Fiber Monday - A little bit of this and a little bit of that
The first day of school went well in that there were no tears. There was some difficulty in remembering how to diagram sentences but that wasn't surprising. Since today was a very light day, I'll probably have more interesting things to share tomorrow. In the meantime, it's Monday, the one day you all get to wade through pictures and descriptions of fiber crafts that you aren't actually interested in.
Let's start with the knitting. I did get a good chunk done on the sleeves of my sweater as we were driving in the car. I kind of forgot exactly how large sleeves actually are. Plus, they get bigger and bigger as you work your way up the sleeve, so that it feels as if you are knitting slower and slower. I do get a good chunk of knitting done during the last two hours of co-op while R. rests next to me, so I'm hopeful they will be done soon. The best decision I made was to knit both sleeves at the same time. This means that I have both sleeves cast onto my needles, each being knit with separate balls of yarn. I finish one sleeve, push it aside, then knit the same row on the second sleeve, then reverse. I will be so very happy when I finish them and don't have to cast on a second sleeve. Here is how far I've gotten on them.
(They really are the same length, I just didn't try to unroll each edge exactly.)
The other thing I worked on over vacation was knitting a swatch for the socks I'll be starting next. I've decided that these socks will by for J., and he is very excited about them.
On to a dyeing project. This Thursday my spinning class will be getting their suspended spindles and will begin learning to spin. (Last week we talked about fiber and cloth and yarn and separated a raw fleece into separate locks.) The best thing to use to spin is commercially prepared wool, not unprepared fleece. We're going to work up to that. I have prepared wool all ready for them, but it was a natural white, so not very interesting to spin color-wise. So I decided to try to dye some of it. I haven't mixed all my dyes up yet, but I did have primary colors, so went for a tie-dyed effect. Here is what it looked like right after I added the dye.
After heating, these colors moved around and blended quite a bit. This morning I was very excited to see what the wool ended up looking like.
I think everyone is going to have fun with the colors as they learn to spin. I am wondering exactly how much fun I will be having trying to get all twelve students spinning at the same time.
This weekend I also washed some fleece. (There were all those locks that my class has so dutifully separated.) And since I was going to be spending the afternoon filling up bins of hot water, I decided to wash the final dirty fleece I had stashed in my closet.
The trays of each student's locks. They are almost dry and I will be very happy to bring them inside as those towers I've made are rather precarious.
And the cheviot fleece I also washed. This is fleece I brought home after the dyeing class I took earlier in the summer. There's not a huge amount of it, but it has washed up very well and seems very fluffy.
Finally, I have one spinning project I've been working on since we got home. Do you remember a while back G. and I spent some time making batts with the drum carder? Well, most of those have been sitting in my studio closet waiting for me to get to them. I needed a project to start last week, so on a whim pulled out the purple ones.
Those I spun and filled three bobbins with the plan to make a 3-ply yarn.
Today I started the plying stage. Here is the first skein waiting for me to tie it up. I haven't counted yet, but it probably close to 100 yards. I will probably get two more skeins the same size from what I spun.
When you look at the individual strands of yarn you can see all the different colors which are in it.
It's about 16 wpi, putting it a sport weight. This is thinner than I thought I was spinning. My plan was to make a slightly chunkier yarn and that is what I thought I was doing with the singles. While it is not as fine as a fingering weight, it is also not much thicker. This is my current learning curve. Having finally learned to spin fine yarn, it is very difficult to go back to purposefully spinning thicker yarn. I have more batts, I'll keep trying.
This yarn is also made with a hodgepodge of random wool fiber. It is pretty scratchy and not what you would want to wear next to the skin. I have absolutely no idea what I will end up doing with it. This is what happens with most of the yarn I spin unless I have a specific project I am spinning purposefully for.
You'll notice there are not weaving items to mention. That is because I am finding that weaving still takes me more bandwidth to do. Spinning? That I can do without much effort, but with weaving I still really need to think purposefully about each and every step. This means that during seasons where I am expending a lot of mental energy in other areas, by the end of the day I just can't fathom sitting and having to think some more. Spinning becomes my default that that point, which explains the hundreds of yarn I've spun over the past week. I'm hoping life is going to settle down now that everything has started and I can go back to weaving again.
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