Preparations for the sock talk are going well. I’ve finished all the samples I want to show. There are a few optional ones that I’ll see if I have time for next week.
I’ve been having fun the last couple weeks getting the fibre prepared and yarn spun to make a pair of socks to show at the talk. Continue reading
Phew! That went pretty smoothly.
Everything checked out after the updates. Crossing fingers I won’t have anything pop up later.
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I did a few behind the scenes changes and updated my version of WordPress. Thankfully there is lots of help online and walkthroughs for doing this.
Evening everyone.
There are a few updates I need to make to the blog software this weekend.
If things go as planned it should only be out for Saturday afternoon.
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One of my bad habits in many aspects of my life is making things more complicated then they really need to be.
I’ve been working on reigning this in, but it’s something the I have to put a lot of effort into.
With my designs, I like to add in interesting little details that make for a more pleasing finished item. When I’m starting the design I make it the way that pleases me. This often includes things that may not be intuitive to others and can be difficult.
In the past I would leave these touches in my designs as I initially made then. Nowadays I’m more likely to try several versions, using techniques that might be more familiar and easier for most knitters to understand. I’m trying to keep the final item as close to my initial idea, but making it simpler then it would have been.
With other life projects I’m finding a couple new approaches are helping me a lot now.
I start by making a task list for the project and breaking it down into as many small steps as I can think of. Once I have that I go through these again and add time estimates to these steps. I then usually let it rest for a day or two and then review it, seeing if there are things that can be trimmed back or seeing if I’m, as usual, making it more complicated then needed.
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Once I’ve revised this a couple times, and I’m happy with it, I will often get someone else to look at it again with me, to give it a reality check. This helps me a lot because that other person may see where I’m going astray and help me get back on target.
A good example happened this week. In my spinning program we are onto our last assignment, which is a design challenge. The challenge I chose was producing a line of yarns for a specialty yarn store. We have to come up with at least three yarns, with a couple colourways for each yarn.
The instructors asked us to submit proposals for our projects, so they could see if we were on the right track. I submitted mine and, no surprise, it came back with comments that what I proposed looked overly ambitious. They liked the overall concept though. They gave me several suggestions on how I could pare it back but still keep the overall themes intact.
So I’m revising my proposal and plans, and will be resubmitting them soon. I figure after a couple back and forths we’ll have a project that is still interesting but much less work then my initial ideas.
Having my instructors as a reality check for this assignment is invaluable. Their guideline is that the homework should be about 40-50 hours of work. Looking back at my initial proposal it probably would have been in the 80-100 hour range, which is way too much.
Hello again everyone. I’m surfacing for a while after finishing my third assignment for my spinning certificate. I’ll have to start the final one (YAY!) in a couple weeks.
I’m getting ready for a talk I’m giving at the end of February to my local spinning guild the Guelph Guild of Handweavers and Spinners. I’m giving a presentation on spinning for socks.
I like making socks. I like making socks a lot! But I have never made a full pair with my own handspun. I’ve made small sample ones, but I’ve yet to spin enough for an entire pair.
Well, I figure that needs to change! So I’m going to spin and knit a pair for the talk.
The fibre in the picture above is what I’ll be spinning. I dyed the fibre with Elderberries back in 2008 or 2009. The fibres and the blend for the socks are:
Left – tussah silk (10%)
Middle – mohair/wool blend (20%)
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I originally carded this fibre back in 2009. I had planned to make socks with it that summer, but it never happened. So the fibre has been waiting in a bin since then.
I’ve spent the last couple days re-carding it on my drum carder, to get it re-fluffed and to hopefully get rid of some of the nepps in it.The first time I carded it was on a course drum carder and it broke some of the fibres, making for a lot of nepps.
Re-carding it did get rid of most of the nepps. They all stayed on the surface of the batt and I was able to just pick them off as I saw them.
I started with almost 250g of fibre in the small batts. Recarding gave me 60g in waste / nepps, so I’m left with about 190g to spin the socks from.
I’m planning on making a 3-ply yarn, about 20-22 WPI. I should be able to knit this on a 2.25 or 2.5mm needle to get a nice fabric. I’ll be making toe up socks so I can make sure I use up as much of the yarn as possible.
Special thanks to Van Waffle for taking the pictures in this post.
Back in November I took part in the Sheep to Shawl competition at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto.
My guild had two teams in the event this year. Team A was made up of the seasoned members who’ve done the competition for many years. Team B was made up of first timers and others who have been in the competition before. This was my first year in the competition, so I was on the second team.
There were ten teams in total with sixty people competing. It was awe inspiring to see that many weavers and spinners all going for glory!
Alpaca and silk blend yarn, 15-16 WPI, 27g, 93 yards.
Last weekend I played with the new drum carder a bit.
Back in the summer we purchased a bit of white alpaca from a member of our spinning guild. We’ve washed about half of it already in small mesh laundry bags, getting maybe 50 – 60 grams per bag.
When we got it we noticed that the tips were pretty muddy and glued together. We hoped that this would come out in the wash.
A small dream has finally come true.
I’ve been wanting a drum carder for at least five years. I’ve been looking into various brands and have tried out a few different drum carders. They all can do good jobs, but they all have their quirks.
Last week I finally bit the bullet and we bought one, plus another fun fiber prep tool.
We got the Ashford Wide Drum Carder and blending board. We got these from our friends at The Fibre Garden.
We got to play with the store’s tools for a couple hours and had a lot of fun. Both tools are easy to use and we made a few sample batts and rolags. I thought I was going to have to put in an order for the two items but they let us have the store’s drum carder, which was just out of the box that day, and the blending board which just arrived that day as well! Saved having to go back in a few weeks to pick them up.
This drum carder will work pretty well for us. It has a wider drum, so we can get larger 100g (4 oz) batts off of it. We work with a lot of fine fibres, like merino, silk and alpaca, and this carder can handle those pretty well.
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When we got it home I tried out some scrap merino fleece on it. The fleece is pretty fine, but the butt ends of the locks are a bit matted and felted. I teased open the locks as best as I could and then carded it 4 times. This gave a nice fluffy preparation. There were some neps from second cuts and the felted bits of butt ends. The sample I spun was pretty nice, but not very consistent. I’m going to try this again but will flick the butt ends to open them up a bit or to get the felted bits off. This should make the carding easier.
I’ve got two projects coming up for the drum carder. We have some white alpaca fleece we need to card up. It’s got some problems with matted tips and a lot of veg matter in it. It will be interesting to see how the carder handles that. The second project is re-carding some blended batts I made almost 5 years ago. They’ve become a bit squished in that time and this will help fluff them up. I plan on then dizzing them off into roving. They are a blend of wool, mohair and silk and are for a sock project. There should be enough for one pair plus extra for gloves or something.
We got the blending board mostly for Van, but I’m sure I’ll be playing with it as well. Van’s been playing a lot with colours for making corespun yarns. He’s been mostly doing this on hand cards. With those you can only get about 5 grams of fibre on a rolag, so he has to prepare a lot of them to make his yarns.
With the blending board he’s able to paint on the fibres any way he wants and get about 50g of fibre onto the board. Much more efficient! He can then take the fibre off as one large batt and either roll it up and spin it as one large rolag or strip it to make a bunch of smaller rolags. We’ve also found a video on dizzing off of the blending board to make a roving, so that’s something we are looking forward to trying.
Having both of these tools will make things a lot easier for future projects. The thought of having to hand card enough fibre to make a sweater makes my hands and back ache! Doing that much on the drum carder will be a lot easier and quicker.
“You’re Mother was a hamster!” sock yarn, nature dyed will Elderberry berries.
Socks and beyond
Sock yarns are not just for socks these days! We’ll look at the many uses for sock yarns and discuss the best ways to use the various types of yarns available.
I’ll be speaking to the Oakville Association of Knitters and Crocheters (OAK-C) next Tuesday, November 5th.
The meeting is at the Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre from 6:30pm to 9:30pm.
I’ll be talking about lots of ways you can use up your sock yarn stash, and not just for socks! I’ll have lots of pretty yarns and samples for people to look at, as well as books they can be inspired by.
Mini socks from hand dyed 50% merino, 50% silk blend. Approx. 35 yards, 16 WPI 3-ply yarn.
It’s one of those things that as a fibre person you either love or hate doing.
I’m sort of in the middle now. I started hating doing it. I didn’t want to take the time and just get into the project.
One thing taking my spinning course has taught me though is that sampling will give me a better end product. It will make it easier to get the final result that I want rather than having it be more hit and miss.
So now I still don’t like to make many samples, but I do try to see what the results of different methods will produce.
I’m getting ready for a talk I’m giving in February to my local spinning guild. It is on spinning for socks and some techniques for knitting toe up socks.
I’ll be covering things like types of fibres to use, different spinning and plying methods, and different knitting methods.
So this is a perfect time to make a bunch of samples to show off all of these things.
I’m planning on making a bunch of small socks. The socks use about 45-50 yards of yarn, and about 25g or 1oz of fibre. I doesn’t take to long to spin up the yarn and the socks can be easily knit over an evening.
For those that might be interested, here is a basic pattern you can use to make a small sock like the one in the picture. I’m going to format it better and will post it later as a free download.
These small socks would make pretty Christmas tree ornaments or small stocking stuffer socks! Since they don’t use a lot of yarn they are perfect for using up those scraps of sock weight yarn that you may have lying around.