around it and with it and was satisfied with the result. We did decide that to be really effective you would want thick bright coloured slubby yarn!

Some of the questions that were raised were:

1. What use would it really be, apart from 'because you can'?

2. It was reasonably soft, so would it make a hat?

3. If washed and left, would it rust AND dye the wool? (I HAVE to try this!)

Other interesting things were:

1. You need to do an awful lot of spinning to use up all those no longer used cassettes we all have lieing around the house.

2. There are lots and lots of bits in cassettes, once you pull them apart. Useful spools and potentially interesting tiny bits. (Could you glue them to glass?)

3. Don't pull apart an audio cassette tape before you spin. Cut the tape at one end and spin from the cassette, otherwise you could end up with a mess.

I now want to do some knitting with the resulting yarn and the tape on its own. I want to see how strong it is as a knitted fabric. Perhaps another sculpture or two is in order......

Chocolate

It seems to have been a very chocolatey (?) year. What with spinning chocolate yarns earlier in the year, and ending the year with Chocolate at Experimental Spinning on Saturday.

For the last couple of years, we've been finishing off in December with a celebratory fibre sandwich. This is a wonderful way to do something as a group, to bust a little stash and generally share.

This year the theme was Chocolate, of course! We started with a layer of chocolate, consisting of chocolate fleece, tops and some caramel fleece. Then a layer of strawberry jam...it was turning into a chocolate cake. This was made up of silk waste, wool top, cut up fabric, all red, then a little bit of cream, another layer of chocolate and caramel. We finished it off with sprinkles, cut up cotton threads.

This was split up into the number of people who participated and we each spun our portion of the cake.

At the same time we managed to indulge in some real chocolate sponge with home grown raspberries.

And this is my bobbin full of chocolate. Spun directly as it came from the cake. Sometimes I've carded a sandwich before spinning, but this time I just wanted it straight. It's waiting for me to spin a very fine chocolate fleece single which I will use as the second ply.