Trenchwork

It’s hard to believe, but we’ve already had a few days of hard frost and having to scrape the windows. The hills just an hour away are already covered in snow–even if it’s hard to see against the grey clouds . . . which were, incidentally, supposed to be clear blue skies. Ya gotta love how wrong weather forecasters can be.

It’s been a busy month, but I’m learning a few things. First, look at this:

The Bothwell Spin-In sponsors the Longest Thread competition. The idea is to spin as long a 2-ply thread as you can from 10 grams of washed and prepped fleece. The record? It’s over 1200 meters for a wheel-spun yarn, and over 1400 for a spindle-spun yarn. And that yarn above? It’s not even close.

Bothwell has historically not allowed electric wheels, but thanks to a lovely spinner by the name of Lucinda, they’ve added them as of this year. And, since I wrote in to support that inclusion, I feel compelled to spin a yarn on Jeeves. The problem is that the WooLee Winder has a fair amount of pull, and spinning a fine thread with that kind of tension really takes practice. And I haven’t quite nailed it yet, even when I cross-lace the flyer and take off the brake. The fleece is a 14-micron Merino, and the singles have around 14-20 individual hairs. I need to reduce to half that.

There is a trick to doing this. It’s a balancing act between the amount of twist, the amount of ply, what you need to have the yarn hold together, and when that enough is enough.

I’ll give it one more try, and then send in whatever I accomplish. It won’t be competitive, but it’ll support the inclusion of the electric wheels, and a simple personal best. That’s enough.

But, working through that single–and then plying and finding I’d underplied that yarn–is reminding me that while we all know we need more twist when we spin thinner singles, we may be so focused on that fact that we may be overthinking how much we need. Too much twist and the single becomes brittle and breaks. Too little and it drifts apart and won’t hold. I rarely spin this thin a single, but I need to work on giving it less twist than I have been, and then see what happens.

It’s an experiment, you see.

In the meantime, this yarn finished:

A colleague has asked for a scarf from handspun in a dark burgundy/wine color, so I cannibalized a few remaining ounces of superwash Merino from Enchanted Knoll Farm in the “Hot Blood” colorway as the base, and added equal portions of kettle-dyed mulberry silk in pure scarlet, and black alpaca. There are 150 grams in a 3-ply, 18wpi, 558 yards with 131 in chain ply. And this is where that lesson about the reduced twist in very thin singles becomes reality, because the yarn is crisper than I’d like. It softened up a little in a swatch, and the fabric has lovely drape and a silky handle. It works out beautifully in a fabric, but given what it was intended for, I really did want it a bit softer. He gave me two color alternatives, so this is another thing we’re going to try again. Those thin singles . . . I’m going to get them the way I want them. Soon.

A Review: Nancy’s Knit Knacks Jumbo Katie-a-Go Go
The bobbins for the Hansen are too large for the Majacraft lazy kate, so I got this one. It has an advantage in that it will hold pretty much any bobbin. In order from large to small, the photo shows the WooLee Winder bobbin for the Hansen, the normal Majacraft bobbin, and the bobbin for the high-speed head. They all fit. The bit of string around the peg on the front works as a tensioning band so the bobbins don’t spin out of control, and the base has little rubber feet that keep it from slipping around on a surface. The entire kate dismantles and slips into the denim pouch, so becomes incredibly portable.

But it has a flaw. See the loop on the dowel in the middle? That loop is intended to work as a yarn guide; the singles or yarns from the bobbins run through the eye of the loop, and therein lies the flaw. The guide keeps the singles too close to each other, which means that they catch on each other if they’re at all fuzzy, and then you’re stuck trying to unhook them from one another in order to continue the plying. Ideally, the singles are kept as far apart from one another as possible until they reach your control point–usually your hand or plying diz–but that doesn’t have a chance to happen here; they’re streamed together too soon. If the brace were rectangular on the outside edge of the kate and was as wide as the kate, it would work better. But, that would be a rather clunky design, and I’ll be honest and say that I don’t think it would be any better than the current arrangement.

The solution? Just don’t use the loop. Other than that, I find that I like a kate where the bobbins are horizontal rather than vertical. If the bobbin is vertical, the single has to turn the entire weight of the bobbin with its burden of yarn. If the bobbin is horizontal, it turns more easily, and that in turn places less stress on the single pulling the bobbin.

The portability of the kate is brilliant, and it will work for much of what I want to do. That’s enough. For now.

Completion
And finally, the Favorite Flannel yarn in the last post? It’s now a simple version of the Haruni Shawl.

Since the shawl was intended as a prayer shawl, I replaced the central lace pattern with a simple stockinette. I did one extra set of rows and started the edging with 389 stitches, but I should have done one more repeat of those last 10 stockinette increase rows. The pattern notes that chart B should use about half the total yarn, but that changes if you do the center in stockinette and increase the center size. As a result, I ended up with 80 grams/227meters leftover, which is a bit of a shame, but I’ll give away the rest of the yarn with the shawl and perhaps she can find a use for the extra. I could have ripped back and added, but today–the day the shawl is finished–was the deadline. So, even if it’s a little smaller than planned, it’s done, and gifted away to its recipient.

I blocked pretty aggressively and the final size is 30” deep and 35” wide, so a nice little size for a shoulder shawl.

Now let’s see if I can spin some thread.