Elowen: the latest shawl

It's always a great feeling when you have something off your needles, the ends woven in and the item washed and blocked. Here is the latest. It's called Elowen, available on Ravelry. Made in 100% commercial yarn, the only thing 100-Mile about this shawl is the knitter. But go easy on me folks, we all need distractions.

It's blocked with shawl pins, one of the world's greatest inventions. And held down by my collection of river rocks. That's why I collect flat, heavy rocks.

I'm planning to wear it to work so maybe I can entice the youngest to do a photo shoot.

100-mile skirt update V

Here's the last skein of yarn for the 100-mile skirt. It is 189m and I hope this finishes the skirt. 400m took me to about 3 inches above my knee, and while the pattern does start to flare out quite a bit, I think this last 189m will do the trick.

Here it is on the niddy-noddy:

And here it is, nicely dried after a good soak in hot water.

 Now I have to find the pattern and try to remember where I was. . . .

March Fibre club: Wellspring colourway in English

Here's a photo of the March Fibre club yarn, nearly complete. It's English Shetland wool that is a delight to spin, especially after spinning the slippery silky/merino/nylon Candygram last week. I am spinning this yarn to be a worsted weight and it spun up fast. All of it has been spun it all on my Houndesign Henry's Dervish spindle.

I just have two more sets of singles to ply and then I'll finish them off by boiling and bashing them around. That way they'll get slightly felted and it also may even out the colours a bit.  The dark colours may lose a bit of dye and the lighter ones may pick it up. At least that's what I hope will happen.

Two days later:

I finished up the yarn. And then I put all the skeins well tied up with figure eights, into a pasta pot with hot water and a bit of shampoo. I brought it to a boil and then held it at a simmer for 15 minutes. In that time the twist relaxed, the yarn evened out and the colours became a bit more even. The dark sections lost some of their dye and the lighter sections picked it up. I like this yarn a lot better now.

Not sure what it will be. There's 100+grams of it. Enough to make a set of half-mitts and a hat. Or it could just go into my yarn collection.  I seem to be much more prolific making yarn than I am knitting these days.

Candygram yarn complete

The yarn is all done. Here it is right after being made into skeins.

and here it is all washed and bashed up, ready for knitting.You can see how the yarn softens up and gets its bounce back after a good hot soak. In some sections it's a sock yarn, and in others is a sport weight.

Not entirely sure how it's going to knit up, in terms of how the colours will behave with each other. The yarn itself is lovely and soft and strong, so it could be a pair of socks. But the colours and patterning are really asking for it to be some kind of small shawl scarf.  

Then again I could just put it into my yarn collection with all the other stuff that I make. I simply love making yarn. This fibre club is a great way to satisfy my need to constantly explore fibres and colours and get out of my regular rhythms.  

I'm onto the March fibre now. I'm determined to have the Jan/Feb/March fibre spun up before the next cycle begins. January fibre is a merino/silk blend that will take a lot of discipline. That's why I've jumped to the March fibre.  It's a nice Shetland wool with greens and blues. Easy spinning, worsted weight. Will go fast, I type hopefully.

Will keep you posted.

February Fibre Club: Candygram

Sweet Georgia Yarns Fibre Club is a fun way to experiment with fibres and colours. It's also a great way to boot you out of any kind of a fibre/spinning rut you may be in.  You sign up for three months at a time. Once a month you get a 100g bag of unspun fibre with a description of the content of the yarn along with some spinning suggestions.

The fibre for February is called Candygram. According to Felicia Lo, "All these saccharine pinks, lilacs, light lime greens and pale blues remind me of those little candy hearts that you get at Valentine's Day." And boy, she's right. These are not colours that would have every chosen for myself. But that's the fun thing about the Fibre Club. Once you have them, you have to work with them. And it ended up being really fun. I love these intense bold colours and the splash of silver glitter that ekes out one in a while. 

It is made of 63% Superwash Merino Wool, 20% Silk, 15% Nylon, 2% "Silver." And it was prepared as a pencil roving.  A sleek amount of fibre, about the thickness of a . . . pencil.  

I've been off spinning with my wheel due to a spinning injury, and since the spinning workshop last week, I've been full on with my spindles. So this is being done entirely with my lace-weight spindles for the singles, and my heavier, Henry's Dervish for plying.

I actually have crafted a detailed plan for spinning this yarn.  But I won't explain my thinking until I am sure it worked.  Why bother otherwise?  But here it is nearly done - all the fibre is spun up and I am at the plying stage now.  

From left to right you will see, a larger spindle that I am using for plying with about a third of the plying done.  Next to that you will see two sets of purple balls next to lace-weight spindles full of singles. These are waiting to be wound into two-ply balls which make plying so much easier. The wee green ball at the bottom is the left over from winding a double-ply ball.  I am sure there will be others so this one will get incorporated into the final plan.  The mini skein at the very bottom is one of the sample I did as I tried to figure out how to get the best out of all these colours.

Will post the final results.

Dyed rovings for the spinning workshop

Last Saturday, I taught two Introduction to Spinning with a Drop Spindle workshops. From 8:30am - 12:30pm and again from 1pm - 4pm. It was intense and fun. Each of the students, and there were eight in each class, were able to spin a continuous thread, and most of them made a small skein of two-ply yarn by the end of the workshop.

As a a treat I sent them home with 25g of white BLF and 25g of dyed BFL rovings. Rovings that I dyed myself.  Here's the photo essay of that process:

I soaked the rovings overnight and then applied the dye in a rainbow-ish pattern. After they dyeing, I rolled them in cellophane and let them sit for a few days. Overnight is probably enough, but things got busy with work so the steaming part was on hold.

I steamed them for a total of 45 minutes. Flipping them every ten minutes. After four flips, I turned the heat off and let them cool down in the steamer. About three hours after that, I unrolled them and let them cool even further.

Here's what they looked like after I rinsed all the dye out of them.

And here they are, all dry and ready to be rolled into nests to be tucked into their bags.

I wish I had made one of these for me, so I could see what the spun yarn looked like. Next time. . . . . better planning.

Over dyeing experiment

A friend of mine at work recently made a lovely shawl.  Well I thought it was lovely, but she wasn't all that pleased with the colours. The shawl was made from the Elowen Shawl pattern by Judy Marples of Purl Bumps. It's a two-coloured pattern. My friend knit her's in pink and grey. Pink as the main colour, grey the second. Since she wasn't happy with it, I suggested she over dye it. So then we got to talking, thinking, strategizing about what colour to over dye it. And that's when I suggested we do an experiment.

She gave me what was left of the yarn and I made them into as many mini-skeins of equal size that I could manage.  I ended up with five, see below:

Each one went into a mason jar along with a mini-skein of white wool so we'd know what the base colour was.

I added warm water to the jars and then put them into my steamer. I added enough water so the jars were surrounded by it within two inches of the top of the open jar. When the temperature of the water in the jar reached 170 degrees, I held it there for 10 minutes. Using tongs, I removed the yarn from the hot water, added carefully measured out dye (enough to make a 1% intensity) and then added the yarn back to it.

I let that simmer for about 15 minutes, then turned the heat off. After 20 minutes I emptied the water from the pot and let the jars sit for another 20 minutes. Then I let them cool some more on my windowsill.

When it was completely cooled down, I removed them from the jars, rinsed them in soapy then clear water and set them to dry.  Here's the result:

Not too inspiring. There is not a great difference between the grey and pink yarns, especially when there is already some red in the dye -- as you can see with the pink and purple samples. The most dramatic difference is the yellow, but even so, not enough to inspire you to make the change.

If I were to do it again, I would use less dye and see what kind of effect a pastel over dye would have.

That will have to wait for another day.