Dyeing and Plying

I don't quite understand different techniques of spinning hand dyed roving.  I find spinning roving that is 1 color rather monotonous.  However, I don't really like the barber pole effect of dyed roving that is then spun and plied.  After reading this article, I decided to try and apply her techniques.
There were two issues.  She talks about the different techniques of pre drafting versus splitting/ stripping, yet in her experiment, she plied one with a white yarn and plied the other with itself.  I really couldn't tell the difference, and the fact that she therefore had 2 variables bothered me.
I took this roving and split it, plying it with itself:

 And the result: 

Then I took this roving and pre drafted it and plyed it with itself:

 

I couldn't tell any difference between the two techniques.  

So I decided to run an experiment of my own.  I dyed up some roving with koolaid in my crock pot (lemonade, black cherry, and iced blue lemonade) ( I think).

The resulting roving looked surprisingly like a snow cone.  

The pre drafted roving (top) had a much greater chance of multi colored singles.  The stripped roving is a little more vibrant.  In both of these, I divided the roving in half, spun on different bobbins, and then plied together.  There wasn't a large degree of matching up.  I still can't tell much of a difference between the two.

Tdf day 5

I like this a lot more than I thought I would. Iced grapes and Pomegranates.

TDF day 4

I dyed this wool with koolaid and accidentally felted it a little bit. I'm spinning it with some scraps of silk and angelina.

TDF Day 3

Sadly over spun...

Tour de Fleece

Day two

Tour de Fleece, Day 1

Here are pics. Not too happy with the roving, but it was in a grab bag. I figured yellow would be a good place to start.

Scarfy Thing

I am working on knitting up the hot chocolate with marshmallows yarn.  Unfortunately, I am not as pleased with it as I thought.  I don't like the randomness of the slubs.  I also think they kind of look like grubs which is kind of gross.  I think it would have been better if I just spun a think and thin yarn instead of looking for a concept like hot chocolate with marshmallows.  Another thing that made it harder is that the yarn is a bit overspun and has a lot of variety.  The slubs are close to 2 wpi, where the thinnest yarn (usually overspun) is around 20.  I settled on size 10 needles, which were too small for the slubs...  I'm thinking about adding buttons to make it wearable.

Hot Chocolate and Marshmallows scarfy thing

In other news, I am getting yarn ready to dye with koolaid.  I am also hoping to participate in the 2012 Tour de Fleece for the first time this year and excited about MOAR SPINNING!

Silkies

I tried spinning silk matawas this after noon and I didn't enjoy it.  The instructions I had read advised scrubbing ones' hands with a sugar scrub.  My hands felt so soft after the sugar and olive oil rub, and that was nice.  However, The silk catches on everything.  The stubble on my legs, my housemate's shoes... Everything.

My rhythm of spinning yarn did not work with the silk.  I had difficulty pre drafting because I drafted too thin and then got tangled.  I had a hard time spinning consistently.

Eventually, I settled into something that kind of worked: I took one layer of the hankie, stretched it out, and pre drafted it the length of my arms- about 5.5 feet.

I think I spun about half the hankie.  I'll post pictures later.

burlesque swap

Amazing package from Odd Duck's Burlesque swap:

Still Spinning

I checked out a copy of Anne Field's Spinning Wool: Beyond the Basics (thank you interlibrary loan!) and it isn't as helpful as I hoped.  I am not really sure what to do with the yarn.  I can't match how I spin with the methods she dscribes, and I'm a bit paranoid that I'm doing it wrong and I have bad habits that will limit me later.  However.  My yarn continues to be more consistent as well as less over spun.  I'm just a bit worried that now it is underspun, but I think I just made that it.  I don't have pictures yet, but the latest I spun appears to be about sport weight, and appears balanced after plying.  I haven't experimented more with art yarn. 

Knitting Red

I'm still figuring out how to link this with my ravelry account.  I am not really sure how to make my projects show up in a side bar or if I want to.  I'm more interested in writing than in making this look pretty.

Ani Difranco has a song, "Red Letter Year," which states 

New years eve we dropped mushrooms and danced around the house 

Making music with everything that we found 

incantation replaced resolution and we vowed to allow each perfection that we could be 

and the goddesses sent word that this would be a red letter year 

they didn't mention how much shit was gonna change around here

New Year's Eve, we weren't dancing around the House.  We were in a Medical ICU, keeping watch over someone who'd coded 3 times and been lifeflighted.  Since then, it has been a red letter year.  So much has changed.

When some friends decided to do a "red along" (knitting something red to facilitate transition) I jumped at the chance.  The camaraderie as well as intentional knitting seems like something I need.  I debated what to knit.

I have some BFL that was black and white and was dyed red.  If I chose to spin the yarn, I would have more intention.  Yet as the roving isn't just red, I chose not to use it.  Also, I am not that consistent a spinner yet, so I would have to wait to choose a project until I'd spun the yarn.

I have some lace weight red yarn that my friend Rain dyed.  I am making Annis.  Yesterday I had about an hour between school and work and figured I would be able to wind it and knit a swatch.  I was wrong.  I have a ball winder but not a swift, so I draped the hank over an upside down chair.  While winding it, I contemplated

• What do I want to be my intention in knitting this?
• Creating something (a center pull ball) requires the destruction of something (a hank). 
• Learning to bend before I break is an important skill I need to cultivate.
• If I decided to knit from the hank, that would create much more problems down the road.
• If I put too much attention on the past (hank) I loose track of the present (ball) and wind backwards, have to undo and fix mistakes.
• Asking for help when appropriate is an important skill.

I ended up asking my housemate for assistance in winding the yarn.  It took over an hour just to wind it and I needed the help.

I'm off to swatch and will write more about why I'm knitting a red shawl later.

Marshmellows

Hot chocolate with marshmellows is one of my favorite things.  I'd seen  brown wool with white silk noils on esty that I wanted to buy, but it was a bit out of my price range.  However, I bought a grab bag from another seller to practice with.  She included a brown and white (not quite sure what to call it) roving and I immediately thought of hot chocolate with marshmellows.  I decided to attempt to incorporate what I'd learned about coiled yarns as well.  (video here from dyingwitch)

I ended up fighting my wheel a little.  The delta orifice was large enough to take the coils, but not the butterfly hooks.  I also had more lace weight than thick and thin, so when I ran out of the thick and thin I just plyed the lace weight with itself.

I don't have pictures of the thick and thin roving, but here is the lace weight:

And here is the finished product on the bobbin.  I didn't have time to unwind it last night  The lace weight (I don't know what kind of fiber it is) turned out a little fragile and I had issues with it breaking as I plied the coils.

The picture only shows 1 1/2 of the marshmellows.  I hope to update this post with more pictures.  The end was only lace weight.  I am trying to figure out what to make with the yarn when it is finished.

I also need to create labels for the handspun I made for a swap.  I have to finish the yarn, measure WPI, and make a label.  Hopefully finishing it on the niddy noddy will allow me to measure it so I can include that on the label as well.

Red Roving

I have been recently spinning this superwash wool. I would put it at about sport weight. I bought the roving from etsy, but I think it is brown sheep roving. Not sure. I had a hard time getting started and ended up needing to split the roving down fairly small so I could draft it out.

I am going to let it rest on the bobbin until I finish making my new niddy noddy. I've been using a coat hanger to unwind yarn, but this is too much. It is also for a swap, so I need a hankier hank.

Welcome!

I have been interested in spinning yarn for years. Probably since I first watched Sleeping Beauty as a child. A few weeks ago, I purchased a Majacraft Little Gem spinning wheel from my local yarn store's going out of business sale and some pencil roving.

I have been surprised at the difficulty in finding information about spinning. So here we are. I want to write about my experiences in spinning as well as create a way to access information. I'm in graduate school, so I can't promise a consistent schedule of entries.