In which I learn a new trick

I got a huge box of acid dyes from Mr. Jane for Christmas. Of course, I ruined the surprise by telling him, 3 days before Christmas, that I was going to head to a local yarn shop to buy some. He had to come clean to keep me from going. As a prize, I got to reach in blind and pick two out to use before the holiday. I picked sapphire blue and scarlet. Check out the huge mess I made:



I actually spilled some blue dye on the already ridiculously blue table and stained it MORE BLUE. Crazy. Since then, I have also been given a giant tarp as a gift, which I am required to cover the kitchen with whenever I get out the dye. I think Mr. Jane is fearing for our security deposit.

Some close-ups of the huge mess. I soaked the wool for an hour before I laid it out on strips of plastic wrap. I used some suction bulbs I got in the baby section of the dollar store to paint the fiber:





Then I rolled it all up in the plastic wrap (this is where the blue dye exploded out of one end of the roll and onto the table and chair, but not the floor). Rolls of plastic wrap went into the vegetable steamer for 45 minutes:



Thankfully, while I was waiting for this to steam, I read up a little on spinning hand-painted roving. I ended up splitting each length of fiber lengthwise into 8 strips to spin. Here's the yarn mid-ply:



The colors don't line up so much, but the red and blue look much better together than I thought they would. What we wound up with was one whole skein at 208 yards, and another overflow skein of 116 yards. This is the 208:



Hooray!

In which I actually do something

A couple of months ago, planning a trip to the Hudson Valley, I made a map of every fiber store and sheep-farm I could find on the interwebs between my house and my Mom's. The map didn't keep me from getting horribly and hopelessly lost, but whatever. By the time I reached my parents' house, I had filled up the back of my little car with all kinds of goodies, most of which are sitting, uncarded, in bags scattered around me as I'm writing this. Since Mr. Jane was dragged along on this adventure, he decided to make the best of it and pick out some fun fiber and then force me to spin it and make him a present. He decided on this:



It's natural brown alpaca fiber. Now this trip was back when I had spun a grand total of 4 bobbins of anything. I came home, very excited and tried to start making yarn out of it. I failed. I wasn't used to the longer fibers, which don't glide easily through each other and your fingers. I made a mess and put the alpaca away until I got better at this game. After 6 of 7 more skeins of regular wool, bamboo, and soy I tried again:



I figured, since I had to spin pretty much all of this stuff, I would fill the bobbins right up with singly-ply and then just use several bobbins when I plied it together. Here's what we wound up with:



And in the ball:



So in the meantime, Mr. Jane came home from Pittsburgh and got to work flipping through my Ravelry account, searching for a hat that he wanted. He decided on a pretty simple Fisherman's Hat, started here:



And finished and wrapped around his head here:



It's itchy, I'm told.

In which I cheat by using nicer wool

A few weeks ago, Mr. Jane had to go to Pittsburgh for a week and I had too much time on my hands. The New York State Sheep and Wool Festival was only a couple of weeks away, but this did not stop me from visiting a local spinning shop with my partner in crime, Lana. We were disappointed with the shop, as well as the staff, so we will skip the free publicity. On the plus side, I bought this:



Which I promptly turned in 155 yards of this:



This yarn spun up so fast and so well. It's super soft and very consistent.

While I was at the yarn store, I also bought some yellow acid dye, which I had never used before and didn't really understand too well. Never buy yellow acid dye.

In which we make up for lost time

I've spun kind of a lot of yarn since the last time I walked away from my wheel long enough to upload some pictures. Even though I switch fibers just about every time I finish a project, I'm definitely getting better at spinning in general. I experimented with acid dye, as well. I'll need much more practice at that.

I wanted to put these in some kind of chronological order, but I'm a little brain dead and I can't remember what I made right after the soy. I'm thinking it was the squishy white wool that wheel-lady gave me.



Sorry, the finished product is apparently the only picture I have of that one. It was surprisingly easy to spin, considering it was the 3rd or 4th thing I ever made. The wool was in a huge ball, and had been carded very thoroughly. The wool itself was full of lanolin. By the time I would get done with a bobbin of this wool, my hands would literally be dripping with oil. I gave it a few extra soaks after I was finished.


Shortly after that, I took a trip downstate and stopped at every farm that might sell wool along the way. I got some good stuff, but mostly I bought a bunch of very un-processed wool. It had been washed, but that's about it. I thought it would be neat to start a skein of wool from the beginning. Plus, they kept handing me garbage bags full of the stuff. It'll take me a while to get through it all. Here's a bag full of messy wool:



They had pretty much every natural color variation you can imagine, and I think I bought a bag of everything. I did spin a skein of the yarn in the bag above, but it's related to the unfortunate acid dye story so I'll save that for a later post. I cleaned and carded some of the black and dark brown wool and spun up a skein of that too:



And a close up. It's actually kind of pretty, with the subtle color variation - knowing that I had nothing to do with it. This was all the sheep.

Soy!

Ok, so clearly I need some practice with the whole consistent-yarn-diameter thing. Whatever.



Soy fibers are way easier to spin than 10 year old wool. At some points, though, it would just get so thin that I had to stop and literally cut it so I could start again from a higher point. I say cut it because neither I, nor Adam, could break the single thread by pulling on it. Crazy!



I read some horror stories that soy can take up to a week to dry after you ply and soak it, and that it can congeal into a gross mass during the process. Thankfully, neither of those things happened.

I have a lot of soy left, so this is an experiment that I will be repeating shortly, and hopefully with better results. During the plying process, there was some tangling and some breaking and some hasty tying. Kind of tragic.

Either way, here's a close-up of my 95% dry soy yarn. I wound up with almost exactly 100 yards.

In which the pictures look shockingly similar to the first post

So, I want to break these things up into separate projects, though this is more of an extension of the first. After I plied and hung up yesterday's yarn to dry, I began carding some more from the same bag of raw wool. I also had some dyed light green wool (back of the minivan) and some bright blue corriedale which (wait for it...) I actually purchased from a yarn shop in Troy, NY (Thank you, Lana!) and did NOT get out of a vehicle in a parking lot. Look how pretty:



So while I was carding the superold white and grey wool, I threw in pinches of blue and green corriedale. I went to town spinning that stuff last night and I really, really liked the way it looked on the bobbins. If I hadn't woken up this morning and plied it before I even had coffee, I would put in a picture of that. Next time.

Anyway, I had spun two half-bobbins (or so I thought) worth of single ply yarn last night in pretty white, grey, brown, blue, and green. I already know that the very important overnight setting of the twist is going to be the hardest part of this whole process. As I said, I woke up this morning and plied the singles and completely filled my bobbin, grinding the wheel to a halt. There wasn't that much of the singles left, but it was enough that I was kicking myself a little.

Onto the niddy noddy, which I learned yesterday measures the yarn roughly into yards. By my incredibly unscientific estimation (factoring in trying to count while getting my whole upper body tangled in yarn and cursing) I made 92 yards of this stuff.

Wash, soak, rinse



Hang to dry



Here's a close-up, so you can see what the colors did.



It's interesting, but still inconsistent and still a bit fuzzy for my taste. I also started playing around with soy fibers last night, which appear to be making something completely different.

Experiments in spinning really old wool

For the last couple of years I have been stocking up on fiber whenever I go to any kind of knitting/yarn/wool store or festival. I really, really wanted to buy a spinning wheel - eventually. In my mind it was one of those purchases that came after the mortgage I don't yet have was under control, and the student loans were paid off. Spinning wheels are expensive, and fiber isn't cheap. Unfortunately, I have no self-control.



You might notice that there are boxes everywhere. That's because I would rather play with wool than unpack. See above re: self-control.

The woman that I bought the wheel from (used) gave me a few bags of wool she had lying around in her basement with the wheel. For anyone who cares, it's an Ashford Traditional that she hadn't touched since she became pregnant with her son. I met him during the exchange and would put him in 3rd or 4th grade. Long time for this thing to be sitting in a basement.

I bought the wheel a month and a half ago, but I neglected to buy carders, mostly because there weren't any in the back of the woman's minivan when I bought the wheel. Friday, when I got home from work, I had a package from my boyfriend - beautiful curved carders. He gets extra points for thoughtfulness.

I carded some raw wool from WheelLady on Friday night (because my social calendar is clearly packed). It was mostly white and light grey, with some browns and blacks that I blended in. I really, really didn't know what I was doing. I spun it onto two bobbins (back of the minivan) and let it sit overnight, because that's what the only spinning book I own said to do. In the morning I plied it, strung it up on my niddy noddy (back of the minivan, too) and then ran to find my book because I had no idea what to do next.

Thankfully, I had everything I needed in the house. I soaked the yarn in some hot water with dish soap for awhile:



Then vinegar, then hot water. I patted it dry with an old towel and then gave it a few snaps and hung it up to dry:



I let it hang overnight and took it down this morning. It's messy and it's inconsistent, but it is definitely yarn.