I’m back, albeit more than a little jet lagged, so you’ll have to take this post as you can get it (and I’ll cross my fingers that it makes at least some sense).  However, I have plenty of material, so I’m going to be greedy and dole it out slowly over the next week or two.  For today, though, more than anything I just want to reassure folks that I’m alive, and that I haven’t fallen off the planet or gotten permanently lost in the west’s open landscape.  (Seriously, do you KNOW how many places there are out there where running out of gas would mean at least a day’s walk, or a half day to find cell phone coverage?)

It WAS good to be there, and to spend time with family and friends. To sit and visit, to chat about nothing and everything, under no pressure to cover the news or try and download all the latest into a single conversation before you have to leave. I miss them more than I can say.

It was good to be back among the familiar, even when there were changes. To see election information and campaign interviews as they happened rather than filtered through European interests and perspectives, recognizing where medias on both sides of the pond have their own biases and slants. To drive an automatic, to turn right on red, have decent sized parking spaces, to find street signs and addresses clearly marked. To groan about Florida/Georgia humidity and be thankful for air conditioning. To go to church and celebrate in one’s own language in a place and among a people which actually celebrate. To have Mom’s cheesecake. To have access to department stores which carry sizes larger than a 9 and colors other than black. To linger over a Mexican or Tex-Mex meal, and to have 24-hour access to a WalMart which happens to carry one’s preferred antacid afterward.

And doggone it, it was a real downer to have to settle for a Norwegian grocery yesterday after having spent 6 weeks around full-sized American groceries. If you’re wondering about the difference, think of the larger Mom & Pop stores. The ones with 4 brands of ice cream, only 1 or 2 of which come in gallon boxes, and of those in only 3 flavors (krokan, tri, and vanilla). Where they have 6 types of cereal not counting musli, 4 types of canned fruits (pears, peaches, pineapple, and coctail), and not many more types of canned veggies (corn, beans in tomato sauce or red beans, tomatoes, sometimes peas and sometimes green beans).

It’s a joy to walk into a well-organized Publix or Winn-Dixie, to shake your head at your own excitement at finding true sausages rather than oversized hot dogs, Pop Tarts, a real selection of fruits and veggies, more than three types of pasta, and a proper broom. To laugh when you realize that the family member who came with you has decided to not only walk 20 paces behind, but in the next aisle as you ooh and ah over new products and old “friends,” and while you possessively clutch that box of ordinary saltine crackers.

It’s amazing what you miss, and how touched you find yourself when you can pick up a box of Grape Nuts or walk into an office supply store and find not only the labels you need but a thousand versions to suit any need. Or how grateful you feel yourself when you walk through the doors of a large hardware store and have the desk clerk smile, ask if you’re having a good day, and offer to help you find whatever it is you came in for—within 5 seconds of your arrival—then follow through to do exactly that or summon help if she doesn’t have the answers, all with a cheerful can-do attitude.

There are, of course, some negatives along the way. Such as when a fiber order from a vendor never arrives (is never truly sent) and the vendor refuses to answer the phone or reply to your messages (voice and e-mail) and you have to resort to filing a grievance to retrieve your payment. That kind of unprofessionalism is simply unacceptable, and I don’t care whether it’s a small family business or not. While the brick and mortar store is probably more honest because it requires no initiative from the owner, I’ll never again try to purchase anything from that shop or individual, either online or otherwise, and I’ll never never never recommend them to someone else. Nor do I object to telling you who it was in the hope that the vendor will straighten up, although I fear that their reputation is sunk with more than just me. My feeling is that Little Barn should never operate an online shop . . . or perhaps that they should hire an honest and reputable individual to manage it independently of the owner. It’s a shame, because the prices are good, and I truly loathe reporting a bad experience with a vendor. They’re the kinds of things which give your faith in the inherent good in people a bit of a shake.

Then there are the ones you order raw wool from and who fall off the planet after you’ve sent your payment, and from whom you cannot get a response. The CVM was that way, and I’d given it up for fraud and lost, but was thankful I’d only paid for a pound plus postage. Then, six months later, the fiber arrives. Unexpected, and out of the blue. I don’t know whether the individual had a bout of conscience, if someone else found out and applied pressure, or quite what happened. There was no note, and no explanation. Just a very generous pound of wool. These are the ones which, while you’re still a bit cynical, begin to restore your faith in humanity.

And then there are the pure goods. Like getting an unexpected fibery gift of roving from Margaret (who seemed to be under the silly illusion that I just didn’t have enough but I know it was really because she was trying to dig herself out of fleece that had all come back from the mill ). And meeting Donna, who is as genuine and sweet as she seems on her blog, and who brought me some Loopy Ewe mini-batts because she feared I’d be overwhelmed with just raw fleece. And Kate Lowder who nudged a fleece vendor into shipping an order, and then went above and beyond the call to find me a reputable BFL vendor (which turned out to be Robin Koenig and her champion ewe from Black Sheep Gathering, and whose fleece had been washed on the animal before she was shown—which meant that it was incredibly clean when I got it). Seriously, I cannot say enough positive about Kate, and I recommend her to anyone and without reservation.

There were the two anonymous gents at the Metcalf Wood Industries who reassured me that I wasn’t as lost as I thought I was and pointed me in the right direction.

There was Laura Steere of Infinity Acres who found me the luscious fleece from this little Huacaya Alpacca sweetie:

. . . and then promply went out and, in 100-degree heat and impossible humidity–sheared the silky white ringleted fleece of a Suri Llama when I asked if she had a pound she could spare and bouyed my niece and I up with glasses of cold water. How nice could you be?? And heck yes I took the whole fleece!

There was Tony in the produce section of the Winn-Dixie on Magnolia and Park in Tallahassee. A tall, clear-sighted fellow who was intrigued by my desire for onion skins and who talked to me about it and his time in the professional basketball leagues in Europe for a good 15 minutes. He even offered to save the skins for me.

There are people you meet and for whom you automatically wish not just well, but best.

Then there was the fellow at the Woolery who replaced the Little Barn order, and had it in my hands in 2 days flat. The fibery vendors who followed through, like Vicki at Kendig Cottage and Terry of Bizyhands on Etsy who sold me her gently-used Victoria and threw in a lovely hand-dyed roving so that I would have something to practice with.

I truly do believe that people are generally inherently good, but after a couple of negative experiences, it’s awfully nice to find the folks who prove the rule rather than the exception.

(ETA:  click for bigger or ID labels on the Flickr image.)

First things first.  The spindling class was last Friday and a number of you have asked (and patiently waited) for a report.  This is it. 

It went well.  There were some 41 (I think) students, divided into 3 groups—sort of.  Grades 9 and 10 were combined into one large class which met for 2 hours, then there was Grade 8 for an hour, then a break for lunch.  Then Grade 8 was joined by Grade 7 for the next hour, and finally 7 had an hour all to themselves.  One of my new spinners helped out with the first group, so that gave us 3 adults working with 22 (?) kids, and only 1 of those kids had ever touched a spindle before.  That lone soul was—you guessed it—the son of my new spinner, and he’s doing brilliantly!  Talk about a consistent, fine single!

The combined 7 and 8 grades were a bit of a challenge, but Scott took the continuing 8th graders into their plying while I started the 7th graders on their spinning, and then we both worked with the 7th graders in their last hour.

And yes—I was toast by the end of it all.  I think Scott survived a bit better, but there’s no way I could have done it without his and Janet’s help.  Thanks, guys.

So, how did they do?  Well, about as I expected.  I took in all the novelty yarns I’ve run up over the past couple of months, plus the bag of small sample skeins so they could see some different fibers, plus a number of my own yarns, and a gallon ziplock bag each of washed Teeswater, Wensleydale, and Babydoll Southdown.  Most of these kids have only seen Norwegian White type sheep, and I wanted them to get the idea that wool is not wool is not wool.  There is simply a world of fiber possibilities out there, and if we look at wool alone, the possibilities are nearly endless.  I also wanted them to understand that as spinners, they controlled the entire creative process of their yarn—starting with their choice of fibers.

They dealt with that well, and they were fascinated by the raw wools, although I had to laugh when one gal grimaced and rolled her eyes when she felt the Babydoll Southdown.  The fiber is clean and well scoured, but it has a spongy feel and she was convinced it was  dirty and nasty. The Wensleydale, however, she liked because of the smooth curls; it feels more like hair.  Seriously, kids are a riot.

Each student chose a braid, and as expected, not all of them finished that braid.  Most of them did not, in fact, and I was relieved that I’d chosen well by not including a full 2 ounces of fiber in each braid.  At the end of the day, there were 46 braids left, which gives them enough for another spinning day or two, or for next year’s crop of students.  I’m rather pleased about that.

And how they spun . . . As expected, some did very well, and some struggled.  But at the end of the 2-hour block, every single student had spun a yarn.  A couple or three needed to finish plying, but the rest left with their yarn plied, skeined, and tied for washing, many of them wearing their new skeins as bracelets and headbands.

The only other thing which caught me off guard was their confusion about where that fiber and yarn came from.  Scott told one group that I’d dyed the fiber for them, and that seemed to surprise them so much that they applauded.  I’m not entirely certain what that says about their first impressions about me, though. (grin)  It didn’t occur to me to tell the others that I’d dyed those fibers; I didn’t feel a need to.  But one entire group and several students asked me what some of the yarns I’d brought with me cost.  I told them that those yarns weren’t for sale, and then we had a “who’s on first” conversation for a little while until I realized that they were trying to figure out how much I had paid for those yarns; they wanted to know how much it had cost me to purchase those yarns.  When the light went on and I understood what they were asking, I told them that I had not bought those yarns; I had spun those yarns myself.  I had to repeat myself a couple of times before that bit of information really sank in, and then there was a rather long silence while they adjusted their conception of spinning, and their ideas about me.  I was no longer just someone showing them something; I was the person who had done that.  Since they now knew the person who’d spun those yarns and knew that it wasn’t a professional who did it for a living, the concept of spinning their own yarns seemed to become much more accessible to several of them.  So much so that a couple of them asked about the spinning group meetings—and I’d love to see some of them there.

That, however, is the scoop on the class, and yes—I’m fairly pleased with how it all went.

On Saturday I had the last orientation meeting with the daughter of one of the gals in the knitting group.  She had come to me with questions for an essay she was working on, and I’d put a spindle and fiber in her hands as part of a way to answer those questions.  Her mom sent me a note that evening telling me that Z had gone home and promptly declared that she wants a wheel for her birthday.

I’m starting to feel as if I’m a corrupting influence!  At least it’s toward fibery pursuits. 

After I thought about that one for a bit, I realized that I was going to be away for a couple of months, and the Babe I use for training purposes would be sitting idle.  And it struck me that perhaps Z’s parents would be interested in renting the Babe (cheap) for a couple of months.  At the end of that time, Z would know for certain whether she really wanted to spin on a wheel, and her parents wouldn’t have agonized about whether to get her one only to find that the novelty had worn off before the wheel was more than a couple of months old.  This way, she’ll have a chance to decide for herself what she wants to do—and her parents will have a chance to evaluate the situation and explore options.  At least, all that made sense to me.

It made sense to them as well, and after a second tutoring session, Z went home with the Babe safely tucked into the back  seat of her mom’s car, some training fiber, and eight ounces each of BFL, Shetland, Corriedale pencil roving, and Brown Sheep Yarn superwash she’d bought at cost from my stash. By the time she finishes all those, she should have a good foundation to work from, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what she’s done at the end of the summer.

In the meantime, there’s been some odds and ends on my own spinning front.  I’ve washed up half of each of the pound samples.  I’ve spun samples from all sections of the full Shetland fleece, and decided to put it away until I get back so that I can take my time to comb it carefully.  It’s simply a beautiful fleece, and turns out a lovely rich coffee color that I adore.  I span a sample skein from the black Shetland lamb in the grease, and decided two things:

1. I love that fleece.  It’s healthy with no milk tips, it’s black as night, and it’s very very soft.  It would make a stunning shawl, and since I don’t have time to do that now, I’ve put it aside for when I come back.
2. I do not like spinning in the grease.  Both of Lois’s fleeces were very clean, so I didn’t have to worry about nasty stuff, extra VM, and so forth.  This is, in fact, the only fleece in my current possession that I would have considered spinning without a wash first.  However, even with the fleece and instruments warmed, and the lanolin very fluid, I don’t like the drafting process in full grease.  A little lanolin is one thing; a lot creates trouble for me.  Nor do I like the way my hands and tools pick up any dirt because the lanolin acts a bit like glue, or how I have to scrub my equipment down afterward.  I know there are a lot of people out there who enjoy the experience, but I’m afraid I’m not one of them.

I’ve begun carding the fleece I’ve washed, but I’m simply not going to get it all done before I leave.  I’d intended on having it all carded and spun, but that sooo isn’t going to happen.  So it’s going into the suitcase in whatever condition I have it—carded, combed, or not—and I’ll just be thankful that it’s clean!

The Teeswater lamb was first.

This sample came from Barbara Burrows and caught me by surprise. I lost a bit of the lock structure rubbing out the tips in some sections, but the locks are incredibly soft and very shiny. I have three curly wool samples in this batch: Wensleydale, Cotswold, and Teeswater. Of the three, the Wensleydale has the crisper and stronger curl, while the Teeswater and the Cotswold have less of a distinct ringlet curl and more of a heavy wave of the sort you might see in a light permanent.

The Teeswater is softer than either the Wensleydale or Cotswold, and this particular sample has much more shine, although it’s not precisely fair to judge lamb against adult fleece, particularly when one of the adult fleeces is colored. It is, however, downright silky, and I can easily see how it is used as a substitute for mohair.

The staple length is fairly long

and close to 5 inches in this case, if you stretch it out.

It combs and cards easily, and because of the silky nature, VM simply falls out during the process. Truthfully, it’s lovely to work with.  This one is carded and half is combed and pulled into sliver; it’s in the suitcase.

By the way, Barbara? She and her daughter, Kate, are both pleasures to work with.   You know precisely what you’re getting, when you’re getting it, and there’s no confusion or risk of being burned on a fleece purchase. Kate even helped me straighten out a purchase from another seller. I couldn’t ask for more.  Seriously.

The Old English Babydoll Southdown was next.

(click for bigger if you like)

This particular sample came from a nice gal named Patty and a 2-year old ram named “Care Bear.” How cute is that?? Isn’t that name just incredibly appropriate for that breed with their little round faces and smiling expressions?

Babydoll has a very short staple

and a very spongy texture. I’ve carded some and combed some just to see how it behaved, and aside from the note that it needs a fine pitch set of combs, and very gentle carding, it handles either nicely. I have a feeling, however, that this will be one of those wools which will feel as if it’s spun woolen regardless of whether it’s spun worsted from a worsted prep or woolen from a rolag. We’ll see what happens.

The only other note I really want to add here is that it has a truly impressive amount of lanolin. I lost a full half of the weight in the wash, and I still see one or two locks that managed to retain a little of the grease, despite my best efforts. The problem, of course, is not so much that there’s a massive amount of grease as it is that that grease and the short, crimpy staple traps the dirt. As I pull the locks open prior to carding, the sand and VM falls out, but I can see that some of it is still there. This was not a particularly dirty fleece; it’s just a part of the nature of the beast, I’m afraid, but a series of good shakes and thwaps in the process makes a big difference, and the rest will fall out in the spinning process.

This one is already in the suitcase.

Finally, there’s been some dyeing. Not acids, this time, but natural dyes.

(click for bigger and tags)
The photo doesn’t do the colors justice, and I can’t seem to get a good shot of the skeins. The yarn is a handspun merino at about 18wpi, and there are 10-15 yards per skein. I’ve labeled the photo, but going from left to right we have:
*original undyed white;
*sandalwood (it’s actually a medium salmon color);
*yellow onion skins with an iron after bath;
*yellow onion skins with a tin  after bath;
*yellow onion skins (the tin version is only a figment brighter than this one, and both are a rich rust color);
*dandelion flower with an iron after bath (it’s actually a soft sage green);
*dandelion flower with a tin after bath (a bit brighter greenish yellow);
*dandelion flower (a solid greenish yellow);
*dandlion root (I read somewhere that the root would give a pink.  It didn’t.  It’s ecru.);
*lichen, tentatively identified as cavernularia hultenii (a lovely soft camel color);
*birch leaf (a nearly neon yellow green);
*osage orange (a yellower and less neon version of the birch, much to my surprise);
*annatto;
*alkanet (a lavender grey);
*madder (not too different from the onion skins);
*madder with tin mordant (only a hint brighter than the plain);
*madder with iron mordant (a rich chocolate).

For all of these except the last two madders, I used an alum mordant.  Of these, I had a couple of surprises.  I expected green from the birch.  I did not expect it to  glow in the dark.  The lichen is a grey and black color, and I expected a nondescript grey dye.  I did not expect the  lovely brown it gave.  I expected osage orange to give a deeper color.  And I definitely did not expect the alkanet to smell like feet.

No, I’m not kidding on that last.  Feet.  Stinky feet.  Definitely makes you thankful you have ventilation.

So what did I think?  Well, natural dyes are fun.  They’re an adventure and I do have a lot more exploring to do.  But you know, I really do appreciate the orderliness and precision—and colors—in acids.  In other words, I don’t think natural dyeing will take priority for me, and it certainly won’t replace other methods.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate them—and enjoy them.

And that, friends and neighbors, is all the news of the moment.  On Tuesday morning (Monday evening for east coasters), I hop a plane for stateside for a month of friends and family.  I’ve pulled out the suitcase, but so far have only the fibery elements figured out.  Typical, eh? DH is flying over at the end of the month, and then we’re going be tourists and wander around a bit before we go back to family and then fly home again.

In short, the computer is going with me for some personal work and some writing time, but ‘net access will be unstable and I’m giving myself permission to not fret about mail, blogs, or forums for the next 2 months.  All listserv mail is being turned off for the time being, and I’m looking forward to NOT being chained to the machine and communications.  I’ll try and give you a post or two along the way, but don’t worry about sending Vito after me until after 15 August.  I’m planning on spending time with my family, meeting a few spinners in real life, visiting a proper grocery store (do you KNOW how exciting it can be to just walk down the aisles of a normal Winn-Dixie?!?), relishing a bit of sunshine even while I die in the heat and humidity, boiling some shrimp, and otherwise just generally enjoying the down time.

I sincerely hope you’ve all planned a little respite for yourselves!  Life is simply too busy, too full of stress, and too chaotic for us to live at the usual pace all the time.  Even if it’s just a little one, give yourself a break when you can.

But I find myself wondering about students now and then, and their expectations of educational programs, education in general, and us as teachers in particular.

One of the classes I just finished with required 4 novels over a 16 week period, a short essay of 1200 words, and a final exam.  Not much, truth be told, but it’s not my course.  And I suppose that’s another part of the reason I don’t talk much about teaching;  very little of what I’m doing is actually my own course design these days, and I miss that incredibly.

However, while I’m accustomed to students complaining about the workload, a recent conversation caught me off guard simply because of its blatancy.  The student hadn’t read the last novel, and had no intention of doing so.  S/He’d attended the lecture and therefore “knew what the story was about.”

Right.

It was useless to explain that the lectures only provide context and analysis issues, and certainly don’t cover everything in the novel, although I did try.  I even resorted to the “you probably won’t manage the exam if you don’t read the text” desperate appeal, but since the student had cleared an earlier exam without having read the text, it wasn’t precisely convincing.

I don’t know which is more distressing:  the idea that a student actually COULD pass an exam without having read a text (and no, it wasn’t my exam), or the fact that a student registers for a sophomore/junior-level literature class with no intention of  reading the literature.  “I’m studying literature.  Just tell me what the story says; I don’t have to read it.”

There’s something horribly wrong with that discussion, and I find myself torn between frustration, incredible irritation, and a certain depression.  The latter because there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it; it’s neither my system nor my course.

Sigh.

Getting OFF the soapbox and moving on to fibery stuff, you’ll have to wait for fleece until the next installment.  I’m determined to get off the computer for a couple of hours tonight and do a bit of spinning.  But I do have a  little to show you.

First, I promised to teach a class of about 47 students (in 3 groups, I think) to spindle.  It’s just an orientation, and is the primary reason why I’ve been spinning a few funky and novelty yarns.  And yes, I have a couple to show you, but first there’s dyeing.  Allowing 2 ounces of fiber per student, there’s six pounds of Brown Sheep mill ends roving from Carol Lee at The Sheep Shed Studio.  It’s perfect fiber for this kind of thing; it’s cheap enough that no one is traumatized if it ends up fairly well destroyed, but has a good handle and makes for a nice yarn.  It’s great for training and getting new folks started, and I’ll admit I’ve worked my way through about 15 pounds of it for just that purpose.  The only drawback to the mill ends rather than the regular rovings is that the roving isn’t necessarily consistently wide; some sections are thinner than others.  But it still works, and the kids will do fine with it.

Scott (their teacher) told me that they seem to be into bright colors at the moment; he noticed that as they got into their weaving segment. I took him seriously.

This is a fairly bad photo; I couldn’t find a place to photo all of it where there was halfway decent light! And you certainly don’t get a sense of the scale of things, but there are 87 braids there, and each braid is made up of a 6-foot long or longer length of roving. MOST of the colors are done in batches of 10, except for the crayon-rainbow batches, and I think there are about 20 of them. There is ONE subtle, earth-tones batch just to show that all fibers don’t have to be glow-in-the-dark shades.

We have a pepto-pink with splashes of yellow (which don’t show in the photo):

There’s a flame orange with splashes of yellow (which also doesn’t show), the brown, and an orange (which should have been red) with splashes of pepto-pink:

A slime green (much brighter than here) with splashes of blue:

A blue with splashes of red and purple, and a host of primary-color rainbow fibers:

and

and

And last, a yellow and purple (which looks like black/navy in this photo):

Whew!

Do you reckon they’ll be happy? At least this gives them a choice! Or several.

I have, however, realized that braids are truly horrible ways to show fiber. It’s impossible to see how the colors pattern themselves across a roving; you only get a sense of the colors and not the structure of those colors. Normally I wrap the bundles into birds’ nests, but transporting 87 nests is a lot messier than transporting 87 braids. So, for the sake of organization, you’ll have to settle for the braids.

Spinning has been a bit eclectic, and the goal has been to gather enough of a variety of yarns to be able to show the students (teens, remember) that there are options and handspun yarn can look like any number of things—and need not look like rag yarn if you don’t want it to. So, in addition to what’s already in the stash, I’ve run up these . . .

First, I realized I had no singles in my stash. Everything is plied. I know why I don’t; I don’t want to have to worry about skewed fabric or finding a pattern specifically for those yarns. I’m lazy. But I need to at least show them that you CAN spin a single and, given certain considerations, knit with it. So first there was this:

This is Icelandic, hand-dyed by Spunky Eclectic in “Snow Squall.” It’s spun a bit thick-thin, as softly as possible, and for a total of 271 yards.

And then there was this:

This is another Spunky Eclectic fiber club fiber. It’s Romney, hand-dyed in the “Goblin Eyes” colorway. There are 8 ounces and 244 yards, and I deliberately spun it thick-thin. The dye work is lovely here, and the photo doesn’t do it justice. The colors look like velvet and are much richer in real life.

Both singles are low-twist and as softly spun as I could manage. Much to my surprise, I found that the Icelandic needed more twist than I expected—and fulled much more readily than I expected. Only a bit of grace and a lot of luck saved me from having a felted mass for that one, and determined to get it right, I span and fulled the Romney next. It came out nearly perfectly. The Icelandic, on the other hand, has three knots in the skein simply because I underestimated how much twist was actually necessary and then had to reconnect. That’ll teach me to get cocky!

Then, however, things got funky. First I ran up this:

Four ounces of Spunky’s “Pie for Everyone” Falkland. (Are you seeing a theme here?) It’s plied with Anchor’s glitter viscose crochet cable yarn/thread, decidedly thick-thin, and there are 46 yards.

Then I used the other half of “Pie for Everyone” to do this:

It’s a thick-thin, plied back on itself with feathers, felted balls, and silk fabric. I suspect the silk bled a wee bit and is the reason the yarn is a bit more mauve than the other “Pie,” but I don’t mind it. There are 71 yards.

And finally, a simple, dignified novelty yarn.

I had about 4 ounces of a red superwash, so plied it with metallic thread and sequins for a worsted-weight very soft yarn with a bit of glitz and glitter. This one actually surprised me a bit, but I rather like it. For the record, the WPI = 12, and TPI is about 7. There are 131 yards; enough for a scarf of some sort eventually.

And that, friends and neighbors, is the last of my novelties for a little while.  The rest of the week is going to be spent indulging in fleece.  Lovely fleece.

As of today, I’ve finished office hours for students, and have only a few exams and essays to mark or respond to over the course of the next month.  In other words, as of tomorrow, I suddenly find myself sitting here with a tidy amount of time on my hands, 50,000 things I want to do, and a bad case of ADD about which to do first!  Some of it will order itself according to deadlines—and the fact that I fly out for a visit home on 3 June, so some of it simply needs to be done before I leave.  I’m just not entirely certain which.

It’s about the same as putting a kid in a candy shop for the first time and telling her to choose one  candy.

And there is a lot of candy.

PLEASE click for bigger! I’ve set it to open in a different window, so you can take your time to check the notes and go to the larger sizes and really see the fleece.  Just to clarify, there’s a pound of each different breed, and some of it is simply stunning.  From back row to front, left to right:
Corriedale and Border Leicester; Babydoll Southdown and Cormo; Shetland lamb (with a bit of grey for contrast);
Wensleydale and Teeswater; Cotswold and Tunis; Icelandic and Cheviot;
Suffolk.

I’m dying to tell you all about each of these, but I reserve the right to do so at intervals as I work with each fleece—and thereby not add an extra 1000 words to this post!  But some of them . . . some of them are just absolutely gorgeous and I’m dying to get into them. Three of them are dirtier than the others and will need a little extra TLC in the washing  up, but most of them are clean, healthy, lovely fleeces.

And while I’ve not shown it to you (you’ll get it in the installment plan), that gives me a total of . . . er . . . Well, these:

1. Babydoll Southdown
2. Border Leicester
3. Cheviot
4. Cormo
5. Corriedale
6. Cotswold
7. Icelandic
8. Shetland (x2)
9. Suffolk
10. Teeswater
11. Tunis
12. Wensleydale
13. Gulf Coast
14. Finn
15. aussie Merino (i.e., not Delaine.  Presumably Peppin or Booroola.)
16. Targhee
17. Romeldale
18. Polwarth
19. Karakul
20. Rambouillet
21. CVM
22. BFL
23. Romney-Montaldale cross
24. Romney
25. Navajo Churro
26. Polypay
    plus:
27. llama
28. alpaca
29. mohair

I think I’m forgetting someone, but let’s face it:  you can’t tell.  However, I suppose I should admit that some of those are full fleeces.  The Shetland you already know about, and you’ve seen the Shetland lamb.  Otherwise, the Gulf Coast, Rambouillet, Romney, and Romney-Montaldale are full; the Polwarth, Tunis, and Navajo-Churro are partials.  The BFL and CVM may be full.

Can you tell what I’ll be doing over the summer?

I’ve been toying with the idea of saving out a half pound of each breed in single ounce increments for a sort of sample pack for my new spinners—or at least for those who want to do a bit of work with raw fleece (and who don’t mind paying for what it cost me).  OR, saving it for a course of my own in the fall.  I’d love to do the latter, but can’t provide wheels for a full class; new folks would be working with spindles and I don’t know if I can fill a class with spindles only.  Anyone have ideas or suggestions?

At the same time those latest samples came in, these arrived:

(er, not the clothespin; that’s just for gauge).  And:

The top combs are single-row and handmade by a gal in Sweden, and are both light and very nicely balanced. They’re perfect for rough combing. Remember this?–

Specifically, the brownish Romney/Romeldale cross in the lower left corner? Well, these combs turned that fleece into this:

(Ignore the sofa cushions; I was being lazy and couldn’t find an easy space to photo it all.)

I found I hadn’t washed the fleece quite as well as I’d thought I had; a little experience makes a huge difference when you can look at things in hindsight!  So I warmed the fleece to make it easier to handle, and rough combed it.  It was a bit of a challenge since it had been very dirty and full of VM, and now still had a bit of the lanolin residue and far too much VM.  I’d known it was rather a lot, but I never understood how much until I worked with the Stonehaven Farm fleeces. The tips were a bit sun damaged, and nepped a bit in the processing.  For the first few nests, I rough combed and then fine combed, but the fleece was a bit too rough for the four-pitch combs in their full configuration, and out of curiosity, I decided to let the neps remain and see what the final result would be.  The fleece was free, and it made sense to take advantage of every bit of experience I could get—and it’s been more than worth the weight of a paid fleece!

For fine combing, I turned to the four-pitch combs.  They’re hand-made by Jürgen Schönwolff (http://www.wollwolff.de/) and are lovely to handle.  The stand is very stable, has a solid weight, and comes with a clamp to reinforce that stability.

The stationary comb can be locked in place in the usual upright position:

or turned sideways, although I’ll be honest and say that I don’t know whether Mr. Schönwolff drilled the extra hole for the sideways position because I asked for it, or because it was something he’d already planned for. I’m afraid his English is less than brilliant, and my German is absolutely no better. (One does lose what one does not use.)

But the combs are also unique. Look:

See that red strip? Take another look:

Each row of tines is indivually placed and fixed. And, each row of tines can be individually removed and replaced with a spacer bar to change the combs from four- to three- to two- to single-pitch combs. The tines are 2mm, and with all four rows in place, the combs have a solid heft. An individual comb weighs in at 415 grams each, but it’s actually not overly heavy. The balance is good, and the handle is comfortable. While my hand was tired at the end of the day, my wrists did not hurt—and given the deQuervain’s, that’s significant.

While I didn’t use the Schönwolff combs on much of the Romney, I did test it on a bit of Shetland. And in combination, these two combs were brilliant. I ended up with a lovely combed top with no neps and, much to my surprise, nearly no waste—the latter of which I think is as much a reflection of the fleece as anything else!

But wow!!  What a difference a good set of combs can make in transforming raw fleece into a lovely bit of spinning fiber!  And yes, I’ll show you the Shetland eventually.  (Patience, patience!)

Oh . . . I almost forgot.  The Rustic RomneyX?

The color is a light coffee, the yarn is a true worsted (combed top spun worsted), but I cannot tell you how squishy it is! It’s surprisingly soft, and I’m dying to test it against the true Romney to see how it compares. I still have the white Romney from the free fleece (the earlier photo), which is in a similar condition to the brown. It’ll need to be combed to get the VM out, but if it wants to nep, I’m inclined to let it do so and run it in the same thick-thin rustic type of yarn and pair the two into a single project, like mittens or a hat.

However, it’s not all fleece. There’s been SOME spinning as well. There was this:

Four ounces of South African Fine, in Spunky Eclectic’s “Think Spring,” spun thick-thin and plied with heavy thread, feathers, and silk roses, for about 46 yards.  With a little luck and a bit of grace, it’ll help show a group of teens that handspun yarn can be as creative as they want it to be.

The other four ounces turned into this (thanks to Amelia of askthebellwether.com):

There’s 40 yards, spun thick-thin, plied with heavy pink thread, then chain plied. And it fascinates me how the thread creates a visual line that looks as if the yarn has a line of stitching down the middle of it.

And just for the sake of creating a not-so-funky yarn, I finally finished this:

It’s soysilk, dyed with Jacquard acid dyes, and I was glad to get it off the wheel! I find I prefer bamboo to soysilk, although part of my frustration was because I’d intended on beading the yarn, and changed my mind at the last minute. I did manage a small beaded skein for sample purposes, but I had tried plying with a beaded thread—and I gotta tell ya that is NOT my favorite method of adding beads. I much prefer to add it to the single itself as I spin it.

Fiber: Soysilk, kettle dyed with Jacquard into a lavender-rose.
Weight: 7.5 ounces
Yardage: 244
WPI/TPI: 16 and 9

But it feels simply loverly.

Whew.  And that’s enough for now.  Next up will be a bit more novelty yarn, and a rather massive amount of dyeing, and  some fleece work.

Come with coffee.

Just sayin’.

Yes, you can click for bigger.  You have my permission.  Feel free.  Then come back here when you’re finished trying to figure out exactly what it is and I’ll explain it. 

Back?

Confused?  Ah, well, let me enlighten you.  In the ongoing attempt to create some novelty yarns for demo purposes, I decided to use the remaining 4 ounces of the last Spunky Eclectic club fiber (the one which went into the seed yarn in the previous post) in a different novelty.  That would allow the kids to see how the same fiber can look like two entirely different things, depending on how it’s spun.  Makes perfect sense, yes?

I thought so.

And then I thought that a good contrast would be an eyelash yarn.  That makes perfect sense too, right?

I thought so, too.

And so I span the remaining 4 ounces into a single with a reasonable amount of twist and plied it back on itself from a center-pull ball, allowing the lashes to create themselves about every 12 inches.

And then I quit thinking.

I was actually a bit too tired to  think, and I really shouldn’t have been spinning this particular yarn.  I should have opted for a plain vanilla spin until I could remember how to work some of those grey cells.  But clearly the grey cells which would have reminded me to do that were already asleep.

So, I finished the yarn.  275 yards in 4 ounces, an eyelash about every 12 inches, and about 14wpi.  And then I looked at it.

Not bad, muttered one functioning grey cell, not bad.
But a bit boring, said its mate.
There’s that, the first agreed.  And some of those lashes keep trying to slip out of place. So what shall we do?
Well, said the second, rubbing is figurative chin, we could ply it with a binder thread.
Oh!  Now that’s a good idea, enthused the First, wondering absently why its voice seemed to echo around the place.
So First and Second, noticing how oddly empty the space around them seemed but not unduly concerned about it, pondered the issue until they decided that a nice, multicolor metallic thread should do just the trick, and then set things in gear.

Before they could have said their respective names, the deed was done and the 2-ply yarn was plied again with shiny thread.  But because the rest of the grey mob was either asleep or on strike, neither First nor Second quite realized that they’d forgotten to add some twist to the thread before they plied it to the yarn, and that definitely made a difference.  All they knew was that the binder thread seemed a bit slippery and loose.  So, in their infinite wisdom (or lack thereof), they decided to ply the plied yarn with yet one more binder thread, this time in the other direction.

And then they went back to sleep.

When the entire mob woke the next day and realized what First and Second had been up to, there was a bit of chaos, and naturally Third through Unknown Billion ranted and raved and were appropriately disappointed in First and Second’s performance who were then exiled and put on bread and water until they could learn to not have bright ideas until the rest of the group was awake and functioning as well.

The problem, they explained, was that First and Second had forgotten to add twist to the binder thread.  So, when they plied the yarn with the binder the first time, they nearly unspun the yarn trying to get a decent twist per inch, and the binder still wasn’t firmly placed on the yarn, and it unbalanced the yarn.  Re-plying it in the opposite direction with another binder thread nearly returned the yarn to its previously balanced state, but it also loosened up the first binder ply.  The end result, of course, is that the binder threads did their job and locked things in place, but they’re much too lose and, in some cases, nearly parallel the wool yarn underneath.

Ah, well.  Done was done, and there wasn’t much they could do to fix the problem.  So they submitted the yarn to a very abusive wash and fulled it, which of course further locked things in place.  But the binder threads definitely don’t have that firm X over the wool yarn they’d intended, and the universal opinion—now that they’re all awake—is that there will probably be little glittery loops of thread which stick out from the fabric once it’s all knitted.

And there you have it.  I’ve chosen to forgive First and Second.  After all, their hearts were in the right place and it’s not their fault if everyone else had abandoned them.  And since knitting hides a multitude of spinning sins, I’ve about decided to go ahead and knit it up into a simple scarf for the demo rather than leave the yarn in the skein.  The students will never know, and hey—they might see a practical use for all those things they didn’t know they could do in the first place.

All things considered, I suppose it could be worse.

Now, I know that photo doesn’t really make sense when you see it like this. So let me enlighten you. It’s a Shetland fleece from a ewe named Chloe under the care of the Moores on Stonehaven Farm in the marvelously-named town of Halfway, Oregon. Seriously, is that not the coolest set of names you’ve heard in a while? They read like a story. (If you’re curious, there’s a link to the farm on the blogroll to the right.)

And before I explain the fleece, I have to tell you that Lois Moore is a lovely, lovely person to work with. When I asked for a fleece which would let me meet Master Spinner requirements (i.e., NOT heavily skirted; we need the belly wool as well), she went rooting through her newly-shorn fleeces until she found one she’d not yet skirted much, bundled it carefully so that I could unpack it in its proper shape, and shipped faster than I could have hoped for. She talked to me about the fleece, asked questions to be sure she was sending me something I could use and would like, and went above and beyond what I could have asked for. Besides, doggone it, she’s just nice!

But the fleece . . . Don’t laugh, but I brought the box in and opened it, looked at it all sitting nestled in clear organization, and then panicked and had to let it sit for a few minutes before I pulled it out for fear I was going to muss it up. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I pulled it out and unrolled it, and everything fell neatly into place. Can’t you see the shape of the sheep? Need a closer look? Check out this staple:

Isn’t that just lovely crimp?? And the photo doesn’t show it, but it’s actually nicely shiny. This is a mioget fleece, but that unwashed staple doesn’t do the color justice. Try this washed pair:

Yes, I had to wash a lock and blow it dry to see what it would look like. But even that photo doesn’t quite show you the depth of tone. It’s a variegated light moorit (yellow-brown) fleece, and the washed lock shows a lovely warm oatmeal range of color with some dark hairs here and there.

As for the condition of the fleece . . . Oh. My. It feels wonderful, but I’m sooooo impressed with how clean it is compared to what I’ve worked with before. There’s a tiny—and I do mean “tiny”—bit of VM here and there, but it’s all stuff which will be a snap to remove. There are a couple of packy bits here and there where you’d expect to find them on an uncovered sheep, but even those will wash up nicely. There are nearly NO second cuts here, the fleece is actually fairly open, and I simply cannot wait to see how it spins up. It’s a slightly larger fleece than I expected, and weighs in at about 4 pounds. Once the Master Spinner requirements are met, I’ll have enough for a nice-sized project just for me.

Tomorrow is the spinning group meeting from noon until 4, but then guess what I’m doing? (Hint: I picked up some nesting buckets this morning as well.)

I expect the spinning group to be smaller than usual tomorrow since one is ill, two are working, and two others have family and other conflicts, but we’ll have fun anyway. There’s one more scheduled meeting at the end of the month and then they’ll have a break from regular meetings until September in order to accommodate summer travel schedules.

But in the meantime, I’m spinning funky yarns to use as demo yarns for a group of teenagers in a few weeks. I’m willing to bet that they’ll think a smooth vanilla yarn is downright boring—particularly if it doesn’t look much different from what they could buy in any LYS—but a novelty yarn or two might catch their interest. So there’s this:

Is that just not the funniest stuff you’ve seen in a while? It’s 4 ounces of Merino, hand-dyed by Spunky Eclectic in the fiber-of-the-month flavor, “Mud Season.” There are 40 yards here, using the wrap-and-roll method in the current edition of Spin-Off that you’ll find on the front cover. This yarn is a bit more “bubbly” than I’d like, and I found that if you’re going to use that method, then you need to keep three things in mind.

First, your single needs to be pretty consistent both in the thin spots and in the thick spots. In other words, the thin spots should all be about the same thinness, and the thick spots all about the same thickness.

Second, because you’re pushing the plied single up on your core yarn, you’re using a lot of single yardage in a very short space, so you want your thick spots to be fairly far apart. If they’re too close, they’ll all run together and you lose the bubble.

Third, you don’t really need a major distinction between the thin spot of your single and the thick spot. There should be an obvious difference, but if the thick spot is 2 inches long, you don’t need the difference to be dramatic. The thick spot is wound nearly on top of itself during the ply, so all thickness builds exponentially. Too big and you get a Bazooka-sized bubble (like some of these) rather than a simple kernel. And, obviously, the longer the thick spot, then the bigger or longer your bubble, depending on how you “build” it in the ply.

This type of spinning uses a LOT of fiber for a fairly short yardage, but that’s a given. How soft the yarn is will ultimately depend on how firm your single is (keep it soft), and how snugly you ply the single onto your core yarn. I don’t mean how firmly you push it up, but rather how tightly you guide the single onto the core. If you give it a wee bit of room to play, it will be a bit softer and fluffier. Ply it at a straight 90-degree angle with a guiding finger under the join and it will be firmer and a bit stiffer.

It seems to me that the key to the yarn here is that—aside from those other issues—you don’t let it overply; make a point of getting rid of the extra twist. One note to that point . . . In addition to setting your spindle to spinning clockwise (assuming your wheel is plying counterclockwise), if you look at the video on the magazine’s website, you’ll see that she’s actively untwisting the core yarn with her subordinate hand while she’s plying. Even if you shift your wheel to a slower speed, you’re going to build up extra twist. “Helping” your spindle spin by pushing the twist down toward it does, er, help. But you still may have to stop at intervals and release extra twist to keep from overplying.  There’s a balance between how quickly your wheel is plying in one direction and how quickly your spindle is removing twist in the other direction.  If the wheel is moving faster than the spindle, you’re going to need to release twist at some point, even if you just hang the yarn from a hook and let it dangle. 

Finally, do as designer Sarah Anderson suggests and slightly full the yarn in the finishing process. It makes a difference, and the yarn does soften as it’s handled.

But doesn’t it make you think of that bubbly seaweed?  Bladderwrack?

(NB! Nøster er større enn vanlig; jeg bruker den Strauch Jumbo nøstemaskin. Den på venstre er vanlig størrelsen—og er halv brukt.)

NB! The balls of yarn are larger than standard; I use the Strauch Jumbo ball winder. The one on the left is one which is half-used, and which is now about the size of a standard ball of yarn.

Edited to add:  To answer Margaret’s question, yes, that is indeed a little sheep stitchmarker.  :-)  Nearly all my stitchmarkers come from the wonderful Karen of Beadmarkers, and that one is one of these:  http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=9282661

Done, done, done.

Done, done, done.

Nope, I’m not feeling as if I’ve just accomplished something major or that there’s been a weight lifted.  Nope, not at all.

Done, done, done.

Done, done, done!

Ok, maybe I am. 

For 3.7 pounds, at 10-11 wpi and 10 tpi, there is a grand total of somewhere over 2500 yards.  That yardage count is a bit iffy because I lost count one time too many and refused to go back and count the entire thing again.  I DO know that there is at least 2500 yards there.  It’s a nicely soft yarn, despite the high twist factor.  I need this yarn to be fairly sturdy, so I span the singles to the edge of being hard, counting on softening that in the plying process, and then plied with a fairly high twist.  Finally, it was subjected to a very abusive wash, so it plumped up and solidified nicely.  Now if I can just finish it before next Christmas!

It’s a 50/50 Superwash Merino-Tencel blend from Amy at Spunky Eclectic, hand-dyed in “Aspen.”   I had started it during the spinning demo and needed to get it off the wheel in order to finish the last pound of the grey.  (Sigh.  PLEASE tell me I’ll get finished with that soon!)

There is simply no way to say how much I love this fiber.  Of all the blends I’ve covered and toyed with, I honestly have to say that Tencel blends are my favorite.  They are actually softer than an equal blend of silk, and the shine is simply stunning.  That’s also the reason why this photo doesn’t do the colors justice.  The light bounces off the yarn and between the reflection of snow outside and the half-gloom and flash inside, it’s impossible to get a true shot.  You’ll see the colors better in closeup (click for bigger), but just know that they aren’t half as lovely as they are in real life.  In real life, they’re not washed out, but are warm and rich in a subtle golden cast that really does make one think of the aspens in fall.  Amy has combined a range of tones of gold, green, brown, and a hint of blue, and somehow it all works together beautifully.  Even when the colors barberpole (which I am normally not a fan of), they all seem to go together.  Seriously, I love this fiber.

The Stats.
Fiber:  50/50 Superwash Merino-Tencel blend from Spunky Eclectic, “Aspen”
Weight:  8 ounces
Yardage:  454 yards
WPI/TPI:   14/10

Donna asked me how I manage to get the plies all stacked up together, and I had to stop and think about that for a while.  I prefer a firm rather than loose ply; I lose too much of the twist when I knit, and if the yarn is a loose ply, I find my fabric has the singles in a 2-ply lying side by side rather than contained in a twist, and that’s a problem.  I know I could reverse things and spin Z yarns instead, and I’ve done that just to see what would happen, but when I’m trying to explain spinning to someone new, I don’t want to confuse them.  I don’t want to start them off spinning a yarn which will be in the opposite direction to most contemporary spinning; I’d rather tell them they can do both and then let them make the choice to switch from S to Z later.  So, I spin S.  But I think the answer to Donna’s question is two-fold.  First, I actually slightly overspin my single in order to get the increased twist in my ply.  That’s a balancing act, and there have definitely been times when I found I overspun something a bit too much and ended up with a harder yarn than I wanted.  Second, nearly all my yarns go through an abusive finish.  I am NOT gentle with the stuff; I want to know that what I’m knitting with is going to be the same in raw form as it is in finished form.  And I think those two things are the key for me.  I’ve found that I seem to have about 10 twists to the inch in my ply, and the only exceptions have tended to be longer-stapled and firmer fibers such as that Lincoln I had to gift away, and pure Tencel which isn’t quite as flexible as bamboos and silks.  I’ll have to pay closer attention to my tpi in the singles and the ply in order to get a more precise answer.

And in the spirit of cleaning up (we shall NOT talk about the condition of my office and files), I did this:

I’ve pretty much always kept a binder with notes and a sample of the fiber I was working with, but I’ve outgrown it, and the new one I picked up to replace it simply couldn’t hold things neatly without breaking the binder’s back. Since I’ve decided that the next spinning meeting is going to have a small veiledning session (about 10 minutes’ worth) talking about keeping spinning notes, I realized that I sort of needed to organize my notes into a shape that would actually make sense to someone else. It all made perfect sense to me, but anyone new looking at my notes and slightly chaotic system would have sworn that it was all gibberish. So, I picked up a couple of file boxes from Ikea and transferred things over. They’re fairly small—an A4 sheet of paper folded in half fits with just less than an inch to spare sideways in the box. There are two boxes: one for sheep, and one for everything else.

I need to pick up a few divider cards, but otherwise, things are fairly well organized. Each fiber has a page of notes, a small sample in a floss bag, and a couple yards of indifferently spun and unfinished sample yarn to help give an idea of what the yarn would look and feel like. Each sample and bag is marked with the source of that particular fiber so that I can remember the vendors and fibers I particularly like. If I have a bit of the raw fiber, then that raw fiber goes into a little bag as well so that I can compare it to the commercial or “processed by me” fiber and thus have the entire “chain of evidence,” so to speak.

I’ll have to use a different system for the Master Spinner notebooks, but there’s a lot to be said for these little boxes. And once the divider cards are in place, then won’t I just seem totally organized? (HA!)