Natural Bridge park (or is it a monument?) in Alabama—the longest natural bridge east of the Mississippi.
And yes, that’s DH for scale under the arch.
I’ve been playing catch-up again, and I just realized I haven’t updated the blog. Since I’m about to go offline for the coming month, I also realized I’d better do that sooner rather than later.
On a work front, I’m trying to meet deadlines and get things settled for 10 course sites which will go online in a couple of weeks. I’ve done what I need to do for 4 of them, and have my own and 5 support sites left to settle. And I have until Monday.
On Tuesday, DH and I have a vacation, and we’ll be stateside to see family and friends and play tourist for little while. In other words, I need to get those sites settled before we leave.
And in other other words, don’t fret if the blog goes quiet for the next four weeks. I have work that needs to be done on the last couple of days of the month, but I’m otherwise planning on shutting down the machine and staying mostly offline for the break.
On a fibery front, the last few weeks have been mostly focused on work, but there’s been a little fibery progress.
First, the Gotland/Karakul/Rambouillet cross is finished, and is about to become travel knitting. I’m rather pleased with it. There are roughly 900 yards of a fingering weight 2-ply, and I decided I wanted it in a nuanced olive green.
The yarn has a lovely silky handle, and a subtle shine, and it’s going to make a terrific lace shawl. Which one, you ask? Oh, please! As if I know! But I’d better figure it out in the next 48 hours so I can at least be sure to pack the right needles!
And we’re making progress on Matteus. Remember the Shetland lamb?
It is starting to look like this:
The color is warmer than the photo shows, so rather than grey it’s a lovely oatmeal. I’m spinning it at a very soft, low-twist, DK o light worsted weight with the intent to do a Sleeves in your Pi, but I may have to reduce the grist in order to get the yardage I want. Or I can just spin it and make something warm and cozy and do a Sleeves in your Pi with the next one.
There’s a standing joke in the spinning community which seems to be true for me these days. Someone asks a spinner what she’s doing. ”
Spinning,” she replies.
“What are you going to make?” asks the uninitiated observer.
“Yarn,” she says, and grins.
“No, I mean, what are you going to make? You know, with the yarn?”
“Make something? I have to make something? I’m making yarn. What more do I want?” she asks, with wide-eyed innocence.
And never ask a spinner what that particular fiber is for when she buys it. Or, if you do ask, be prepared for the frequent response, “I have absolutely no idea.” And when we tell you that? Don’t get annoyed with us, because the reality is that we genuinely have no idea. Sometimes we go into a fiber knowing precisely what it’s going to be when it grows up. For instance, given the lock structure and the shine and the smaller amount, this fiber simply had to be lace. Very very often, however, we’re spinning for the joy of spinning, for the learning, for the therapy, for the art, for the relaxation, for the craft, for the process, for the creativity, for the spiritual renewal, and for the end result. Do we actually have to do anything after that?
When we do—if we do—well, that’s just gravy.
Say hello to the latest arrival:
Polwarth. From Wendy Dennis of Tarndwarncoort. I’ve been wanting to compare American bred lines of some of the breeds I like with Australian lines of those fleeces, and this is the start to that. Interestingly, even though the crimp count is the same as the Am-bred Polwarth I’ve tried, this fleece feels softer and has a definitely more silky feel.
The fleece measures in at about 23-24 microns with a lovely handle, and Wendy was a pleasure to deal with—and I’ll cheerfully go back to her next year.
I haven’t fully unpacked the fleece yet—I don’t dare until I’m ready to work with it or I’ll never finish what I need to do before Tuesday—but what I see is very clean. The locks are about 5.5″, with 9 crimps to the inch, and I can’t touch it for the next four weeks. The good news, of course, is that fiber doesn’t expire. It’ll be here waiting when I get back.
Hello, my name is Rhonna and I’m a fiberholic. Are there cookies at these meetings?
The Tour de France finished yesterday, and so did the Tour de Fleece.
I am absolutely and totally amazed at what we can accomplish when we have a support group, and how much it can turn out to be when we aren’t checking our progress every five minutes. It’s rather fun to look back after a longer period of time and see a small pile of completed (or mostly completed) results rather than a single yarn.
From left to right, there’s
The white G/K/R skein on the right has not yet had its finishing bath, and I’ll wait to do that until I spin those remaining batts. It won’t take long, so that yarn will be done today. Then instead of just the usual bath, I’ll put it in a dye bath and finish it that way. It should come out to about 18wpi, give or take a couple, and I’m guessing I’ll end up with around 775 yards when all is said and done.
My goals for this Tour were to finish the Bond and one of the smaller batches of fleece in my stash, and the two indie fibers on the left. I nearly made that; the only thing I didn’t quite finish was the G/K/R cross, although I met the Raw Power challenge goal of spinning a pound of raw fleece. I actually managed a bit more than that in fleece-to-yarn spinning; there are 21+ ounces in the Bond, and 9.5 in the G/K/R cross.
However, even without those last three batts, that’s a total of 2168 yards of yarn in the past 21 days—and half of that is in a 3-ply yarn. Given the sheer amount of time that it takes to prep fiber and a few very low-productivity days, that’s not bad at all. The reality is that it takes about as much time to prep the fiber as it does to spin it, regardless of whether you’re combing or carding, and not forgetting flicking and diz time. I have a tendency to overlook this part of the process, I’m afraid. I tend to overestimate what I can accomplish because I underestimate how long it will actually take to comb that fleece, or flick the locks to prepare for carding, or to run the carder . . . Spinning from fleece is NOT a fast process. It takes time. But I love the process, the transformation of one form to another, and I love being able to pick up a yarn I’ve taken from fleece to yarn and say, “I did that.” How very very cool it all is.
The Tour? The Tour is finished, and I’m looking forward to it next year. But, for now, it’s done. However, as with the riders the Tour de Fleece follows, wheels will keep on spinning.
Bond is a fine wool. For those of you who don’t really know what that means, we don’t mean “fine” in the sense that it’s nice, as in “it’s a fine day,” “that’s fine, dear,” or “lawdy, lawdy, ain’t he fine?” Rather, we mean that it’s a fine grade; it is a softer wool versus a coarser wool. But it’s also fine. 
The breed was developed in the early 1900s by crossing Peppin Merino ewes with Lincoln rams, then breeding back to Merino to regain the softness but not so much as to lose the Lincoln influence. The end result is a fairly large sheep with a lovely lovely fleece. The Merino gave its softness and low micron count, and the Lincoln influence gave a longer staple length, slightly more relaxed crimp and staple, and a tiny bit of luster. So, the average staple length is closer to 5″, with roughly 7 crimps per inch, and the staple seems to normally be a bit blocky and dense rather than triangular or oval in shape. The micron count for the breed falls between 22-28. To put it in another way, it’s about the same softness as a medium Merino, but with a longer and more relaxed staple.
Let me show you a quick comparison:
Interesting, huh?
In this case, the Bond is from a ram named Thomas of Lowder Colour Farms. The unwashed fleece looked like this:
The photo doesn’t do the color justice; the color in the samples photo above this one is on target, but that lock doesn’t have the golden tips which were in the fleece.
Because of the Merino influence, this is a fairly high-grease fleece and you can expect to lose between 30-45% of the weight in the wash, assuming you scour out all the grease. In this case, I wanted to leave some of the lanolin in the fleece in order to play with longdraw spinning with the lanolin, but I found I left more than I wanted and had to give the fleece a second wash before I was willing to work with it.
/begin rant
And that, friends and neighbors, raises a point. At repeated intervals, there is a discussion about spinning in the grease on the various fiber lists and forums, and I want to go on record as saying that there is a difference between spinning in the dirt and spinning in the grease. Somehow, folks have gotten the idea that “spinning in the grease” means working with fleece just as it is, straight from the sheep. There are those who like that experience, and that’s ok. But I’m not one of them. As Kate has said, sheep in general are not clean beasties. And certainly they’re not self-grooming. As a result, their fleece is full not only of suint (lanolin, sweat, body oils), but whatever they’ve come into contact with along the way—which includes everything from mud to poo, urine to dirt and sand, straw and chaff, seed and feed. The fleece may look fairly clean if it doesn’t have a lot of VM (vegetable matter) in it and it’s not covered in dung tags, but the simple reality is that it is not. And with all due respect to those who don’t mind dealing with that stuff, I don’t want to spin it into my yarn. Contrary to what some folks say, it does not spin out or all come out in the wash when the yarn is washed and finished—particularly if you’ve spun a firm yarn, such as a worsted yarn and a yarn with multiple plies.
For me, I have to admit that it seems a matter of common sense. I see what falls out of a fleece which has been washed and the lanolin removed; it’s amazing how much sand, dirt, and tiny pieces of VM there is even after you’ve thoroughly and a bit obsessively picked the fleece. Most of it comes out in the processing, and the rest in the spinning as you work with the fiber. But if the lanolin is retained, it behaves like glue and holds onto all the nastiness as well, which means that it is all trapped within the singles you’ve just spun. Some will come out in the wash, but the process of sand and dirt working its way out over time is not exactly good for the yarn, and you know, I would rather not feel like Charlie Brown’s friend Pig-pen, leaving a trail of tiny granules and dirt on my clothes and elsewhere.
That’s what I call spinning in the dirt. (And it helps that I’ve seen a few other folks use that phrase as well; at least I know I’m not alone there!)
But I do understand the love some folks have of spinning fleece which still has at least some degree of lanolin. The lanolin works as an intensive treatment for your hands, the yarn plumps beautifully when it’s scoured in the finishing process, and the general wisdom is that it can make longdraw easier to spin thinner singles since it essentially forces the individual hairs to want to stick to one another, and thus draw out in a longer stream without falling apart quite so easily.
It is, however, possible to spin in the grease without spinning in the dirt: wash the fleece. That may sound contrary to the purpose, but it really isn’t; there are a dozen different ways to wash fleece, and there is no rule which says you have to wash in very hot water with lots of degreaser soap. If you want to keep the lanolin, try soaking the fleece in room-temperature water for a couple of days and doing repeated rinses. Even better (IMHO), use a wash method with lukewarm temperatures and a bit of soap to get rid of the other impurities. If the water is not warm enough to melt the lanolin, it won’t be removed. If you want to get rid of some of the lanolin but not all of it, raise the temperature enough to melt the lanolin, but reduce the amount of degreaser and don’t let the fleece soak in the warmer temperature for too long. In other words, shorten the wash cycle.
You may have to experiment to find a wash method that works best for you, but there is absolutely no reason why spinning in the grease should be the same as spinning in the dirt. There is, in other words, no good reason why you should not be able to spin a clean, lanolin-rich yarn.
/end rant
With all that in mind, I washed Thomas’s fleece so that I could retain some of the lanolin in order to work with longdraw spinning. And you know, I’ve decided I prefer spinning fiber where most of the lanolin has been removed.
First, what I had was a partial fleece, and I knew I wanted to comb it. The Valkyrie combs did a beautiful job of it:
Forgive the dark pic, but there are 600 grams (21.+ ounces) of combed bird’s nests. But in locks where I had left more than less lanolin, the remaining bits of VM or sand clung for life. It is absolutely critical that the wool and the combs are warm; you cannot comb lanolin-laden wool when it is cold. The lanolin behaves like cement and you’ll just end up ripping your fibers. So, tuck the fleece in a warm space and let it warm to the point where the lanolin become more fluid (around 95-100F) and then you can work with it. In my case, that was in a plastic bag inside a window where the sun happened to be shining through. Some of the few days when we actually had sun, that is. However, I still felt that I had more waste as a result of the cling effect than I wanted—and I wanted to hold onto every single gram of this fleece.
The Valkyrie combs created bird’s nests which weighed about 8-10 grams at the finish, and I “cheated” a couple of times and loaded the last rounds onto the hackle . . .
then dizzed from there to get a larger nest.
I had wanted to start with combed top, but I didn’t want a fully worsted yarn. Rather, I wanted the best of both worlds, so I span with a backward draw, letting the twist into the fiber supply to create a semi-woolen yarn. It is softer and loftier than a worsted yarn, but a bit more sturdy than a true woolen yarn, and the multiple plies make for a rounder and more durable yarn as well.
However, I found I actually have better control over my backward draw when there is no lanolin in the fiber. It is, I think, a matter of experience and practice, and I know I’ll get better at it, but the lanolin “hides” the amount of twist the single has and it is easy for the single to feel harder than it is—and to thus underestimate how much twist you actually have. There is a balancing point in the process which I haven’t yet mastered, and it may simply be that I need to keep even less of the lanolin than I did this time.
The end result, however, is that the singles are a bit more variable than I would have liked—or than I’d intended—so the grist of the yarn varies from 9-13 wraps per inch. I did scour the yarn fairly thoroughly when it was finished, and fulled it slightly, so the sections which had more lanolin than others and the sections which were more loosely spun as a result of that lanolin plumped like Ballpark franks. That accounts for some of the irregularity, but I’m afraid the rest is purely the fault of the spinner (i.e., me).
There are roughly 1100 yards here. I’d wanted a vest, but I don’t think I have quite enough, so it will rest a bit while I search out patterns. I am, however, very pleased with this yarn. Bond is a lovely fiber. It is soft, resilient, has a good degree of elasticity, and is a versatile fleece . It’s not as slippery as Merino, but can be as soft. And yes: there’s more on the horizon. There are a number of Bond breeders in the US (including Kate Lowder in OK and Joanna Gleason in CO), and I’m really curious to see how the US Bonds compare to the Australian Bonds (their home of origin), and that’s a question I’ll be able to resolve in a few months. In the meantime, however, I am truly enjoying the journey.
| ETA: An addendum.
Because I just never knit socks, I forgot to mention something Nikki Wyscaver (a gal who possesses a wonderful amount of knowledge and grasp on spinning) reminded me of and told the fibery list we both happen to inhabit, and that is that while Bond is considered a next-to-skin soft fiber, it is not a fiber you want to choose for something which needs to be particularly strong, such as socks. That’s true of all the fine wools, of course, although there are ways to work around that, such as by spinning a very firm worsted yarn, or a semi-worsted with more plies than usual (no less than 3). Another solution would be to add stronger fibers to your finer ones, although with a soft fiber, it makes sense to add fibers which will lend to rather than detract from that softness, such as silk, tencel, bamboo, nylon or rayon, or kid mohair. For softer fabrics, though? My, oh my, oh my. Ain’t it just fine. |
By the way, Mr. Onery?
He’s proving to not be very ornery at all.
It’s amazing how spinning and fiber in work pauses can add up, and I’m a bit pleased with how things are going, although I’d have liked to have managed more.
I finished the second bobbin of Bond.
saw another bobbin and a single batt. Forgive the bad picture; it’s what you get when you take a photo indoors at 11pm.
(ETA: The batt the left comes from the fleece at the bottom of the post; the bobbin on the right is Bond singles.)
That gave me 3 bobbins ready to ply.
Woooot! We have yarn! I managed to ply 2 bobbins’ worth of 3-ply yarn. There are roughly 450+ yards of light worsted weight. The yarn is still wet in this shot, but it’ll give you an idea; I was able to comb the fleece in such a way that I kept the golden tips, and the shifts in colors are still present in the yarn.
I think I’m going to like it very much indeed.
There were leftover singles on two of the bobbins, and I think I’m about halfway through the fiber. I’ll refill the bobbins and ply the next batch, but I’m guessing there will be 1200-1500 yards. Not as much as I’d hoped, but enough to do something with.
The batt, however, has been much less predictable, and a total riot.
When I was home for my stepdad’s death in March, a friend who seems bent on enabling my fiber passions decided I needed the comfort of fleece. She was right, of course, and let’s face it: when it comes to fleece, I have the resistance a 2-year-old has to candy.
One of the partial fleeces she sent was a Gotland/Karakul/Rambouillet mix from a wether named Mr. Onery.
I’ve decided the name is appropriate, but not because the fellow is producing ugly wool. Rather, he can’t seem to decide what kind of fleece he wants to grow. Have a look:
In most crossbred sheep, you have a fleece which bears the characteristics of its ancestry to one degree or another. So, for instance, a Rambouillet/Teeswater fleece may look and feel more like Rambouillet or more like Teeswater, or may be like both; it may have the Rambo’s fineness and the Teeswater’s silkiness. Mr. Onery, however, seems to have decided to grow representative locks of all his ancestors . . . sort of.
See, Karakul is a primitive breed with a double coat rather like Icelandic, except that—in my own experience—Icelandic has a higher proportion of thel than Karakul has. But it does have that very long tog and the distinctive undercoat, the thel. In Mr. Onery’s case, the tog is much softer than his Karakul ancestor could claim, and the thel is similarly softer and a bit longer or more variable in length than the Karakul. In some ways, the thel is more reminiscent of a low-crimp and rather silky Rambo lock.
And then there is the Gotland, with its somewhat silky feel and wavy curl.
And to both of those, the Rambouillet has added fineness and a denser lock.
I rather want to meet this sheep. Because, you see, he simply cannot look like what my imagination paints him as: a softly curling ball of shiny wool with drooping spikes of tog in a crazy patchwork quilt of lock types—rather like a wilting porcupine. But he IS a confused little soul, isn’t he?
Given the variations in lock length even within the locks, there’s just no good way to comb this fleece without losing half the fleece. In order to retain as much as possible, carding seems to be the only viable option. That at least gives the opportunity to mix up the sections so you get some of all types of locks in a single batt, and then to blend those well. I’ll pull out any stiff hairs as I come to them, but thus far the fleece promises to be fairly soft, very silky, and have a lot of shine.
The batt in the Day 12 photo above was carded on the Strauch Petite, and nigh well exploded when I took it off the carder. It weighs 1.3+ ounces, and is over 4 inches thick, without being dense at all.
I am Totally entertained. And I can’t wait to see what the yarn will be like.
