Saturday, August 18, 2018

Still spinning like crazy😁

I joined a Tour de Fleece team that runs in conjunction with the Tour de France in July and spun everyday of it.  I am amazed at how enjoyable it was.  My plan was always to start spinning once I retire.  I bought my Lendrum Original DT way back in 2005 and just goofed around on it, folded it up and tucked it in its bag and there it as sat.  Over the years I have given thought to selling it but I never did.  Now I am glad I didn't.   Now the plans are to learn to spin decent sock yarn to use on the Canadian Auto Knitter csm.

I looked through my plastic tote of fiber and found more than I thought I had - no surprise there!  LOL  I had a number of balls of unmeasured blends of wool, alpaca, angora, and llama that I had bought years ago, probably 2005 as well, to locker hook some rugs which I never did.  I pulled it all out for the Tour de Fleece and spun it up.
The plan is to use the yarn I spun to weave a throw.  I will probably have to use something along with it, either for warp or weft.  Since both of the floor looms are occupied I don't have to worry about it for now.  

As in the picture, I also got the spindles out as well.  I always like messing around with spindles so I am spinning up some silk hankies that I had gotten to knit some scarves.  I did try knitting one but it was not fun where the spindles are, so that will be the way those go.  I also won a really pretty black walnut spindle from the Tour team, so it is dressed in silk too:-)

Last night I pulled out a big bag out white fiber that I think is corriedale and a bag of pine green nylon.  I am using 100 grams of the corriedale and blend it with the nylon and learn how to spin a cabled3-ply sock yarn.  I split the corriedale into 3 balls and started blending each with the nylon and made rolags.  That process improved as I went, I do not think that the first bobbin is spun as fine as I would have liked so plying those 2 bobbins will be interesting.


...I was right, those 2 bobbins did not ply the same.  Fortunately I wound the nicer spun singles into a center-pull ball and then plied both together.  I ended up plying alot of the second bobbin to it's self but it worked fine.  Just one more bobbin of singles to spin and I will ply it all together and see what I end up with.

My brother gifted me with a pretty little saxony spinning wheel.  The best we know is that it came out of a 3-story Victorian house that was moved from West Allis to Milwaukee  by horses in the 1920's.   I have no idea when the wheel was made and it is not signed but it is a pretty little thing.


It cleaned up well but it is missing the flyer and bobbin.  I ordered a flyer off of EBay and it sort of fits.  It is not quite right.  I can get everything to spin, but I cannot get the bobbin to take up the yarn.  It is a double drive wheel and I am not sure if the whorl is not the right size to get everything to work together.  I have set it aside for now, eventually I will play some more and see if I can get it to spin.





Saturday, July 14, 2018

The Ups and Down of Playing with Fiber

The last 10 days or so have been just a rollercoaster of success and fails while playing with yarn and fiber.

First of all, I decided to try pickup on the mini Wave.  I took a pattern from Around the Baltic Sea, Notebook #4, Lithuania 2 by Hilegund Hergenhan.  I have a number of her bandweaving pattern books and they are a delight.  I can so appreciated all of the time and effort she put into these publications and find them to be a real treasure trove of Baltic band designs.

So I broke out my graph paper and colored pencils and modified one of the designs.  I found the Singer 301 cardtable a great place to sit and design:-)


I wound the warp and dressed the loom and tried to weave.  There were little warning bells🔔 going off in the back of my mind as I threaded, but I ignored it.  I start to weave and realize that I did not wind enough background threads - grrrrr!  Another warp trashed.  I recalculated how many ends were needed, wound, dressed, and started weaving.  Great, the pattern threads are not showing up as I would like.  In disgust, I have set the loom aside.  I need to decide to continue weaving as pickup, or just weave it off as plain weave.

Next problem, I pulled some 2/9 wools in blues that I have had for years to weave a wool pad for my ironing board.  I have read in various places how a wool pad really helps when steam pressing and people buy wool blankets at thrift stores and cut to fit.  I figured I have wool, so weave one.

This was an opportunity to use the triangle pulleys on the 110cm Glimakra.   I have been wanting to play with them and I have been so enamored with twills lately that it was a perfect time to weave a 3-shaft twill.  It went really well, weaving with the loom set up as counterbalance was great!  Good sheds and easy treadling. The shaft bars looked cattywampus, but everything went well.
 Well it went well until I cut the fabric from the loom and laid it out on my ironing board.  Duh!  I forgot to include loom waste when I wound the warp.  What is that all about?  I have been weaving over 15 years and I forget loom waste!?!  Now I will have to piece it after full it -geez!
Yep, that fabric is too short.

Now for the straw that almost broke my back.  I am participating in Tour de Fleece with team Warped Weaver's and years ago I wove spinning lap towel.  I decided to

weave one as a prize for our team.  Again, wound the warp, wove the towel, sewed it all up and it is some of the worst weaving I have done in years. I cannot believe how bad it looks.  Terrible selvages, obvious tension issues, it looks like a 3 year old wove it. So, back to winding, dressing, and weaving - again!  When I put myself on a yarn moratorium it was not my plan to trash so many warps as a way of reducing my stash.

Now, the actual spinning is going great!  I am spinning a number of bumps of mixed fibers.  All of the balls are a mix of wool, angora, alpaca,  and llama in natural colors that I had bought years ago to try lockerhooking but never did that.  I have been using the bumps to teach myself to spin.

I spun up 2 bumps that were a combo of greys and browns and finished plying them this morning.  I have a full jumbo bobbin of 2-ply that I have to skein.
Up to this point, I had only plied handspun a couple of times before.  Last night when I started to ply, I was just using the Lendrum lazy kate and did not care for how it was going just having one yarn guide.  I left the bobbins on the kate and threaded each single through a yarn guide on my winding stand and it really worked well for me.

It looks like I am doing better making yarn than using yarn😃






Saturday, June 30, 2018

Bone-headed move led me back to my wheel

Last night I finished weaving another linen band on the mini Wave.

So today I designed a new warp for the mini Wave.  I have had the urge to do some pickup and I want to see how this loom will handle it.  I modified a draft from Hidegund Hergenhan's 4th notebook Around the Baltic Sea, Lithuania 2.  I actually broke out the graph paper and colored pencils.  I am still weaving linen bands, they have all been woven is shades of greens, oranges, tans, along with black and brown.

The card table for the Singer 301 was perfect for graphing this out since my band basket was sitting.  So I have the warp dressed on the loom, go to start weaving, and figured out that I did not wind enough background ends.  Yeesh, it was like I had never woven before.  Now I have this long, pretty warp on the loom that will not do what I want it to do.  I needed to walk away and think about this.

I went up to the loft, pulled out my Lendrum DT spinning wheel and started spinning.  It has been a long time since I did any serious spinning and since I did join Ravelry's Warped Weavers Tour de Fleece 2018, I figured I should put some time in on the wheel.  It was pleasant, I can still spin!
This fiber is a mixed blend of alpaca, llama, angora, and wool.  I have a number of balls of this fiber from years ago.  I never used it for its original purpose, so I taught myself to spin on the wheel and spindles with it.  I also ended up going through my fleece bin and found some merino and some silk hankies, so I am set.  Should be fun:-)

Friday, June 22, 2018

Tonight I totally trashed the warp on the mini Wave.  I tried to outsmart myself and that never works.  I had a 2 ends dangling that were missed while winding the warp and I thought I could just wind all the warp forward, attach the 2 missed ends, and wind it back on.  Very wrong!  The tension and length of warp ends is all messed up.  I am afraid this one is for the trash can.

I set that mess aside, and went back to weaving of the floor inkle loom.  This one is not giving me any grief so far.


This is a band of dark and lights of each of the colors I have been using.  I really love this Bockens 16/2 linen.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

The start....

This is a travel journal of my wanderings in the tunnels of the rabbit-holes that I keep falling down.  Hopefully there will be some interesting twist and turns as I go.

I am hooked on fiber:  I weave in a variety of ways and have the equipment to do so.  I am now weaving yardage for sewing my own clothing on vintage Singer sewing machines.  Somehow I slipped down the quilting rabbit-hole as well which actually came from picking up a number of vintage Singer sewing machines.  I really love those old black beauties😀  I also enjoy different styles of braiding and have some really cool equipment for that.  Oh and there is a spinning wheel and a few spindles as well.

For going through all the hassles of being treated for breast cancer, I bought myself a kayak.  I have been using the "I survived cancer" justification for the purchase of a lot of toys.  That and preparing for retirement.  This is the time to get what I need to play with in the future.  So with that in mind, I picked up a recreational kayak for playing on rivers and small inland lakes.  My first 'yak is mostly for Lake Michigan.  It can pretty much take anything she decides to throw at me.

So that is what this blog will do, document my explorations in fiber and water.  I hope you enjoy the journeys as well.

What insomnia can lead to!

 A couple of weeks ago I had a very bad case of insomnia.  I was not able to fall asleep, so rather than the torture of tossing and turning,...