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
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.
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.
Those who’ve known me for a while know that I have a hard time accepting a compliment. I’m better than I have been, but I still have to work hard at not negating the compliment being given.
I’ve been working on a commissioned design for the last couple months. This weekend I attended the KW Knitter’s Fair, where I got to show it to the commissioner. Other people at the booth got to see it as well. Everyone was impressed and complimented me on it. One women got to try it on and that’s when people really liked it.
For me it was amazing seeing how well it was received and also seeing the finished piece on someone else. It really brought the design to life for me in a way that it hadn’t been before.
Now I’m stoked to get the photography sample for the pattern done!
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The pattern is with my test knitter, and if it all goes as planned the pattern will be available for the beginning of November.
Getting all that positive feedback this weekend is helping get this pattern through the home stretch. The hardest work has been done, now it’s doing all the last fiddly bits to get it ready for sale.
Thank you to everyone who gave me a compliment on this piece this weekend. It means a lot to me that you appreciated my work.
It’s a quiet, grey day here in Guelph. It hasn’t rained yet this morning, but it’s coming soon.
It’s been a couple busy weeks since the last post.
I’ve finished my spinning certificate class and had a blast with it. Last week was spent getting my homework in order and working on a commissioned pattern. That pattern is coming along very nicely. I just have a few tweaks left and then it’s off to the test knitter this Friday. I’ll be getting the yarn for the pattern sample soon and I’m really excited to start working with it. It’s a new yarn to me and looks and feels amazing.
I thought I would post some pictures of the dye experiments we did in my spinning class. This year was dyeing with fibre reactive dyes and creative dyeing techniques. These were all a blast to do, but it got pretty hectic having twenty people all dyeing at the same time. We managed and thankfully no spills or accidents.
Those people with a weak constitution may want to scroll quickly past the next picture.
In my last post I talked about the 5 Counties Seminar that is coming up in September.
I’ve picked out the fibres that I’ll be using in the scarf and have done some sampling of the first group of fibres. These will be the main colours in the scarf, with the second group of fibres being the accent colours.