Drum Carder!

So, my friend Fern phoned this evening to say that our new drum carder had arrived. (We decided to go halfsies on one, since neither of us quite thought we could justify the expense alone. Right now, it's living at her house.)

Owen and I went right over and brought along the grape Kool-Aid almost-felted roving to run through.



We had a chuckle about one sheet of instructions that was packed with it. It was a notice that a great many returns for service were introduced with the owner saying, "I lent it to a friend..." So, they want to make sure to remind folks not to lend out the drum carder without properly training the friend first.

After carefully reading all the important parts of the manual, we got out some plain white inexpensive roving to run through a few times. This is to clean off any crud left on at the factory, and indeed, that first fiber did get pretty dingy. When we got a clean run, then I started in on the grape Kool-aid batch.

And voila:

My first batts! It's a lot of fun to make them and I'm excited to imagine the creative potential in blending fibers and colors.


Earlier in the day, I decided that I needed to make the yarn from these singles into a 3 ply. I tried Navajo plying a little sample, the second time I ever tried. I did a better job the first time. After a couple broken strands in thin spots and a twisty gobbledy-gook mess, I decided I wasn't going to pursue that tonight. Surely plain old plying with three strands would be easier. Except that I had one center pull ball and one small quantity on a cone. The two ends from the center-pull ball had more affinity for one another than the third ply, but I just wanted to get a sense of the weight of yarn I'd end up with, so I made enough yards for a little swatch.


I really like the feel of it. It has a satisfying springiness and is pleasantly soft. It just has a nice hand.

Energized by all this, I got home from Fern's about 10 and spun up some of one of the batts. What a delight! Compared to working apart the almost-felted fibers by hand, this is a dream.

I'm planning to make it all a three-ply, probably a heavy sport-weight/DK range. My swatch was done on US #5 needles and that seems just right.

I just need to work out the right amount of twist for plying three strands. I'm getting the hang of balanced two-ply, but my timing is off on the three-ply.

Spinning!

Lots of photos in this post.

First, here's all the Caramel Yarn I made from sectioning off the brown roving in the mixed browns batch of Brown Sheep mill ends:

I might still be able to split off another couple bobbins' worth, which would be nice. I'm guessing this will knit up somewhere around DK/Worsted wt, comfortable on size 7-ish needles.

Next up, I took some of this so-called "mixed blacks" Brown Sheep roving

and gave it a simmering bath of grape kool-aid. It was a weak solution for the volume of wool. I got this result when I unbraided the roving:

It came this close to felting. I can still pull the fibers apart and spin them, though.
Here are the first of the singles from that:

I would like to card this to spread the mohair more evenly through the wool and reduce the manual prep time. (Drum carder is supposed to come today or tomorrow! Wahoo!)

This is a bobbin with singles from some of the black and white that was left when I peeled off the brown:

I think this will look better when plied and skeined that it does in this picture.

And finally, the spinning story of the week. A fellow Knittyhead forwarded me a Craigslist ad for someone near Madison with a lot of fiber to sell. It was a sad situation, as someone was forced by circumstance to clear out all her fiber and supplies, but worked out really well for me. My friend Fern and I went there the other night and bought it all for a song. We squeezed it into Fern's Prius and drove it home to her house. We'll split it up this weekend and I'll get pictures of the mountain then. Remember those yarn ads a few years ago, with a VW Beetle full of yarn? It was kind of like that, only fiber in a Prius.

That night I brought just this small bit home with me:

Four balls of Merino/Romney cross.

Here's my first attempt with that:

It seems to want to be spun very fine.

Now, I think I need more bobbins! Three different singles, one on each of the three bobbins I own.

And, lastly, here's a pumpkin flower on Owen's vine:

In order to keep my knitting balanced, I like to have some very easy, very portable projects going while I'm working on something that requires more attention.
The current easy portable projects are some Regia socks and a solid, stockinette st vest from my handspun.

When you think your spinning is getting pretty good, there's nothing like knitting with it to show you all its faults. I'll still love the vest this fall when the weather cools off.

I did make a bit more progress on the Fair Isle in the last few days:

When I give it the time and attention, it goes pretty quickly. Thanks for all the compliments on the last post. Since you asked about how I choose colors for a complex project, I'll ramble a bit on that topic.

First of all, as you probably know, I have a ridiculously large stash. So when I get in mind to make a new fair isle color scheme, I start with the yarn I already own and see what happens. If I'm knitting for myself, I usually want to choose colors from the warmer tones. I have very pink undertones in my skin and tend to look like a flushed inebriate if I choose the wrong undertones. So, even the blues and greens I like tend to have a warm cast to them. Sometimes I'll want to work with a particular color or group of colors and need to audition some others to round out the palette. This is where it gets interesting. Sometimes the color I was trying to build a garment around gets eliminated from the line-up. Sometimes a group I think look smashing together in the balls or hanks just don't work in little knitted stitches. I personally tend to be happier with a color scheme when there's something that fights a little bit in it. Not so much as an outright clash, but something that gives it a bit of spark. Which means that even though I think an understanding of color theory is helpful, ultimately it's about choosing what works for you and going with it. After all, when you look around at the natural world, you find any and all colors existing near one another and some of those random collisions of color don't "go" at all, but are a joy to behold. Check my archives for October 2006 for some old posts about choosing colors.

Here's a day lily from the yard:


Finally, Owen got a hamster yesterday. See her picture
here. Her name is Susie Suzy.

Fair Isle progress

In between lots of long spinning sessions, I've made a bit of progress on the Fair Isle cardigan.

This one clicks for a slightly bigger view.

And here's a detail shot:


At this point, the knitting is about 12 inches long. After the next round of the greys and greens, I'll begin armhole shaping. I'm planning to make sleeve caps with steeks, either set-in or modified drop, or kind of a hybrid of the two. So far, I've always worked Fair Isle sleeves by picking up around the armhole and knitting down to the wrist. And they've always been drop shoulders. So this will be a bit of a departure for me.

Later the Same Day...

Just to give you an idea of how the Brown Sheep is shaping up with more prep and a little familiarity...

(This one gets big if you click it.)

And again:


I split large sections of brown off of the brown mix, maybe taking a bit of black or white, but not much. I loosened the fibers up and pre-drafted vigorously. And you can see, compared to the calico mix, that this is a far more even and satisfactory yarn. Still some thick and thin, but not as bad and subtler transitions between thicknesses.

Mostly Spinning

It's been interesting working with the Brown Sheep mill ends. I started on the mixed browns a few days ago. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this stuff is a little compressed and benefits from some loosening up. I've been pre-drafting each section before I spin, and it makes a big difference in my results. There are also section with a lot of very short fibers, from where the roving was blunt-cut, and those tended to form clumps unless I took pains to get them out.

This skein is from the first bobbin-full plied back on itself. It's very thick'n'thin and has a real beginner look to it.


A closer look:


I was afraid that I wouldn't like the effect when I got it plied, but I do. It reminds me of a calico cat. I thought I would prefer fiber with more even color distribution and placement, but this is ok.

While I was spinning, I was thinking that it would be nice to have access to a drum carder, so I could blend the colors and loosen up the fiber more quickly. Mr. SABLE looked on Ebay to see what was there. I thought briefly of asking my friend Fern if she wanted to goes halfsies on one, but I really knew this is not something I need and put it out of my head. The next day, I was driving to St Paul with Fern, who also bought a couple pounds of the Brown Sheep mill ends and we were discussing our results so far. Then, she asked me if I might be interested in going halfsies on a drum carder. It must be fate. She's going to look into the choices and let me know.

Here's a picture of the Romney sliver I bought from Paradise Fibers a while ago.

This yarn is pretty hairy and rustic, but I was spinning it right off the ball and doing no pre-drafting whatsoever. It was fun to work with and was spinning very quickly.

In Other News
Yesterday I went to Last Saturday Knitting. We've moved to 2 p.m., which seems to be working out better than the 10 a.m. slot. I tried to work on my Fair Isle project a bit, but I was just starting a new repeat of the big reds and yellows band and I kept either screwing up or thinking I did, so I cast on some new socks instead. I can do colorwork in a social setting once I have the visual cues in place to read my knitting. Maybe next time.

That Fair Isle has seen darn little action this past week. I drove over 1000 miles on the two round trips to St Paul. I had the Lost Wednesday. And a couple of less-memorably lost days in all that. I'm afraid not much knitting will get done until fall, in spite of the fact that I have no aversion to knitting in the summer. It's just that family life has a way of interfering.

I need to make myself another swimsuit. The second one has grown obscenely sheer from chlorine exposure. This happened to the first one. Marji helped me out with finding a source for chlorine-resistant swimsuit fabric, so as soon as that arrives, I'll have my next project cut out for me. So to speak. (If it really was cut out for me, that might simplify everything. Remember the old Frostline kits?) I would just buy a bathing suit, but being both long in the torso and plus size, I kind of need to make my own. Unless I want my butt cheeks hanging out the bottom, or a two-piece with my stretch marks hanging out the middle. Even in my life BC (before children), when I was just tall and not plus-sized, the tall suits were never tall enough. The first time I realized I could sew my own suit and emerge from the water with out any tugging whatsoever was a truly liberating day.

Meanwhile, we're hoping to take the kids and the canoe to Devil's Lake today and I need to find a way to cover my backside. I'm thinking about doing surgery on a suit I got at Target 6 years ago. It's the kind with a dress over a tank suit and the suit part creeps A LOT. I think I might slice off the the bottom around the waist and either serge in a 2 inch strip of stretchy fabric around the waist (it will all be hidden by the dress part over) or cut the bottom off an old Land's End suit that had other fitting issues, and serge that on, adding the needed length. Sounds like I have my agenda for the day worked out.

Much better today

Thank you all for your concern. I don't know what was wrong with me yesterday but a fever and excruciating headache are the main symptoms of lots of nasty stuff. I wasn't entirely joking about West Nile, but I wasn't panicking because
A) my fever wasn't that high and
B) I wasn't confused or having more serious neurological symptoms.
My husband kept asking every hour if I was confused and how the stiff neck was doing. I was reading on the CDC website about West Nile and there's really no point in going to my doctor early on anyway, as there's nothing she would do but send me home to wait and see.

I still had a low fever early on today and I can still feel a slight pain in the top of my head with sudden movement, but I have something close to normal energy levels, ate a healthy and substantial dinner, did some laundry, and spent the evening spinning.

Tomorrow I drive back up to St. Paul to pick up Owen at camp. I have a fellow fiber-geek friend riding along with me and her son who's a computer geek like Owen. So, the boys will be ensconced in the way-back row of of the mini-van and my friend will ride up front and knit and we can chat. Her son has gone to camps run by the same outfit, but in another city, for four years and he loves it. So, we figure the boys will have lots to chat about, too.

I've begun spinning some of the Brown Sheep mill ends. This fiber really does benefit from pre-drafting to loosen it all up. If I owned a drum carder, I'd probably pass it through to randomize the colors a bit, loosen it all up a bit, and maybe remove some of the short bits that were created by occasional blunt cuts across the roving. To me, it's worth the work because the price is right, but I can imagine that some spinners would rather spend more for fiber that you can spin right out of the box.

No pictures tonight, either, but maybe over the weekend. Mostly I wanted to let you all know that whatever bug I was fighting is losing this round.

Sick.

On Saturday, The Little Emperor was spiking a fever of about 104 and we had to go to urgent care. The diagnosis was herpangina, an enteric virus more common in kids and in summertime. He made a very speedy recovery.

Last night, I started feeling a little unwell. This morning I was spiking a low fever and felt like I had a spike driving through my head. I haven't had a headache like that since one particularly awful hang-over in college about 1981. I've been lying in bed most of the day, dozing on and off. I think it might be West Nile, judging by the symptoms. I hope it goes away fast because I don't want to spend another day in that kind of misery.

I'm hoping to sleep now.

More Summer Pursuits

Owen went to camp yesterday. Well, not "camp" like sleeping in a tent or a cabin in the woods, but a summer program. His camp is in St Paul MN and the "campers" sleep in an air-conditioned dormitory and housekeeping brings them clean towels daily. He and his fellow campers will learn about computer programming for gaming.

This is a big rite of passage for a 12 year old who has never really been away from his parents, even to sleep over at a friend's, who has never really been babysat (under 6 times in his life). We're hoping it goes well.

This is the dorm room:


These are two of the staff members:

They seemed very nice.

I stayed over at my old college friend Nora's. I persuaded her to start a blog last night, and she did! Nora's a writer who sometimes knits. She wrote a book about knitting a sweater for one of her sons: kind of a memoir with a lot of history and other knitters' stories intertwined. And she's been shopping it to publishers and agents for over a year without any success. If you know an agent with an open mind, let me know. (I took a couple pictures of Nora, but they were awful. My camera was behaving a bit strangely and I caught her in the worst moments, freezing distorted expressions and so on. So, no picture this time.) She is my oldest friend. Well, you know, not that she's old, but I've maintained a friendship with her longer than with anyone else except my parents. She's been in my life even longer than my husband. Almost 28 years!!!! (Can we really be that old? It doesn't seem possible.)

I came home to find that my Sheep Shed Studio order had come! Six pounds of fiber!

This place sells mill ends from Brown Sheep Yarn Company at a great price. $7.50 a pound! But you don't get to specify exactly what you'll get. That's ok with me. You get to choose a color family and you can request a color dominance, but you might get something a little different.

I requested a black-dominant black mix,

and a brown-dominant brown mix.


While I would have preferred more black in the black mix, that's just fine with me. I can dye the white stuff. Maybe I can mix it up to a medium grey.

And they enclosed a little bonus pack of pure black. I can't wait to dig in.

Summertime Pursuits

As we've moved into summer I find precious little time to pursue solitary knitting in my basement lair. Even when it seems like everyone is happily engaged with their own stuff, I know from experience that it's only a matter of minutes until the situation changes and a crisis erupts. Maybe that's why I find that summer is spinning time for me. I sit on the screen porch and spin. I'm aware of activity inside the house and out in the yard. I can stop and start as needed without trying to find my place in a chart or a pattern repeat.

Here's the final portrait of the yarn I made from the Ashland Bay English Top I bought a couple weeks ago.

One pound of fiber turned into five skeins of yarn. I could probably make my mom or another smaller woman a sweater from it. I'm planning to make a simple vest for me. It'll make a nice extra layer in those weeks when the cold weather is coming, but before we get into the full-fledged frigid months of winter.

Earlier today I was out in the yard looking for things to point the camera at, and this Red Admiral landed right in front of me.

I guess he really wanted to be in the blog today.

Fair Isle Progress Update (and Flowers!)

The progress so far on the new Fair Isle. It started off wonderfully. But, I had to redo the first patterned row of the 15 row brown and red section a couple times to get it right. Once I got the pattern established, it was a piece of cake. Except that I also screwed up my color sequence a bit, but not enough to redo. Now that I've got it all worked out, it should go more quickly.

I have only a finite amount of one color which I bought around 1990 in Ithaca NY. That was in a large batch of discontinued yarn from an Italian company. The yarn shop owner had bought the clearance batch at a good price and I bought most of it from her. I also bought Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting book then, too, and that was the beginning of this insanity. So, the maroon yarn in question will be the deciding factor in whether this becomes a cardigan or a button-front vest. As I approach the armhole area, I'll assess what I have left and see which way to go with it.

For those who don't know all the Fair Isle jargon, a peerie is a small pattern that separates the larger ones. Not that it matters in this post, but Laura asked a few posts ago.

I think if I was allowed to just sit in my lair and knit fair isle patterns all day long, without having to think about meals, kids, laundry, etc., I would be the happiest knitter on the planet.

And now some flowers:

Mulberry Yarn!

I had been planning to make such amazing progress on my new Fair Isle that you would all gasp with awe and admiration. But I had to redo the first row of the big border pattern a bunch of times and so that'll have to wait a day. And, I got side-tracked by other stuff, too.

Like, the mulberries. One particular tree that grows on the fence line we share with our favorite neighbors is quite heavy with fruit. The Little Emperor and I picked a bunch yesterday and everyone ate as much as they wanted. But still, there were lots more. (Maybe the guys didn't want to keep working at them after I pointed out the spider that was trying to escape in colander full of berries...) This morning I resolved to use the ones I had to try to dye some yarn. After all, just picking them turns my fingers quite purple. I picked a couple more cups and simmered them all in my old enamel dye pot. I wasn't sure what kind of mordant works with berries and didn't really think to look it up until after I was well under way. The tan yarn is from a thrift-shop sweater I've been frogging as I need that color for Fair Isle projects. Since I have more than I need for the current project, and I had some of that skeined up and freshly washed, I decided to see how the mulberry dye would work on it.

Although the juice looked very dark purple, like grape juice, the grey is what stuck to the yarn. That's okay; I like grey. This is a nice warm grey and I'm sure I'll find a nice Fair Isle design that it will suit perfectly.

edited to add the details.
First, I put the berries in to simmer with water. Meanwhile, I soaked the yarn in a vinegar and water solution. Then I strained the berry solids out of the dye solution and added the yarn to the dye. As that simmered for a while, I noticed that the color mostly ran right out of the yarn when I held some up out of the solution. Then I went online to see what would be a good mordant and if it was too late to add to the mix. I know that it's best to mordant the yarn before dyeing, but I was already in the middle of everything. One site I found indicated that this could work. I mixed some alum and cream of tartar in hot water and stirred that solution into the pot. It continued to simmer. Then I went back online and read that salt makes a good mordant for berry dyes, so I added 1/2 cup of that to the pot, too. It was all very unscientific! I didn't notice the natural sugars having any effects on the process. I know that I would probably get different results if I started with white yarn and properly mordanted it first.

Mead Scarf Pattern!

Even though it's like a sauna outside, I got a couple pictures of the Mead Scarf in its finished state!


I won't tell you how much I tinkered with this image to preserve my vanity!

This pattern made be downloaded free through Ravelry. You do not need to be a Ravelry member.

A Day of Astounding Productivity!

My goodness, we've been busy. In our ongoing quest to bring our household back from the brink of squalor, we've been making inroads all over the place.

A few of weeks ago I ordered two enormous matching dressers for me and the Mister. Our furniture is an interesting assemblage of mostly thrift-shop specials with some flat pack bargains thrown in to round out the down-scale look. So, buying these was a bit of a splurge. They were delivered a week ago Friday, but getting ready to assemble took a bit of planning and work.

Today, I did some more cleaning in Owen's room and made room to move one of our old cheap dressers in there. He's been living without a dresser for a while and the drawers under his captain's bed aren't enough. Then Mr. SABLE assembled one of the two dressers and we did a little reshuffling of stuff to put it in place. It holds so much! No more avoiding putting laundry away because it's too hard to figure out how to make it fit.

This morning, Owen mowed the lawn. This is an amazing leap forward. He has finally conquered his phobia of the power mower. I can't tell you what joy this brings me.

This evening I blocked the Mead Scarf.

I had been mulling over what to use to pin it out on, and then realized that I had all these big, long, sturdy pieces of styrofoam from the dresser packing materials. Eureka! Instant free blocking surface! I'm clearly not a perfectionist about this, as you can see by my slightly wavy edges. I guess that's part of why I'm not really a huge lace knitter. The whole process is fraught with more finicky details than I usually enjoy. But I did like making this scarf.

Here's a couple images from the yard yesterday.




Now I'm going to have a nice sleep.

Fair Isle Evolution 2

Ah the wonders of Photoshop! I was able to take the section of my swatch that I like and duplicate my repeats, rather that have to do a lot more knitting. I'm pretty pleased with it

I reversed the dark and light on the 15 row bands. When I did that, some of the colors no longer worked the way I wanted them to. When I started replacing some colors, others had to go.

Believe it or not, the background color in the peerie patterns is medium grey. It is a wee bit on the cool side looking at it in the ball. But look how blue it looks here. The amazing power of color to change and fool the eye.

Mothra!

Yesterday we were expecting some exciting weather. Thankfully, Madison had the Weather Shields up, so the storms all went around us. But earlier in the day, before we knew that we weren't going to get hit, I was securing the items on the porch in case of strong winds, driving rains, and tornadoes. And I noticed a brown thing hanging on the edge of a large peanut butter jar in a corner. Last summer Mr SABLE found a caterpillar and gave it a nice place to make a cocoon. It stayed in there, out on the porch, all winter. And, lo and behold, here it is:

Now, don't go panicking! This moth has no interest in munching on wool. It's one of Mr SABLE's friends and means us no harm. I'm sure he'll be on his way this evening, off to find a mate and make more moths.

BTW, it's a polyphemus moth, a giant silk moth!

Edited to add another view:


In other news, last night I finished the knitting on The Mead Scarf.

Yeah, that's a pretty uninspired photo. I'll do a better job once I get it blocked. For those who missed the details, last fall Sarah sent me a lovely skein of hand-spun alpaca for a birthday present. Eventually I decided that a very simple lace scarf would be a great use for the yarn. The pattern is just simple zig zags of eyelets running the length of the scarf. Unblocked, it measures about 57 inches. I stopped because I was getting close to a break in the yarn (I think I broke it when winding; can't remember), and I didn't want to make a splice. So, there's a wee bit left on the cone. Maybe that'll become a fair isle accent on a hat or something. I'm hoping to block it out to about 6 feet long. I have a ball of nylon twine somewhere that I used for blocking a Branching Out scarf a while back. Just got to decide where to pin it out...

Last night, in preparation for the tornado we didn't have, I also did a bunch of cleaning and rearranging in my lair, to free up some seating for my family in the event that we needed to seek shelter. And stumbled upon Scott's Tweedy Sweater, a UFO of such long duration that at times I feel I should just give up on it. But I worked several rows last night and now I can see that I'm almost up to the armhole shaping on the front and the back is already done, so I think I'll just soldier on with it. I know I have a couple of pairs of socks hanging around, too, that are within a stone's throw of being finished. I ought to dig those out and do right by them.

Meanwhile, I've been tinkering with my fair isle colors and every time I change one thing, it leads to a ripple effect that necessitates further change. Good thing I don't mind swatching. And it's always a learning experience. I've said it before, but there really is no substitute for putting together the yarns in the knitting to see how they will interact. Training and experience make me a better predictor, but I get surprises every day.

Mead Scarf Progress

Before we get to knitting, here's a macro picture of a spiderwort that I took in the rain the other day. Yeah, I'm nutty like that.

I wish you could all see it full size on a big monitor. The thready bits around the stamens are very interesting.

On to knitting...

The Mead Scarf is measuring over 50 inches long. I still have a bunch more yarn. I'm hoping to make it to around 60 inches. I really want it to be a long scarf when it's blocked, ideally more than 6 feet.

I enlisted Mr. SABLE's help to hold it up in the sunlight and the Little Emperor wanted in on the action. He's about 52 inches tall these days.

And every knitting blog needs an occasional gratuitous pet picture. This is Ossie, our boy cat, who was out catching a few late afternoon rays on the bags of path-building supplies.

Fiber into Yarn

Last night I finished plying the first two bobbins of singles. I'm not patient enough to count yardage, but it weighs about 210 grams. This is a little less than half-way through the pound.

I'm hoping to get enough yarn to make a vest. I think I'd need to buy about 2 pounds to be sure of having enough yarn for a whole sweater.

I took some pictures of my wheel the other day just because it was there. Here's one:


Yarn Acquisition

I ended up ordering some Spindrift from Camilla Valley Farms in Canada. It seemed like the surest way to get the colors I wanted in a hurry. One of my local yarn shops does carry Spindrift, but I know they were trying to clear out the old stock in the spring and I don't think they'll be ordering new until closer to fall. Camilla Valley has good prices and very speedy shipping. I recommend them for anyone trying to assemble the colors for a complex Fair Isle project.

I'm going to tinker with my Fair Isle plans a bit and hope to get started on that soon.