Handspun for Helen

I have been having a great time lately dyeing roving and spinning – here are my latest creations:

Both yarns are quite similar – they started out as undyed polwarth which I bought at Birkeland Brothers Wool here in Vancouver.  I dyed them both in using Jacquard acid dyes, by putting my big dye-pot into the oven on 150-200 degrees for 1-2 hours.  The purple roving required more heat and time than the multi-coloured one did – I believe this is because the magenta dye has a higher strike point.

The purple yarn is a much belated christmas gift to my knitting friend Helen – I hope she likes it!  The multi is for me,  but I’m not sure whether I will use it for a hat… though it’s likely not enough… or I could use it in this crocheted afghan that I’ve started, and which is my current obsession!

 

New Handspun

So after a bit of a break from spinning, I’m back to it!! And I’ve finally made friends with my spinning wheel – that took me a little time, but I think it’ll just get better and better from now on.  These yarns are from hand-dyed polwarth roving.

And here are some more details of the yarns:
1. A 2-ply:

2. Single-ply spun from a variegated roving with blues / greys

3. Single-ply spun from by combination drafting the variegated blue/grey roving with a charcoal grey roving:

There are a few knitters who I’d like to spin some hand-spun up for in time for Christmas, so I’m excited that I’m building up my skills and learning to make nicer and nicer yarns! I bought 2 lbs of the polwarth roving that each of these yarns are spun from, so I’m just going to keep on practicing and practicing with it!

 

Craft Corner… so my cr#f$ don’t take up the entire apartment!

So the apartment now has colour, and I have the most amazing space I’ve ever had in which to adore fibre of all kinds: my craft corner!! OK, it’s more like an alcove, … and lets face it, it basically takes up the entire dining room… but I am overjoyed, to say the least.

So I’ve also been making some stellar progress on the Lady Sweater – I’m done the body, and part-way done one of the arms. I’m VERY excited, as I intend to ACTUALLY FINISH this sweater, and that will make it my first! Hopefully my aran cardigan will follow soon after…

I’ve also been unravelling more thrift-store sweaters, and dyeing roving, and doing a bit of spinning.

The blues/greys roving is polwarth sliver that I got from birkeland bros. here in Vancouver, and hand-dyed using the hot pour method (stovetop). It felted very slightly (not as bad as I have done before, but still not great), so I think I’m going to go back to the oven-dyeing method, which I think is a little safer.

Here are a couple of yarn shots of some spinning tests I’ve done with this roving:

 

Pi Blanket and some dyeing

I’ve started a pi shawl, that I intend to eventually be blanket-sized. I’ve wanted to start a GIGANTIC project like this for some time, and I finally cast on. The yarn is a recycled 100% merino which is absolutely lovely; it’s about DK weight or so; and I’m knitting with US#6 needles. I was mostly inspired by the pi shawl blanket that Brooklyn Tweed made; once I saw it, it stuck in my mind and eventually I had to make one! The pattern is by Elizabeth Zimmerman.

On the rawer fiber front, I’ve been up to my elbows in dye, and the results are these 3 colorways of polwarth roving, all dried out and ready to spin. And on the spindle are some initial tests of how the colors might spin up if I draft them together. I am especially happy with the reds/pinks/mauves/browns/blacks I achieved in one of the rovings. The others didn’t really turn out as planned at all; the BRIGHT orange was supposed to be mostly deep reds with a bit of orange, and the intense blue/green/yellow roving was to be a fairly consistent turquoise… well that didn’t happen. But the orange is very exciting, and the blue-greens will likely make a beautiful fabric once spun.

 

blustery day

I’ve just spun enough yarn to actually MAKE something!  The yarn is spun from a polwarth roving that I hand-dyed in my dyepot in the oven. I actually wasn’t happy at all with the result of the dyeing – I hadn’t intended any white spots to remain in the roving, and in fact there was quite a bit of white in the finished product. But as with many things that I work on, it has grown on me, and I love the final product. It reminds me of a blustery day sailing, with whitecaps and spray flying off a brilliant blue ocean under deep blue sunny skies.

Process shots: [click for larger image]

Roving — > spun single on niddy-noddy — > yarn in skein form — > balls — > knit garment!

I spun approximately 170 yds from around 55 grams of roving. It’s pretty inconsistent & thick & thin. So now I need to decide on a project; I’m thinking either scarf of toque will be most forgiving of the thick-thin nature of the yarn; plus they’re small. I’ve got Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns out of the library, so I’m trying to find an inspiring stitch pattern that will work with thick/thin. I’ll be checking out ravelry too…

 

hand-spun

This is some of my first handspun! I spun it from fairly coarse wool roving, which I hand-dyed (you can see the roving in the dyeing process at left. It is 11-12 WPI and 2-ply. I have to eventually learn to spin more finely, to achieve a good sock-weight yarn.

This below is single-ply lace / fingering weight, and another 2-ply. I just finished spinning the 100 grams of this roving, and so I bought 1 lb of softer merino roving. My next project will be to spin enough to knit a project – but I’m not sure yet what; socks? a toque? a scarf? maybe even a sweater, if I spin a fairly bulky yarn? I also will be starting to learn to spin on my mom’s old wheel, so I’ll find out how quickly that will work.

 

Spindster part 2

OK, just to explain, I say ‘spindster’ because I’m spinning with a spinDle, not a wheel (well, not yet, anyways). I want to learn on the spindle, then graduate to the wheel my mom gave me (she bought it as a kit and put it together back before I was born).

So after my outing to the wool shop, the next day I went to Home Depot, which is, most conveniently, just across the street from where I work. There I found bits and pieces of things that I thought might combine to become a drop spindle. This adventure was inspired by another Emily of the web, author of ‘Not Another Knitblog!’, who has made some beautiful drop spindles from found objects.

So a little dowelling and hardware later, I had a couple of spindles. The first, made with big heavy washers, is not as effective as the second, made of what I think was a cabinet door pull. But I used them both in the creation of my first yarns!

 

On my way to becoming a spindster

So after work today I pedaled out to Birkeland Bros., a Vancouver yarn/fibre shop at Main and 19th Ave. I’ve been gradually checking out all of the yarn shops in the city, as I come across them. I didn’t have a lot of time, because it was late, but I picked up my very first spinnable fibre! And what have I done with it, but immediately as soon as dinner was over, I pulled out the dye pot! Maybe you can tell from the excess use of exclamation marks that I am VERY excited to see what the result will be.