Uggg. What's wrong with this picture...nothing...except

I am not really a weaver, but I have to do something with the ever growing spinning stash I am building up. Besides, the major project for Master Spinners Level 5 is to make something in either linen or cotton that takes 50 hours. First, I chose linen. It is a pleasure to spin. Cotton, well, it's okay, but heck, it is cheap enough to buy already spun. Flax on the other hand, shines, has an earthy smell, and satisfies.
I have now spent, hmmm, well over 30 hours spinning flax. I have spun dew retted, water retted, tow, line and bleached flax. I have spun it Z and spun it S. I have a stack of flax now spun into lovely linen yarns.
With all that linen I decided to weave 3 tea towels. Why do one? With all the work it takes to warp a loom, you really have to make more than one thing at a time. So I spent, hmm, another 8 hours putting on a dummy warp. Why spend tall those hours on just 3 finished products, I figured I would save oodles of time by using a dummy warp and then leaving it on after my 3 tea towels and then I can just add a new warp and skip the having to put the yarns through the heddles and slaying the reed each time. Besides it would save 18 inches of wasted yarns.
So I just spent , oh, umm, about another 4 hours sleying the reed when, almost finished I realized I had the wrong reed on! I am aiming for 20 ends per inch and I stupidly used a 5 dent reed, and ended up with 10 ends per inch not 20. It was going so well. You would have thought I would have figured out there was something wrong hours ago. But no, it was only when I thought, hmm, this tea towel sure is wide. So like my knitting adventures, it is three steps forward and two back.

Spinning a cloud of camel down

[Photo:Spinning camel down
in Egmont]

The opportunity: to see the Sunshine Coast. 
The assignment: to spin camel--camel down, camel down/silk blends and camel hair and compare them. 
The resources: Spin-Off Fall 2007; hand carded punis of camel down, some with silk.
I usually mix up the two types of camel: Bactrian (2 humps from China and Mongolia) and Dromedary (1 hump from the Middle East), but I finally figured out a way to keep them straight in my mind. 'B' turned on it's side gives you 2 humps, just like the Bactrian camel.'D' turned on it's side gives you one hump, just like the Dromedary camel. Alice, the camel only had one hump, just like the Dromedary camel. There's 'a town called Alice' in Australia (also the title of a very good book by Neville Shute) where domesticated Dromedary camels have gone walkabout. Given the environmental differences between the deserts of Middle East/Australia (hot hot hot) and Mongolia (cold cold cold), which beast probably has a soft warm undercoat?  Yup, the B's, those 2 humped Bactrians.
I was given some of that Bactrian camel down, a soft carded light tan roving or top with 2" fibres. True luxurious fibres. Almost to good to spin on samples. To supplement that I bought what I can only describe as a cloud of camel down with shorter (about 3/4 to 1") length, but still very fine fibres.  I hand carded the cloud and rolled it into punis.
After spinning a few yards of the 100% down I found my spinning groove by using a point-of-contact (ie let the twist enter the drafting zone) short (around 1") backward draw.  The singles looked tight but I planned on plying them enough to open the yarn up and then have the yarn 'bloom' with a good finishing wash.
I'll include the final yarn in a post with the other samples.

A project for Cuba

 January brought a quick trip to Cuba.   This was a pure R & R trip.  With only seven days, the idea was to sit on a beach.  Oh, sure, I admit to having a weak, ill-thought out plan to find the bee hummingbird (the smallest hummingbird in the world) but once I saw the beach, that quest was put away for another trip. We did manage to drag ourselves to Havana for a short day where I found a group of women learning to knit, but then it was back to the beach and a couple of novels.

[Photo: A group of women
knitting in downtown Havana]

With hours of flights and just as many getting to the airport and sitting waiting for the plane, I decided I needed a project and since I am behind in my spinning homework, I thought it wise to pick a project that would get me a little further ahead in my homework.  For my major project this year, I have to spin a yarn and then knit or weave it into something.  From start (preparing the fleece) to finish (a usable product), the project should take 50 hours.  I have so far spent 25 hours sampling (1 hour), cleaning and teasing fleece (8hrs), blending and carding (4hrs)  fibres (40% mohair, 40% alpaca and 20% silk), preparing skeins for dying (2 hrs), mordanting (1 hr) and dying the skeins (4 hrs), plus 1 hour on calculations.  This was to be for a woven scarf, but at the end of all this work, my weft which was to be a soft pink turned into a rather gaudy, vibrant, purple.  I had enough purple for a scarf in itself.  I was still happy with the yarn a soft 2 ply suitable for weaving or knitting lace.  So if the planned weft was too harsh to go with the soft, subtle colours of the warp, then knitting would be a good alternative, except I can't knit anything more complicated than knit and purl and even then my knitting is questionable.  This I decided was the perfect time to learn how to knit and knit lace at that.

[Photo: My first lace knit project]

So I 'googled' beginner knit lace and found this pattern from Knitty.com.    Perfect.  The description says it is good for beginners.  that's all the time I had to read before printing the chart, downloading a 'How to Knit ' app for the I-phone (complete with how-to videos, and packaging my purple yarn off I went to Cuba.

[Photo: From Knitty.com]

I want to point out a couple of items of interest in my photo of my WIP (Work in progress).  First, note the turquoise thingy, it is a Knit Kit, advertised as 'never lose your knit knacks ever again'.  I bought it from Knotty by Nature on my way to the airport, and am so glad I did.  It has a row counter, crochet hooks for those darned stitches you drop by accident, stitch markers, tape measure and even scissors apparently approved for air travel (personally, I think it is because they fold so cleverly that the x-ray machine can't see the sharp pointy bits).  If you are a knitter, never leave home without it.  The second thing I want to point out, is if you look closely about an inch below my needle is a blue yarn sewn into the knitting.  It's called a lifeline and it is. My knitting has improved but I tore apart the first 3 inches probably a dozen times, and even now, with a seasoned 164 rows behind me, I knit three rows ahead and often rip five rows back.  The lifeline allows me to rip back to the start of my ten row repeat pattern.  Every ten rows I use the handy dandy darning needle which came withe the Knit Kit and darn through the row.  Then when I have to rip out a few rows to get back on track, I can rip away right back to the lifeline without having any lost/dropped stitches.
On getting back home, I went back to Knitty.com to re-read everything and that's when I realized this wasn't actually a 'beginner's' beginner's project, it was for advanced beginners who are ready to tackle something more difficult. As the instructions say 'So, once you've knit this scarf you can knit just about any lace pattern.'  
And it is true ....I think.

What's on the wheel

I love my new wheel (Ashford Joy WITH a Woolee Winder -- I am sure there will be a post on that later). I especially appreciated it's smoothness when I got stuck in TwistsPerInch (TPI - for those non-technical and hence, sane readers). The problem was too much information, not enough understanding and conflicting formulas in my mind. The homework assignment was to spin ten yards of a plied yarn at 15 TPI. Sounds easy but it ain't! To make a long story short, in my frustration at not succeeding in this seemingly simple assignment, I said 'bugger it, I just want to spin and picked up a beautiful roving from Hummingbird Fibre Arts, consisting of Romney wool, mohair and silk and spun my frustration away'.
But now I am stuck on a totally different problem. How best to ply this wonderful roving (on the bobbin on the right)? In order to keep the varigated colours vibrant, I don't want to ply it with itself as the colours will mute each other. I could navajo ply it but that would result in a beautiful 3 ply and I am aiming for a 2ply. So I had my mother pick up some pink tone soft and silky merino/silk roving from the Loom at Whippletree (on the bobbin and wound into a ball on the left). It too is beautiful but do I want to mix them together (the pink/blue sample in the foreground) ? Decisions, decisions. I think I will spin up a few bobbins before I decide. Perhaps by then I will have figured out how to spin a 15TPI plies yarn.

Note to self: Read Course Supply List at least two months in advance.

[Photo: Spinning in front of Mt Rundle]

So there I was, the night before we leave for year 3 of the Master spinners course. I had not packed, nor finished my homework when I read the list and start throwing things into bags. Scissors, check. Niddy noddy, check. Lazy Kate, check. Dye pot, check. Gloves, check. 25 skeins, 10 meters each of hand spun, tied off and labeled ready for the dye pot Monday morning. 25 skeins! Holy cow. That's 250 meters! And it is needed for first thing Monday morning. 

[Photo: 23 skeins drying in the
motel washroom]

According to homework assignment #38 - Calculating time needed to spin-- that is about 250 minutes for a 2 ply, or just over 4 hours of spinning. It will take a day and a half of driving to get there which will give me a day to spin, but I have to finish my homework, re-paginate everything and double check all the assignments, as well as checking out the fleece judging. That cuts it pretty fine for spinning 250 meters.
So I spun in the car, I spun in the motel in Revelstoke. I spun with the spindle in the car from Kamloops to Banff. I spun while admiring Mt Rundle. I spun from Stony Plain to Olds. I spun in Olds. I spun up all the mohair roving I brought. All 230 meters. Yes, that is right, I am 20 meters short!

Homework - D-Day is coming

[Photo: Starting with this]

Today is Friday. This means I have only 7, seven, s*e*v*e*n, 7, as in one week, 7 days left, that is seven working days, to complete my homework before heading back to Olds College for Fibre Week to start my level 3 Master Spinners course.  

[Photo: To do]

There are two problems with this.
First, I work. And I am away on Sunday. Away, as in 'away from my spinning wheel'. And I am the steers person for a dragon boat team (i.e. I steer and if I don't turn up 22 paddlers will beat me with their paddles) and we have 3 evening practices in the next week. This means I really only have Saturday and 2 evenings in which to finish my homework! You may well ask what the heck I am doing right now spending time telling you this when I should be doing homework. That, is a good question.


Second, this means I only have 7 days before I get assigned another YEARS worth of homework! And the whole darn thing starts all over again.

[Photo: Done!]

All quiet on the western front

[Photo: Spinning in Hawai'i]

[Photo: The pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel
with hallways lined with orchids]

You may have noticed a lack of postings lately and there is a very good reason for this as you can see in the picture. We went to Hawai'i for a week where, I confess I did not do much. Very little spinning but what I did do, was done in a very picturesque setting on the lanai of the condo. I wonder if the hotter, sunnier it is, then the more the urge to fondle fibre diminishes? Or was it just plain laziness?

[Photo: A banyan tree where the pigeons roosted
 in nooks and crannies]

[Photo: Seen very close to the surfing hangout 'The Pipeline',
A cat colony with their chicken friends all going for a walk]

I saw a few things that struck me as unusual and interesting and managed to take a few pictures which I have included here.
Now I have to get serious again about my homework, but first, I am off for a weekend of learning how to spin Alpaca and Llama on Salt Spring Island.

Afghanistan, rugs and Christmas

I received an email from my brother recently who is now in Afghanistan and there, in all that chaos, he had the time to read my blog ---he's probably reading it right now. Imagine that. Hello Bro'!--and inspired by fibre, he sent along a link to an article about the rugs of Afghanistan which had a lovely quote which he quoted and I in turn quote him quoting the article. "Read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seema-jilani/the-carpets-of-afghanista_b_718812.html  - I especially like her description of what to do with an Afghan carpet: 

The rug is not just for you to place in your living room, or to be trampled upon by high heels at a cocktail party while people swirl martinis. Women have sewn their lives into it. They have whispered about their husbands, gossiped about in-laws, and exchanged riveting hopes and dreams while their fingers diligently worked the loom. Take your shoes off and don't tread heavily. Respect their stories." 

Spinning on the ferry as we came through Active Pass
to Victoria

 Doesn't that make you think twice when stepping on a carpet?! And imagine thinking about rugs and weaving while serving in Afghanistan.

Christmas travel spinning 

Here, we visited a our families over Christmas, we took the ferry to Vancouver to have Christmas Eve with the in-laws' then the ferry to Victoria to have Christmas dinner with my family. With so many ferry rides and the time spent in the car gave me productive homework time.
We missed my brother (and his family, who are in England), at Christmas and we watched the Canadian troops celebrating Christmas in Afghanistan on the news. We didn't see him but then, maybe he was busy reading this blog.

Homework - am I there yet? NO

Homework, as far as the eye can see...

I have been busy lately...and stuck in the colour wheel assignment ...but I have lost track of where I am and how far I have to go. Let me sum it up...a looooong way! As panic is starting to set in, I thought I better get on top of where I was so I stacked everything up on table, organized the assignments into three categories: Finished (i use that term loosely), halfway there and still to do. Then I counted: 9 items done, 9 half way done and 22 still to go!
And this is just the actual spinning, then there are the written assignments, the 10 book reviews and the spinning major 25hour project.
Then I figured out how many days to go -- 109 days. Well, that's not so bad. It's still possible. Maybe I will have time for Christmas baking.

On the left: done; Centre: half done; Right: kits waiting for action.

Lost in a colour wheel

You might be wondering where I am with my Master Spinners homework. Well, I am stuck in a viscous circle - the twelve colour wheel circle. It is not hard, nor boring, nor tedious, it is just taking time. The assignment: Create a colour wheel. It requires weighing each colour, then blending colours equally by weight, then spinning them and finally create a colour wheel. Here's how it works: take three primary colour merino roving - yellow, blue and red. Blend each of the primary colours with another primary to get three more colors, eg. red + blue = violet. Keep in mind that the new blend has to be homogeneous - blended very carefully, striped colours will be rejected. So I card very careful using the drum carder, running the new blend through the drum 3 - 4 times. Then take the new colour (or, figure out the correct portions of the primary colours that produced the new colour and add to it to et the new colour - you can see where this is getting confusing) and blend with the primary on each side eg. violet + blue = violet/blue, violet+red= ...hey wait a minute, what does that make and where is it? Excuse me while I card more wool....

One left foot

One twisted ankle

Did I mention I signed up for a 'Learn to Run' class? Yup, they teach this. And there is a lot to learn (where to land on your foot for example) and a lot of homework (practise)! It's a great way to become a runner. I know this because I have taken the course before and had worked up to running 13 minutes, then a 2 minute walk and repeat the sequence. It got me through a 5k run in a respectable time. But that was a few years ago a a few pounds lighter.
Well, this time I failed. Flunked out. We got to the midterm and I had worked up to be running a full three continuous minutes, then a two minute walk and was feeling pretty good about this progress when I found a pothole, at the 30 minute mark, in the side walk and down I went. I limped back to work (this being a lunch time activity) where the first aid people bandaged me up, gave me a cold pack and strict instructions to keep it elevated as much as possible for the first 48hours. Apparently early care means an early heal (no pun intended).
I do not mind being housebound or couch bound, but here is the problem. My right foot is the sprained one and my spinning wheel is a single right-foot treadle. What's the good of being house and couch-bound with 36 more spinning homework kits awaiting and with only one left foot?

Alpaca and black walnut dyed wool, drum carded
 (on the left), combed (in the middle) and being
 dizzed into fine tops which were rolled until
ready to spin (on the right)

I returned to the guest bedroom aka the wool stash and without awaking Priscila the spirit, the-fleece-less-sheep-that-rules-the-guest-bedroom-wool-stash, dug into the homework bag that held the kits still to be blended, combed, carded and dizzed and spent today seated in the sunroom aka the production studio and carded, belnded, combed and dizzed a few more kits, so at least I felt I was making some progress. Back on the couch, I resorted back to the spindle and am now working on a blend of silk and mohair. Very deluxe. But I am getting ahead of the next post.
Count down: 150 days to go (using revised deadline date of March 31)

Adams River Sockeye Boondoggle and Kit #19

Sockeye salmon heading up the Adams River

Dead fish lining the shores of
Shuswap Lake

The river ran red. Really. This is the BIG BIG BIG year for the Adams River Sockeye salmon run. For some reason, every four years, there is a bumper year for sockeye returning fish--after their first year, spent in fresh water, the little tykes head down river and spend the next three years in the ocean before returning to their birth place. So a big year is every 4th year and this was a 4th year. Despite predictions from some quarters of a crash, this year was the biggest year since 1913, 34.5 MILLION FISH!. Compare that to last years 1 million fish. This was BIG BIG. Once in a lifetime. So we had to go see it.  Click here to see my slide show.

Spinning Kit# in the van

We've been to the last 4th year run and 8 years before, and they were impressive, so I didn't know how this could be even more impressive. It wasn't that we saw more fish swimming up river- maybe we did but I never counted--but what we saw was more dead fish. After they spawn they die. It's their destiny. So while the line of fish kept going up river, those that spawned and died, floated back down the river and lined the shores of Shuswap Lake. The mouth of the river was thick with dead fish. Now think about this. 34.5 million fish all spawning then dying and littering the shore. That adds up to a lot of dead fish with decaying, rotting flesh. The smell was, well, it smelt. Bearable but the smell did linger with us for hours. .....hmmm, I better have someone with a sensitive nose, check the aroma of kit # 19 - fine grade fleece wool spun and prepared worsted-style, spun in the van on the way there and carried in my pack while viewing and sidestepping dead fish.
Count: 4 down 36 to go

Day 3 and 4, Kit #38

Spinning in the car - not while I drove.

Okay, Kit #38 is supposed to be at the finish line, or at in sight of it but I panicked. I was worried about all the travelling I had coming up in the next week and thinking I would be a week behind with only 1, maybe 2 kits completed.
I was off to Victoria to meet with a curator at the BC Museum to look at historical photos of Coast Salish spinning (but that's another story) and then to go to the Victoria Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild meeting, which meant that I wouldn't have time to spin. Eureka, I would take my spindle and the Kit (#38) that required a 10 yard sample of a 2 ply yarn done with a drop spindle. I could spindle at the Guild meeting, and while the other half drove, I could spindle in the car. And this gives me a good idea. For all those trips, I will select some other kits that would be suitable to use the spindle. One big headache solved.
Which brings me back to Kit #38, a blend of beige llama blended with a Frieson x Suffolk cross both of which had a similar length staple and I had dyed the wool with Black Walnuts to get that ho-hum beige. The mix is a very nice, soft camel coloured yarn.
Time: 1.5 hours driving, 1 hour in a meeting, 1 hour plying in the car, in the dark using a flashlight! = 3.5 hours (including coffee stops)
Count: 3 down, 37 to go.

Homework - Kit #1 True Woollen

Kit #1, Merino, prepared and spun woollen

Arrrghhh. I didn't enjoy Kit #1 (which I did second) until I got into the groove which was about at the 90% done mark but before then I was fighting it. The assignment: spin 10 yards of a fine fleece (I used Merino) using a true woollen preparation and true woolllen spinning technique. Simple. HA!  
After spending 4 months trying to get integrity into my yarn by spinning a true worsted, I had forgotten how to loosen up and spin an easy-as-pie woollen. Adding to my frustration was the idea lurking in the back of my mind that I would run out of Merino so I had to make this work. What rubbish. Think about it. There are an estimated 100 million sheep just in Australia and the majority of them are Merino. There is lots of Merino fleece to be had if I needed more, so why let that fear worry me. I finally put that thought out of my mind. Once I got into the hang of easy-as-pie woollen long draw, it worked, there was evenness in the yarn. When I plied it back on itself to test what it would look like...by gawd, it looked good. So I kept going and then plied the two bobbins into one yarn and got 20 meters with fleece to spare. Not much but some, at least enough for the assignment but I have to admit, I didn't think that my plying was even. But right now I am feeling...good enough. Move on to something nicer, something more pleasing and relaxing to spin.
Time to prepare, spin, curse, ply, wash: 2 hours
Count: 2 down 38 to go.

Homework - Kit #2 - Adding Memory

Black llama blended
with white wool and integrity!

Memory...wouldn't it be great to be able to add memory. I gave my father a memory stick on his 80th, what every ageing person needs -- more memory. Who would have thought that some fibres have no memory. They forget what they are supposed to be, how to hold their shape, how to return to their original state. Wool however, does have memory. Wear a wool sweater, and it holds it shape. If it does stretch, say at the elbows, wash it, lay it out to dry and it bounces back to it's original shape. Llama on the other hand doesn't have memory. Llama is beautiful, soft, warm, strong but draping clothes will stretch. Sleeves will get longer.  
For garments made with inelesatic fibres that will hang, you need to blend in some wool to give it a bit of bounce and bounce-back memory.
Which brings me to my homework where I decided to start with Kit #2, an exercise to mix two fibres, one without memory and one with. I chose some black silky llama and added 38% white wool to get a dark gray with some bounce. It was wonderful to spin. It glided out of my hand in a continuous smooth flow of fibres. I didn't have to do much work at all. And damn it, if it didn't have integrity!
Timing:
60 minutes to blend it = 60
40 minutes for each bobbin = 80 minutes plus 60 = 140 plus
20 minutes to ply it = 160 minutes plus
20 minutes to write up my notes = 180 minutes = 3 hours!
And then I have to figure out a way to mount a 10 yard sample skein, plus a lock of each original fibre and a sample of the blend before spinning. Say another 15 minutes.
That means I have to speed up or double up on the amount I do. This is going to be a tight, tight schedule! I either have to spin smaller amounts, and keep to the 10 yard requirements or make the most of some samples and make enough that the extra can be incorporated into my major project at the end. Inspired by this kit, I have an idea already for the project - a woven scarf made a various shades of gray.
1 down, 39 kits and 179 days to go.

Homework

Getting my homework organized to begin.

Priscilla-the-fleece-less-sheep-that-rule-the-guest-bedroom-wool-stash, has stamped her hooves and has threatened me, "Get this #@$% stuff out of here. For Gawds sake do something with it. Or else" and 3 bags of fibre samples meant for homework were thrown into the hallway.
Heavy hoofed but she was right, it was time to start my homework after all, it has been 4.5 months since my Master Spinners Level 2 course and that meant I only have 5.5 months left to finish it. Yikes!
I have been procrastinating but for a very good reason. Integrity. After being told in class that my yarn lacked integirty (see the earlier post) , I have been spinning up a storm trying to achieve integrity and I think I am there and now ready to tackle the bags of fibre homework.
So I spent this afternoon laying out all the fibre and putting together homework 'kits'. Each kit is in a ziplock bag and holds the instructions and fibres. So kit #33 for example contains some black Llama and some Frieson x Suffolk sheep fleece and instructions: spin a 10 yard skein of a blend suitable for a knitted vest. It may be 2 or more plies (I'll do a 3ply). Give an explanation of why it is suitable and knit a 3" x3" swatch to demonstrate its suitability.
I reckon each kit will take an average of 3 hours to complete. There are 40 kits and then there is the written work (say 10 hours...maybe, maybe more), plus I have to do a final project that takes at least 25 hours: I have to design, wash, prepare, dye, blend, spin and knit or weave something like a scarf. It is almost enough to cause me to give up before I really begin.  Homework is due April 15th (I'm not sure but let's assume it is around there), and that is 6 months away. That sound like a lot, but in terms of days it is 180 days.
So here is the maths: 40kits x 3hrs = 180hrs + 25hrs major project time = 205 hrs + 10 hours written homework = 215 hrs.
Assuming that in that 6 months I will be in a workshop for 4 days, away on holidays for 9, and out of commission for one reason or another for, say, oh 5 days, that means that I would only have 180-18 = 162 days available, which is about 1.25 hours a day will get me to the finish line. Put another way that means finish one kit every two days. Sounds possible except I work full time and sleep at least 8 hrs/day. I usually have 2 hours a day available. This doesn't leave a lot of room. I better get crackin'.