More yarn spinning than usual.

November 2, 2011

I have been doing a little more spindle spinning than my usual, as it requires nothing in the way of brain power or valuable floor space.  On a positive note I did bring a bit of spinning fiber with me through both of my moves in the last 3 mnths.  (Did I mention moving sucks?) 

So I have been working on some commercially prepared white cotton roving, and also on my Fall (that's my name for it) wool roving.  The colors are sooooooo rich and I am even thinking that it may turn out to be sock yarn...maybe. 

Here are a few shots.

I still have a bit, quite a bit actually, of the Fall roving.  I have one ball all nice and plied and one ball of singles.  Lots more spinning before I can do any more plying of the wool.

But this is the end of the white cotton roving.  It will be plied next.  I have been spinning for weeks and weeks on both of these!

I was trying to catch the brilliant colors in the sunlight, still working on the best location for pictures.

Update on projects.

July 7, 2011

First you see my new lace weight spindle.  I am spinning this commercially prepared cotton roving, (I can't remember where I got it as I have had it for years) and it is indeed turning out to be my best spun cotton to date.  Either I am getting the hang of it or the roving is better, or maybe it is the little spindle.  Maybe all of the above.  But this is what I have for Tour de Fleece right now.  Remember I already finished the wool/silk on the phang last couple of days.

Since I couldn't turn the bands into a poncho as I originally planned, if you remember they were too heavy, I have decided to develop a tote out of them.  I really love the Tibetan bag, also known as Doni Delis bag. The one you see if you click is made of re-purposed commercial fabric.

The first bands I chose just wouldn't come together in a design that Dana (she will be doing the assembly) and I liked.  So I played around with some of the others and came up with something I really liked.  Below you see the piece that will be used for the closure flap and some interior pockets.  This also gives you an idea of the color scheme.  Can't wait to see the end result.  She picked out some batik fabric for the lining that I will get to see in class tonight.  Stay tuned to see the completed bag...soon I hope!

Tonight Dana wants to learn Double weave on the backstrap.  I gotta go wind the warp!  TTYL

March 18, 2011

Wow, this is getting intimidating. This is so far over my head…I may have to rethink this.

I am doing the re-spinning…actually just about done with the white cotton. Then wanted to either do some blue cotton or maybe do some sunset wool. The thing is, I am discovering that spinning white cotton gets kind of boring…even though I am reasonably good at it and like the plied result. It is short stable cotton from Georgia USA, so that is saying something. The blue I spun on my wheel months ago, it was professionally prepared cotton roving. My goal is to spin enough for one small warp face piece to see if it is even feasible to use my own yarns. Terribly time consuming even though I already had the first spin of all of the yarn in question done. It has even already been boiled. Not sure I would do this very often.

For instance the piece on my loom as we speak is 416 threads 4 1/2 ft. long. That alot of double spinning folks.

I hear the piece that is almost completed on the loom calling to me also. It is the brown with open knot work, one of Laverne Waddington's charts.  It is done in earth tones, expresso, copper mist and ecru.  I would really love to get it off  the loom.  Pretty sure it will win out eventually. I WILL do some spinning today, out on the back porch in this beautiful Spring weather. 

But it's the weaving that makes my heart sing.

Friends, Ravelry and spinning yarn!

March 13, 2011

I have been busy with quite a few things of late.  I actually took up spinning again.  This came about quite innocently enough through a Spin Along in the Backstrap Group in Ravelry.  I have had so much fun with Ravelry and the wonderfully "  warped"   folks there, lol.  I have even made some on-line friends.  Quite the blessing, considering I really still don't have many friends here in Georgia.  

But I digress...again. 

One of my new friends known as popsicletote belongs in a couple of the groups I also belong to.  Inkle and backstrap to be sure.  She is involved in the Inkle Weave Along and the Andean Pebble weave in the backstrap group also.  Thus we go onward into the Spin Along.

Just cruising around and reading one morning I stumbled her her profile and found that she makes her own hand whittled spindles...ALL kind of spindles.  I contacted her to ask if she sold them.  They have a very rustic look to them and I simply had to have one.  Turns out she doesn't sell them, she gifts them.  I am now the proud owner of the coolest spindle I own to date.  It is a Turkish spindle and it is very light compared to my others.  This might be why I have had so much trouble with my cotton spinning...duh...ya think?

My cotton is from GA (just a coincidence that I live here) and is of course short staple.  When I say short, I mean VERY short.  And I have TONS of it.  So since I was having so much trouble spinning it without carding, I gave in and started carding and making puni's.  If you are unfamiliar with puni's they are little rolls of cleaned and carded fiber.  Mostly called puni's in places like India they are sometimes called Rolag's here in America.  Anyway, I started carding and making them as I watched television, or while helping Dana in tapestry class.  I wanted to weave myself a shoulder shrug of some sort.  Past tense.

Now I have decided that I want to spin for warp face weaving.  A horse of a much different color.  When I picked up my spindle again I still had a difficult time.  Now keep in mind that I have plenty of commercially processed cotton I could use.  But that is not what I want to do.  I also feel that it is important if I am to offer to teach this ancient craft, I should know how to process the fiber start to finish.

Thus, more reading and such on Ravelry which lead to my new friend.  I received my new spindle yesterday.  I jumped right on it too.  I already had some cotton spun and had been told that it needed to be spun a second time so that it would hold up to the abrasion caused by warp face weaving.  So I did.  If you take a look at the pictures below you will see that it has little arms.  You wind the spun fiber onto these arms in a fashion that afterward is a center pull ball of yarn.  You simply slide the arms up off the center piece...then slide the arms out.  Wala!  Center pull.  No winding off of the spindle and then into another skein, or ball or hank.  Cotton is kinky when it is newly spun and that rewinding was always a hassle.  So not only is the spindle perfect...it cuts down on the other work involved for storage.  LOVE IT.  It has the added benefit of being able to come apart if you want to take it around with you in a small bag.  Very portable, even more so than most spindles, which are admittedly very portable.  Especially when compared to a spinning wheel.

So then, after re-spinning it, I plied it.  I took one end from the center, the other from the outside, and spun it in the opposite direction it was originally spun to make a plied cotton yarn.  AWESOME, if I do say so myself.  Turns out I am not as bad with the cotton as I originally thought.  Very nice surprise, and I am on my way to being able to use my own yarns in my warp face bands.

Here is a picture.  I must say it is the simplest things that bring me the most joy.  Thank You so much popsicletote!

Silk Hankie!

March 11, 2011

On Monday I received the nicest gift from my new friend on Ravelry, Cateseye03.

She sent me a hand-dyed silk 'hankie' to spin.  So I did a little research and learned that these are silk fibers stretched over a frame, sometimes square sometimes shaped like a 'bell'.  You peel off layers, draft and spin them.  In doing this research I learned that there are all sorts of kewl ways to order silk. Some are even pretty economical.  Rather than try to educate you myself, I am placing a link here for the site that I learned the most from.

She sent me a pick up stick also.  She says these are for helping her with her inkle weaving...I say it was 'my pleasure' as I made a new friend in the bargain.  Even without the gifts.  They are of course welcomed though as I have been lusting after doing some silk spinning.

So I took a couple of pictures and thought I would share them with you.  Don't you just love the colors she chose.  Coincidently I  just completed a weaving for the Weave Along in the same colors.

On a road trip!

Yesterday Carol and I took a road trip to Tallahassee.  Moultrie has a great Art Center but not a single art store.  She wanted to go to a bead store and to take us on a lunch date to belatedly celebrate our birthdays!

So we found a great bead store where she (of course) blew her budget up.  LOL We ate waaaaayyyyy too much good food at Olive Garden and then we went in search of yarn shops.

We found 2!  They were both fabulous!  Now keep in mind that I don't actually NEED any yarn.  My friend KraftyMax really loaded me up on my birthday, and then again when I went to visit her in Jacksonville for a week.  I literally have two large trashbags of new yarns.  However, right now I am immersed in warpface weaving on my new Mini Wave Gilmore Loom.  It actually requires a much different kind of yarn than what I have boat loads of in the attic.  Most of my yarns are singles, alot of them spun by me, for tapestry weaving.  Now I need very smooth, tightly spun yarns.  Cotton or maybe silk.  Unfortunately most of the yarns we found were of the softer knitting variety.  Gorgeous silks, angora, wool, bamboo...the colors were GORGEOUS!  I would be terrified of making a warp blub again and wasting those beautiful yarns.  They were also out of my financial league.  

However, at the second shop, Carol found some roving while I was in the restroom, and couldn't let me walk out without it.  So she bought it for me.  It is by Louet and the color is called Sunset.  I was looking for some fall colors and I think we hit on it perfectly.  Below you will find pictures and I of course will keep you posted on the spinning of it.

I am spinning uncombed Cotton. So I thought I would just give you a little history.

I took a day trip a few years ago (while still living in FL) to find a cotton field. Came to GA and stopped an elderly man on a tractor and asked him if he knew where I could find a cotton gin. I had just bought my spinning wheel and wanted to see cotton growing in the fields and see if I could get my hands on some. He said "  I just happen to own one"  ,  and took me over to do a walk through.

Did you know they are huge?  Like BIG BARN huge.  I would never have thought so.  In my mind I thought maybe the size of a tractor trailer.  Never for one moment thought you could park multiple tractor trailers inside. 

He was a wonderful gentleman and after my tour he gave me several huge bags of cotton fiber, enough to actually fill a trunk. As I am now living in GA, i.e. cotton country, I think it behooves me to teach how to spin cotton from the local farms.

There are no spinning wheels at the Art center so I will be instructing with various types of spindles.  Most will be homemade of course.  I did indeed purchase the longest one.  It was my very first spindle and it is a Navajo spindle.

I will be making a few more with some stone whorls - the flat part.  My friend KraftyMax is sending me some semi precious pieces just for that purpose.  Can't wait to see them and to show them to you as well.  For now, these are the ones I will be working with.

First class - beginner spin class!

Well as fate would have it I didn't have any students tonight.  But alot of great things happened anyway.

I worked for 4 hours on my 'weaving room'.  Cleaning, organizing, more cleaning.  I also found out that the Quilt show that is coming is HUGE!  OF COURSE these are fiber people, so I need to be READY.  This is the largest they have had here and they even have a baby Grand piano set up for the Grand opening!  This will be on Thursday, and guess what - I actually have a student that night.  Only one, but we must crawl before we run.  Besides that means that this woman will have my undivided attention for her class.  Then we will mingle around into the Quilt show.

I also found out that one of the other instructors wants to take my class also.  SOOOOO... 2 students at this point.  KEWL.

I was asked to revamp my weavings that are there hanging outside my room into a larger, showier display.  So I am off to do just that tomorrow.  Hopefully this will also bring me more students.

At this point I am sore and sleepy...with lots of fiber 'stuff' in my head.  Stay tuned my lovely artsy fartsies, same bat time, same bat channel.