Spinning Update

  Hi Everyone, and happy midweek. We were suppose to be warm today-not-I can't complain no ice or snow, but we are windy, cloudy and cool. So still can't burn leaves from last fall, or work outdoors. I am still fighting not feeling well too. I am thinking I need a dose of predisone for the asthma, can't get into the doctor til end of March. and bummer my car is still not working, we thought we had it fixed and now won't start again-must be some sort of electrical problem.  So instead of food shopping I am playing with fibers again today-smiles. 😀

  Since I am still playing with fibers, thought I would share some progress. One of the skeins I had spun back in 2016 I was able to save from the mice getting into it, at the woods house-since it was on the bottom of the bag. No smells, so I put it on one of my diy niddy noddy's and wetted it down again.  I have been tagging everything over the years so I know what it is. This was blended on the blending board back then with odd fibers and also romney locks that needed to be hand carded individually with a tool called a flicker. After reading the label I remembered I had a big basket full of long locks that I carded outdoors.  This is not too bad of  yarn for a beginner, but it is on the thicker size and the joins are all pretty noticeable-it will weave up ok though

Remember the blending board from my T Tuesday post? Here is the yarn it spun into-I had trouble drafting it out-I had put a bit too much fiber on the board-so this ended up pretty but a little on the thick size too Very soft

   Photo below is of the skein of the long white wool and the above after being wetted down on the niddy noddy to set the twist and let dry 

    Below photo shows dried, put into a skein and added to their cloth bags: the white wool skein goes with the rest to be spun, and the other Yellowstone colors cloth bag.

     Note: I learned years ago to Never store fibers or cloth fabrics in plastic bags, better to keep in cloth bags or old cotton pillow cases.  Resale shops are good places to find pillow cases if you need them.

   The fibers that I bought came from three different sellers all came in plastic, which is ok to mail in, but one of them was quite damp-thinking it was in the plastic too long before mailing.

   I have not had a problem with fabrics being in those large plastic storage containers with lids but plastic bags is a big No for long term storage especially fibers for spinning and spun fibers. 

This next yarn, I played with yesterday. I still have more of this roving so will make up more

Laying on fibers to the blending board

I decided to make into these rolags which I really liked-you pull the fiber from one end draft it out and you get one very long spun piece-if it doesn't break-smiles.

In those two bags of fibers to use for this purpose that I had bought-there were two large pieces of this pretty striped roving-I think the colors are so much prettier blending them together on the board opposed to what I have been doing-tearing off long lengths of the roving and then spin-just get the color you tear off doing that. These colors to me are Yellowstone

  Today I had two pieces of roving left to spin of that pretty tweed green-bamboo and merino wool.  I decided to make rolags out of the last of it, and also add a little bit of the darker green roving and a golden yellow 

I did spin one of these rolags this afternoon, but didn't get a photo yet. For some reason I had a more difficult time pulling the fiber out to spin-may have gotten it too tight. I want to go back to the video I shared yesterday-to make roving from the blending board. Will try that out tomorrow.

Here is a video by Ashford on how to use the blending board to make rolags-I love this company and  have several of their products

    My first purchase was back in the mid 1970's for one of their spinning wheels in kit form. I have not been able to concentrate long enough over the years, to figure out my wheel-which would speed up the spinning. This spinning wheel has been a struggle for me. After I bought it I was working allot of hours, had some life changes, moving around etc and then when I would have some time couldn't figure it out-back then no internet for help.  Years later I discovered they sent the wrong directions-wow-so I got it put together the right way but still couldn't get it to work right. One year I took it to Fiber U when I was taking a spinning class-she was telling me the different things I could do-didn't write it all down at the time-sigh  It's been a long story-still determined though to figure it out one day.

       Oh and  Ashford is a family business out of New Zealand

 Looking at what I have left to spin for my Yellowstone park inspired rauna or poncho, I need more blues and yellows. So I ordered 2 more art batts to make up my own on the blending board-less expensive and more fun too.

  Can't believe we are heading to the end of another week already. 

Happy March 1st everyone.

  

T Stands for Spinning and Fibers

  We are approaching our last T for Tuesday in the month of February. I am ready for March-as Spring will be arriving. I am so ready, although here in this area it can bring allot of strong winds with tornadoes.  I am writing this post early Sunday evening and we are all bracing for very high winds coming in tonight.

  To join in for T just share a drink related post, visit with friends--find link in my sidebar-hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth.

  If interested, in my previous post I shared photos of the fibers I got in the mail for spinning-they are all soft and wonderful.

  I have been spinning most every day this past week. It has been too chilly or raining to work outdoors.

   I have spun up quite a lot of this lovely tweed. I have enough on my spindle to fill up this niddy noddy and then spin almost another full spindle. I had just a little bit of that pretty brown, so added this merino-bamboo green tweed to the same niddy noddy. My spinning is finally improving-although I don't get those very fine spun yarns-however I do like this size of yarn to use as the weft in my weaving so I can really see the yarns. (the weft is the one you wind on to a shuttle and hand weave with that) I feel I have finally progressed to an advanced beginner spinner. My yarn is still not totally the same through out-but that's ok for my weaving now.

I also spun up allot of this very nice white wool 

      I have a full niddy noddy  now These need to get sprayed down with water-let dry and then I repeat the process. This will set the twist 

    information here about a niddy noddy 

 I will dye this white with my left over black walnuts that I dried a couple years ago when I  made the ink. Should give me a lovely brown.

It was a bit late in the day today, but I wanted to play with my blending board. I have not done that since my last trip to Fiber U.  I will need to watch some you tube videos this week as I wasn't able to get the roving off all in one piece. I think I added a bit too much fibers.

Below are tools to make the roving-you choose the size hole and pull the fibers through to make a roving that you spin into yarn. Of course I couldn't buy just one smiles-These are called Ditz All handmade by craftsman that I bought at different times at Fiber U The bear and the buffalo are by the same artisan

I bought this buffalo first I love it-but this has a couple very sharp points on it so I don't use this one often

I thought I would look for a video now to share with you too, on how to do this-ahhh I see what I was doing wrong now She is calling this Dizz and from the video I did not have too many fibers down I just wasn't doing it right.

I ended up with short pieces but that's ok-anxious to see how the colors spin up

 You can see my Yellowstone cup with green tea, and and my Ice drink-which is carbonated water no sugars with flavors

  This is a ranch oak coffee table that was my parents. Two sides pull up to make larger-this sits in front of the couch and then also in front of the tv-I have books piled up on this table along with what ever craft I am working on.

My husband has been asking for homemade pancakes for breakfast. I add fresh blueberries, and we still have maple syrup from Pennsylvania that a friend gifted us years ago. From the gift of a gallon we are now down to less that a quart My coffee in the back, as this plate is my gluten free version-they turned out sooo good no wonder he has been requesting these pancakes-I forgot how good these are. smiles

I bought this book back when it came out in 1970. This is my all time favorite bread book. I used to make all of our breads before I found out I had celiac. This has the pancake recipe in it

And my coffee was made in my French press I figured out a really easy way to clean out the loose grounds-fill up with water and pour through a fine strainer-so much easier and faster this way

That's it from me this week. Stay warm and safe 

  We have a dove pair enjoying the seeds now-perhaps they remember from last year

Happy T and New Week

T Stands for Tuesday & Fiber U Loaded with Photos-Long

Happy T Stands for Tuesday!
  This is where we share a drink related post-just show a photo of your water bottle or what ever you are drinking. Join us with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth-link in my right hand column.

  My weekend was full of classes at Fiber U this year. I took two classes on Saturday and an all day class 8-3 on Sunday.
  I was determined not to shop this year, except perhaps for some natural dyes-which I did end up bringing home a couple hard to find dyes-but nothing else-so I was good-no spontaneous purchasing which I love to do with fibers and beautiful handmade tools-but I did not even look at them. Actually there was time to shop-a good thing ha ha

      (Note: I set up links to explain weaving and spinning terminology)

  My first class was using a blending board to make rolags for spinning. 
   You may remember last year I shared a few posts and photos about me making rolags with my blending board.
  I decided to take this class for a hands on experience as I was having a little trouble getting my rolags off the board-and this turned out to be a very fun class where the time really flew by fast. She had one full table packed with all sorts of fibers to try-including fibers made from milk, banana, mint, soy, all sorts of things. I had also tried making roving from a you tube video, so I brought along my ditz. This was the teacher's first time making roving this way-but I learned tips how to do this better as well.

I remembered to bring my camera along this weekend too-all photos will enlarge to full size just click on them


This event was held at the local civic center in my nearby city

Sorry this was a bit blurry but the only photo I took of the table of fibers-and much of the table is not showing here

The class was worth taking for me to learn of this technique-using a brush to push down some of the more difficult fibers-and then using the carder afterwards

This was my blending board-and you can see my bottle of coconut water to back left

The finished rolags-ready for spinning at end of class

After lunch, my next class was Dyeing with Woods, the class I looked forward to the most and did not disappoint.

  The teacher was a biologist, a bit of a chemist, and a natural dye historian. She has taught in colleges and universities, and at many events like this one.  She was extremely organized and could answer any question we asked. I learned so much. I had discovered some things on my own and when she mentioned a couple it let me know my thinking was correct.
   I was upset that my pokeberry dye on rug yarn that I did several years ago had lost it's color after 4 years and stored away. She reassured me it's a berry so in the end is a stain not a dye, and I had concluded that as well but wasn't sure.
  Another thing I had never read about was to add a wetting agent to the skeins of wool. I knew they needed to either come right out of the mordant bath or to soak over night so the fibers are very wet and will open up to accept the dye. The teacher adds a couple drops of pure no scented ivory dish soap.

Here are a few photos-there were 4 of these pots going at one time, and we filled them three times plus one more. We each ended up with 13 samples, a booklet of information, a ring and tags for our samples.

These bags are filled with our samples of each of the 13 different wood extracted dye pots we did

Below are close ups of some of the bags with our samples-we got purple, browns, yellows, red, a black and one was grey-green

Logwood
   I had bought some of this a couple years ago from her booth-not knowing at the time she also taught. She says now the wood chips are very very difficult to find so one needs to buy the extract right now  I am glad I waited as I now know how to dye with it 

Brazilwood-gorgeous  I bought some of this to dye with

I was very impressed with this gorgeous yellow from the black oak-but you use only a very very small layer just inside the bark-so this is more expensive and harder to find. I bought a small bag She says it will give gorgeous greens over dyed with indigo.

Depending on the wood-some of these are soaked in a water solution, but most in an alcohol solution for a week or more to extract the dye.

She also added the mordant right to the dye pot which I have not done before-I have always mordanted the fibers first and then dyed. this was definately easier especially for yarns

Sunday was my all day Scandinavian weaving class.

   This class did not go well for me at all. I was tired to begin with and then the instructions were very unclear. I felt pretty stupid as I know how to thread a 4 harness floor loom.  geesh 

   The instructor was very knowledgeable, a weaving historian and also a reenacter  She went to allot of work setting up our kits with everything we needed, but she was very poor in explaining things and she mentioned in conversation she was in her mid 80s-so I do applaud her for still teaching--but
    The lighting was also bad in the room and very difficult to see white on white.  There was one student that was worse than me-she said she was a weaver too but did not take the threads off the cross properly so she really messed things up and the teacher gave her another warp-which she also messed up.
    I managed to finally get it threaded properly with an hour left in the class. I just asked the teacher to show me how to set the end up for weaving and I would figure it all out later--probably Not though ha ha
   This is similar to a back strap loom where you tie the warp on to something stable and then you tie the other end to your waist-and then weave. This little loom has a shed though like a floor loom or rigid heddle loom, I took a few photos of the student's set ups

There was only one student that was weaving right away-she ended up with allot more than this finished. She was nice and offered for me to weave on hers so I would know what it was like-as she was going to take most of it apart and weave over again with better tension and edges-I said thanks but I think I am brain dead right now-5 hours to thread mine several times ugh Well in the 5 hours I was also looking at samples, and listening to the teacher about different things

In the 1700 and 1800's these little looms were beautifully handmade and carved
 This is a modern one that was laser cut

She had several samples woven up

This is mine finally threaded-these are plastic they have long slits-tiny holes-and half long slits to thread into. 

      I also wanted to share my swap-I got Elizabeth's big envelope in the mail on Saturday. (Mine will get mailed out on Monday)
   She sent the atc, handmade paper, and butcher papers-oops it was deli papers- for me to see-for eco dyeing and other crafts Thanks again

I decided I needed a bit of wine this evening-lol

   
Happy T Stands for Tuesday