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......

I'm back!

After the most frustrating month without access to my computer and my files, the team (husband and oldest son) have finally got me back online. I did stay out of this as the old adage 'too many cooks spoil the broth' was perfectly apt; two IT professionals and a knowledgeable 18 year old meant that within 5 minutes of working on the problem we were arguing. A hasty (door slamming) retreat was made by me.

The computer problem was payback for the first weekend away that my husband and I have had to ourselves since before children. We've had nights away, and, individually, have been away for weekends, but not together. Doesn't sound much, but anyone with children will know that one night is just that! Drop the children off to babysitters, in our case, if using in-laws was travelling too far, or, cleaning up the spare bed so that babysitter could stay. If lucky we could have an afternoon, then our night out, then get back quickly to relieve said babysitter.

Our weekend was all out for Saturday night dinner, we headed off and spent all Sunday and most of Monday all by ourselves. The big boy cooked dinner for the two of them, so they were well fed and could watch whatever they wanted without my usual ' not THAT again'. (They do like to watch their favourite shows over and over and over again......I know an awful lot of shows, but have rarely ever watched full episodes, just osmosis over time)

Phone call just before returning was 'we've got a virus on the computer'........

Anyway, I have been working but will sort of work backwards through various interesting things that I've done. Not as much as I wanted, but some fun.

What am I working on now?

I have two scarves that relate to each other. The first was a 'just finish off spinning so I can get on with the next project' sort of thing that I fell in love with and kept going. I had purchased some alpace 'bump' they called it. You could pull from the centre and spin and it was in changing shades. I didn't think that I could recreate the original look, but to my amazement I did. I spun half from the centre and then from the outside and plied the two singles together. (This was going to be a whole entry about guessing half - I am always unsuccessful, but that was another story)

The resulting yarn was beautiful. As I spent most of the time at the beach spinning this I wanted a pattern that reminded me of the beach, waves, sand, seashore.....

As I thought the colour was right, I came up with two patterns in one. Half is a scallop pattern with an odd purl row thrown in, the other is double knit stocking stitch with the odd purl row. I'm hoping that because one side will be shorter than the other that I'll get a soft frill. I'm really happy with this so far.

So much so that I started another scarf with the double knit alternating sides and just garter stitch with extra rows for the frill. Out of my stash came a lovely blue and lurex yarn and dark blue mohair, which I 'm running out of! Might be a different blue mohair at the end.

What a ramble. See I missed you all!

Summer knitting - interrupted

I've had to interrupt my knitting......doesn't everyone knit in the Summer holidays?.....to spin some samples for the HWSG Summer school class that I'm running next week.

I've called the class 'Wild Spinning' and hopefully it will be alot of fun.
Firstly, we spin fat singles. Quick.







Then we create a crazy batt full of all sorts. In my case, glitz, fluff, linen warp yarn and silk flock, all carded with merino wool.















It spins up wonderfully, full of shine, glitter and everything. Very happy with this.











To finish off the yarn, I ply these two singles together incorporating a knot every now and then. Big and chunky.





Now I have to do it again, all the same, except that I'm going to overdye......

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.

Cashmere

Doesn't it conjure up pure luxury....cashmere......

I was very generously given a very large amount of cashmere (dehaired, long guard hairs taken out, time saver....) by a member of the HWSG. It was way to much to keep to oneself without feeling extremely selfish...sigh.....So I decided that we could have a session at Experimental Spinning playing with this beautiful fibre.

That was on Saturday and we had lots of fun. Because it is both a very expensive and very short fibre, it is often combined with other fibres. We used silk, silky wool, fine merino and even pink! Beautiful rolags were created and I can't wait to see all the resulting yarns.

I went home and decided to split my 20gms into four and spin a yarn with four different treatments.

1. Mixed with Silky wool (optim), a treated wool that I thought would work well, but it didn't really card well with the cashmere and separated a bit from the cashmere when spinning.

2. Mixed with 18micron merino. This was immediately nicer than the Silky wool and whilst there is a slight different in the pictures, both carding and spinning were much improved.

3. Mixed with Tussah silk. As you can see from the rolags it is beautiful. I wasn't sure that this would work. Even though it came in top form it was still quite long, but I suspect that the critical factor in both the carding and spinning is the thickness, or in this case, fineness of the mixing fibre. For best results they probably do need to be close in micron count.

4. I just spun the cashmere as it came.

I did wonder if I'd put in too much twist for the this skein. Too much twist and I'll lose the softness of the cashmere. I also wanted to keep the different treatments together, so I decided to Navaho ply my single, creating a relatively thick yarn.

This could be a problem as these fabulous fibres are very warm. The resulting scarf will be knitted in a very open lace. I'll show you when it's done.

Oops, forgot.....some things I'd like to try: silk noil and cashmere, what about silk waste with cashmere, fluffy around a core......what else?

Summer School crazy

I've been invited to run a class at Summer School for the Handweavers and Spinners Guild, so I've finally done some samples and decided that the class I had decided to do was doable in a day.

I decided that combining a whole lot of techniques into one yarn would give people a range of new skills or ideas, have a wild yarn and finish the day by knitting it into a simple neckwarmer.

So, first, spin a fat single:

Then, create a wild bat full of allsorts of bits, in this case, very simple, silk waste:

Spin that up:

Then I thought that we could add in some extra commercial yarns to give either texture or colour, and whilst we were plying we could create some great knots.

The resulting yarn looks like this:

You can see the big fat knots (I love them):

Then I thought that we could knit a simple neckwarmer, on really big needles. I think it's good to show how these crazy yarns are really easy to use. They knit up quick and have a fabulous wow factor.

And here's another I did earlier, which is a bit more sedate?

I hope the class runs, as this is going to be fun!

Inspired colours galore

Hugely busy, in need of some gentle recreation, off to Experimental Spinning for the afternoon. Whilst the lovely Charley of Ixchel Angora Bunny and Funky Fibre gave a talk to the spinning certificate group, we carded colours to create all sorts of colours, using basic blue, red, yellow, black and white wool top.

Charley even had one of her absolutely gorgeous, fluffy Angora Bunnies to show.

So an excellent afternoon all round.

On one of my trips to Angus and Robertson in search of bargains I had picked up this book, full of the most wonderfully colourful pictures.

I chose this picture and these are the colours I managed to create.

When the rush is over I'm going to create some more and combine them into a single yarn, full of wonderfully exuberant colour.

Recharged, ready to go, thanks everyone.....

The x-factor team wins!

Sarah, Jen and I competed in the Sheep to Shawl competition held yesterday at the Royal Melbourne Show, and we won, in a time of 3 hours and 15 minutes, setting a new record and being the first winners of the Crossfibres Perpetual Trophy. What a day.

The aim of the event was to spin enough yarn (we spun too much!) ply it, and knit it into a simple shawl. We were provided with a beautiful fleece from the Black and Coloured Sheep Association, and was a beautiful grey from Helen Wright. It was a lovely fleece to spin from.

Everyone had the same pattern, which consisted on three triangles and 3 diamonds, which we could lace together.

In the end we won by 1 minute.

We all went home tired and happy and planning to compete next year!

Experiments with singles and colour

Experimental Spinning, last Saturday, was alot of fun. We managed to sit in the middle of the room surrounded by weavers. It was lovely to have both spinners and weavers together at the Handweavers and Spinners guild!

(I do think we were a bit noisy, so I hope the weavers didn't mind too much?)

As usual, the experiments had to continue at home, so, here are three different skeins before dyeing.














Then, I followed the same procedure, as before, basically boiling the yarn to death!

1. (middle skein) I used the same top, as before, and selected a different colour. Beautiful blue.























2.This was an attempt to use fleece. I prepared it roughly on the drum carder, surprise....not good enough. I spent a little more effort and predrafted as well, still very difficult to get an even result. It just turns into a more slubby yarn.


I then tried preparing the fibre on my wool combs. This was better, but being only little ones, they didn't really help prepare the single well.

This has showed me that there is more experimenting to do: different fleece, this was a good length but a bit fine, I think; bigger wool combs.......


I still achieved a yarn I like that says to me 'hat'!

3. The last experiment was a little disappointing. I mixed the machine washable and non-treated wool top. I like the colour and how the grey affects the colour and overall effect, but while there are fluffy areas and felted areas, they don't stand out.


I think that I'll try again, adding more machine washable top and being careful about how I split the top up and how I combine them.





Finally, I decided I would knit up the first skein I did to see how far it would go. I chose 20mm needles which made quite a thick fabric, which isn't quite a scarf, more a neck warmer length. Larger needle sizes would probably yield a scarf, but I'll have to try another time.














I am very happy with the texture and feel of the knitted fabric, and I think I have a new product!

The fog's lifting

It's an interesting feeling coming out of a head cold, that feeling that you can't think slowly lifts and at some point you realise you still have a functioning brain. This is where I am and hopefully not too much chaos has occurred. I haven't managed to clean the house, with an 18th birthday coming up this is a problem, still a week to go before the first influx of people!

Anyway, I did manage to complete some work, though some is still going having been frogged, oh so many times.

These yarns are a case in point. Yes, the last of the chocolate. The first is the chocolate wrapper, I was running out of wrappers, but managed to find more. Faced with more searching I decided to just finish adding in the last of the fabric. I was very tired at the time....

Then not being content to just ply the rest together I needed to do something, but could I think of something interesting and innovative.......no, just decided to rely on the standby knot yarn. I like how it turned out, but....

More pictures will come as they finish drying and I get my head around recharging the camera battery.

Past midnight

Sometimes you just have to finish things. Not for any particular reason, except perhaps, that if it goes on much longer I'm going to start disliking this!


So, last night, I finished spinning the 2nd single in a slightly fluffier, heavier way and plyed it with the buttons, finishing just past midnight.



Note: it takes a long time to add buttons to the yarn, but is surprisingly satisfying.




I'm now washing the yarn and am looking forward to finding out what it weighs. Not usually a big issue, I'm guessing 150gm, but what will the buttons add?



I've now got enough fleece left for a chocolate wrapper yarn, if only I can find where I left the wrapping!

PS. It's call 'Chocolate centres'

I need chocolate!

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, I managed to sell a record amount, enough in fact to meet my, very loose, target for the month. I'm particularly pleased as it was a variety of work that sold to new, returning, friends and fellow stallholders. I met a fellow Etsy traveller whose work is amazing (http://www.gitte.etsy.com/) and I think made some new fans.

Unfortunately, all the delight of the day was tempered with the performance of the market. It was much better than last month, so must be put in the work-in-progress basket. Next month we relaunch with a new name 'Ivanhoe Makers Market', hopefully with sufficient publicity to make it a wonderful market. As usual our visitors remarked on both the beautiful space that we inhabit and the wonderful work it contains......fingers crossed.

I've come home to more spinning. I managed to finish my 'chocolate drop' yarn for the market and it was renamed by a lovely friend of the market as 'tim tam' and I think it might have to have a identity change.

I'm now spinning 'chocolate centres' which consists of spinning a fine-ish single and threading buttons on as I go. A little bit tedious and there are other methods, I just wanted the buttons to be a well integrated as I can. I'm going to spin a fluffier single to match. I am enjoying the play of worsted and woollen spinning and the change in texture and colour you can get just by employing a different spinning method.

The naturally chocolate coloured fleece that I'm spinning should have enough for another yarn, so 'chocolate wrapper' springs to mind. In my compost bin (full of bits of leftover yarns, etc) was some silk fabric that was leftover from my silk scarves. If I have enough I'll add it as I ply.

Now all I have to do is see if I can find some real chocolate!

A tale of two skeins

Remember my CD drop spindling on my holidays, well this is the second half of the 100gms of First Editions tops.



I then plied both with some soft beautiful light blue reeled silk that I had in my stash. (Don't know how it got there, I'm not really a light blue person, but how can you doubt the wisdom of the stash and the choice of the perfect colour?)

These are the resulting skeins:







Now I don't know if you can tell but they're differents.

The one on the right is the holiday skein. It's beautiful with a slight wrapping to ensure the tops are highlighted. I love this skein.

The other is the home skein. It's finer - I was trying for the same, it's pulled apart in several places and whilst, on it's own is a lovely skein, I can't sell it.

I can't in all honesty sell a skein the knitter is going to have to manage. I'll knit it up and where it's week, I'll rejoin and generally work around. This is definitely NOT what people expect when they purchase handspun wool.


But what is the difference? Spinning on holiday, Spinning at home in front of the television. And maybe I've answered my own question - relax and concentrate!

Happy spinning!

More on holidays and spinning

Going on holiday with your family is about time spent with each other without the distractions of work, washing and various electronic devices. I'm not a fan of the term 'quality time', spending time in itself is enough. I enjoy wandering around a gallery looking at art with my son, but I also enjoy sitting around a table listening to the boys argueing about football (not my favourite topic!)

At home it's sit down, eat as fast as possible and return to whatever you were doing before. At a restaurant you have to take time to order drinks, read menus, wait for everything and wait for everyone to finish....you might as well enjoy the company.

Going on holiday also means leaving work behind, closing the Etsy shop, cleaning the house (well making it presentable enough that you don't groan upon return!) and warning partner to minimise use of Blackberry.

I must admit that I did take the fibre sandwich from Harrietville with me and during quiet times spun it all up on the CD spindle. It went quicker than I thought and when I got home I plied it with the never ending bobbin of purple.

I decided to create a bit more texture by creating a bead yarn. This means allowing one single to wrap around the other rather than evenly plying. It's basically a matter of different tensions. I held the fine purple single firmly and the lovely fibre sandwich single quite loosely. I love the finished yarn.

I've decided not to sell this skein but will make me a pair of buttoned fingerless mittens. I'll wear them everywhere and show off.....a little bit!

Sponge cake hat

Some relief from the weather. It's a bit cooler and is only getting up to 37deg C today.........

I did realise, yesterday, that I hadn't shown you the sponge cake hat. Well....

Remember this.

I turned it into this.

Then I did this, as well.

I decided I wanted to knit a sponge cake hat.

I have a very old pattern, early 50's, late 40's, which I've used before which uses stocking st and reverse stocking stitch to create layers, and has a very flat top. So I thought I would use that to create this hat.

I love it. It's just what I wanted and is suitably fun and suitably practical. It's now for sale on Etsy, as is the very large skein of the slubby stuff.

Australia Day Weekend

The Australia Day weekend is always a good excuse to catch up with friends and to think about this country of ours. It's always a bit difficult and again controversy has arisen at the suggestion that this is not the most appropriate date to celebrate Australia day.

January 26 commemorates the day the British flag was raised at Sydney Cove proclaiming a new settlement and the beginning of European civilization in Australia. It is easy to see that some of the original inhabitants may not see this as necessarily positive. I agree with Mick Dodson, Australian of the Year, that we need a conversation on this issue...we can do better.

I would like to propose another way of thinking about dates. Not new, but perhaps more in keeping with who we really are and would like to think of ourselves.

31st July - the date when Western Australian held a referendum and agreed to join the federation with the five other colonies, the last state to do so. Western Australians might not agree that this is a good date.

21st May - the date when the British House of Commons passed the Bill that sanctioned the union of Australia and its' independance. (I think this is the date, would need more checking) I like this date because of the supreme act of successful democracy that this displays. Six separate colonial governments and the British House of Commons both voted, on one hand to join together and become a nation and on the other, voted to allow this to occur.

Few other countries have achieved independance without bloodshed. It is something to be extremely proud of, that this could be done. With all the competing interests, democracy won.

1st January - the actual date of Federation. A good date, but already the New Year has taken that date, and pershaps could be viewed as a merely ceremonial date.

Anyway, discussion should be had and maybe we can do better......

Sunday was spent on an Australia Day weekend tradition - the Handweavers and Spinners Guild Spin-in at Yarra Bend in Melbourne, one of our lovely inner city parks. We are indeed a lucky city. This is only the second time I have attended, and, again, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

How good is it to sit, with friends, under the trees, on a beautifully sunny day spinning.

If you look carefully, the empty chair is mine and my new wheel had its first outing. Perhaps not in the best condition yet, but supportive comments were passed and happily received. A gentle first outing.

Still did manage to get this spun.

Enough of politics, off to SnB.

Back home again.

The boys are safely esconced with friends having a very Tom Sawyerish holiday, you know fishing, swimming, just at the bottom of the paddock. So it's very quiet at home, which is just as well as I'm recovering from having driven 11 hours in two days to both accomplish the quiet and get to deliver my Summer School class.

The class went very well and the adjustments I made worked out well and the aim of the class - using the multicoloured tops successfully - was achieved....hooray. As always lovely people and all of them willing to give everything a try.

These are the samples I showed them of the different results you get when you used different

preparation and spinning methods.

I started with this beautiful top.

The first three methods were then spinning without thinking.

1. Worsted spinning, short lengths.

2. Worsted spinning, full, long, length.

3. Just because, I carded the top to really mix it up.

Then I got sensible and actively tried to get a good result

1. I stripped the top of each colour. Well not quite, this is a difficult top and the stripes of colour are quite thin. I did my best.

2. I used the fold over finger method of spinning. This is a semi-woollen method of spinning which allows you to go through the top stripe by stripe.

3. I used the same technique as before, just had a longer bit of top. This made it more difficult to manage and, didn't seem to make much difference.

Finally, I spun a wonderful slubby yarn and a reasonably thick single.