Distaff Day 2013

It is that time of the year when all good spinners are called on to once again, pick up their spindles or get back to their wheels on the 12th day of Christmas. European tradition gives spinners the time off at the end of the year and the start of the new one. Distaff Day is the start of a new spinning year. Named after the spinners tool the distaff (think of a free standing hat stand, or a lamp stand without the lamp) which is used to hold the flax strands fanned out in a vertical oblong balloon shape. The distaff sits next to the spinner with the bottom ends of the flax strands about shoulder to waist height making is easy to pull the fibres from the balloon bunch and draft them into linen yarn.
the Tzuhalem Spinners and Weavers Guild once again hosted an excellent event. This year we were treated to a real distaff being used by a talented Brenda. It is hard to see in the photo but just below the fibre balloon and at elbow height is a small wooden ring around the distaff pole. Inside that ring is a grove holding a sponge which in turn holds the water used to dip your fingers (almost like the bowls of water at the entrance of churches) to keep the fibres damp as you spin them. Ingenious!
Brenda is part of the Linen Project, part of Transitions which aims to revive ancient skills and in the case of the Linen project, that means planting flax and processing it into linen. if you live in Victoria, BC check it out and get involved.

[Photo: Angel outside
St. Peter's Church] 

The whole day had a slightly spiritual feeling. The dipping of the fingers, the location St Peter's Church Hall and the site-- one of the most beautiful Gary Oak meadows which surrounds the church and hall. Truly a spiritual event for us spinners.

Knitting and the Art of War

Beginners lace scarf      

As I learn how to knit, I am beginning to see the art of knitting along the lines of Sun Tzu's ancient Chinese treatise The Art of War or some 'conquer-your-inner-fears' self-improvement book. Knitting can be a battle, it is 'knitting vs you' and you need to get past that to 'you, knitting'. So here are some of my 'knitting self-improvement/art of warfare' lessons:

• Start with a plan.  Stick to it.
• Know where you are. Use stitch markers. Use them often. 
• Have a backup plan. Use a lifeline. Use it often. You WILL need to use it.
• See the patterns within the pattern. 
• See the pattern in your mind. See it with your mind.
• Know your weaknesses. Recognize them to avoid them.
• Know your stitches  Know their strengths. Know how to use them to your advantage.

I knit 3 inches in a month.  Then when I put my battle tactics into play, I was able to do another 53 inches in the last two weeks.  I am winning this war!

First post

The New Year was brought in by Miss 2012 going up in flames taking with her all our unwanted thoughts. We toasted her out and the new year in.

Kayakers ready for the rescue

Polar bear swimmers

This was followed (much later in the day) with the polar bear swim.
Meanwhile, in the fibre world, much holiday time was devoted to organizing fibre homework: samples spun, fibres blended, weighing and measuring blends of silk and mohair, writing up my notes for the Level 4 homework. The New Year fibre world is starting out in an organized manner. That should last a day or two.

2012 Last Post

[Photo: Tree with wire rope
growing right through it]

Yesterday was the annual Christmas bird count. Our team consisted of Annie who is doing her PhD on sea birds, Russ, a biologist who has done a lot of bird research at all sorts on interesting places, mostly on islands, and me. I was their handicap to help even out such an expert team. We were in charge of the southern section of Newcastle Island. Three other teams who also knew their birds covered the centre, southern and northern sections. In all it took 36 man/woman hours, or around three hrs per team. How many birds? From memory and just from my team: 1 hairy woodpecker, tons of chickadees, 2 ravens, 3 eagles, a dozen golden crowned kinglets, 2 towhees, 4 sparrows, 16 robins, 6 Anna's hummingbirds, and a host of LBJs (Little Brown Jobs)...hmmm....doesn't seem enough for a 3hr hunt. Annie and Russ were able to identify most of these just by their calls.

[Photo: X tree]

[Photo: Tree with a handle]

[Photo: Miss 2012's last day]

Along the way we saw a few interesting trees which I photographed and thought I would share.

And tonight is the last night of 2012. We will be sending off the old year with written promises of what we are NOT going to take into the new year. These promises will be written on paper and stuffed down Miss 2012's top just before she is burned at the stake on the stroke of midnight. Say goodnight and goodbye to Miss 2012.

It takes a long time to create a masterpiece

[Photo: Black kid mohair and tussah silk]

As regular readers (my mother, my sister) of my blog know, having spun for three short sweet years in my youth before putting spinning away, I am now endeavoring to roll 25 years of non-spinning, into 6 years of intensive focused and guided catch-up. Hmm, one could read I am attempting to recapture my youth through spinning. Anyway, in other words, I am paying for those lost 25 years by working on a Master Spinning Certificate from Olds College. I am now in year four of the six year program.  

[Photo: Blending on cards and making punis]

Each year you are required to do a major spinning project--this is on top of the regular years worth of spinning homework. The first year required a project that took 25 hrs. This includes selecting the fleece/fibres, cleaning, carding, spinning and, as long as you did it yourself, the weaving or knitting into a finished product. By year three we were up to 50 hours. Year four requires 75hrs! You may think this seems counter-intuitive. As the years go by, one gets better at spinning, so you would think it would take less time. Why by year four, I should be able to dash off an exquisite evening lace shawl in an evening or two of spinning and a weekend of knitting. But it doesn't work that way. Spinning doesn't get any faster, it just gets better. Last year I timed myself and it turns out I can spin and ply a yarn a meter per minute. I timed myself again yesterday and that hasn't changed. It is just my spinning that has. I can spin a decent yarn now. My yarn has integrity even at 1 meter/minute. 

[Photo: Blending on a fur carder]

75 hours sounds like a lot of time but considering I have not finished the spinning of the yarn for this years project and haven't yet begun knitting, the 25+ hours I have already clocked, points out that 75 hours will be a breeze to achieve. Reflect on my lack of knitting prowess, and you understand it will take me at least a hundred hours to knit something given my penchant for mistakes leading to re-knitting a second or third time.
So, what has taken the 25 hours so far?  
Planning 3 hrs; teasing, 4.5 hrs; carding, weighing and blending, 5.5 hours; sampling 2 hours; spinning, 6 hrs; changing my mind, 2 minutes; dying, 3 hours; re-sampling, 30 minutes; spinning up a different batch 5 hrs 15 minutes. Total 29 hours 47 minutes.

This year I decided to make another Holden Shawlette, since 

1. I have extensive experience with this pattern having ripped it out and re-knit it at least three times, 
2. having made many, many mistakes in the Holden Shwalette I just finished, I can easily recognize mistakes earlier in the knitting process, and
3. I now know that I should stick to the pattern and cast on the required number of stitches and not think that I, a mere beginner, can willy nilly adjust lace knitting patterns.

[Photo: Subtle silk colours peek
 out of the black kid mohair]

The spinning goal: to spin a delicate lace weight two ply (two ply highlights the lace pattern) that is sophisticated, subtle, soft, and silky. I selected a black super soft and fine kid mohair and blended it 85/15% mohair and tussah silk. I loved the result and after spinning 408 meters decided the subtle sophistication needed a little jazzing up so I experimented and threw silk into various dyepots to find just the right colour to add the needed jazz. I ended up sprinkle dying the silk using a variety of harmonious colours. Next I experimented more with the spinning technique and blended the silk and mohair on hand cards, then rolled it into punis to spin in a semi-woolen technique. But that didn't produce much difference in the yarn (i was looking for more loft) from the semi-worsted method and it took a lot longer, so back to the fur drum carder and I blended the fibres into large batts and stripped off sections to spin in a semi-worsted style.
Stay tuned for adventures in the knitting.

Sleigh ride - Malahat style

[Photo: Click to see a bigger picture of  3
lanes of traffic, the middle going north
 and the 2 outer going south]

Christmas day on the wet coast (aka west coast). A day to spend time with family, so we headed south to Victoria. But up on the infamous Malahat the wet rain turned to slush and then to snow. The west coast style snow--slippery. This is where you can categorize cars and I can tell you that while Jaguars look good parked along the side of the road, we saw three hopelessly stuck in 2 inches of snow. No traction whatever. Now this may be a fault of clueless drivers or drivers who don't spend money on good winter tires or bad snow design. But three, 3, THREE, Jags! By the way, vans, Cadillac and motor-homes towing a car are also bad bets in this snow.
It is hard to knit while all this excitement is going on: texting, a friend who had kayaked across in the storm and was wondering what the road conditions were as she was an hour behind us; phoning my sister who was 30 minutes behind (and wisely decided to turn back) and receiving emails from my brother telling us the conditions were terrible and here was a link to the road web cam to prove it. I emailed back with a picture showing we already knew that but to keep an eye on that web cam as we were coming up to it and would wave as we passed it. Modern technology is wonderful.

I did manage to knit 3 inches in 3 hours, but only had two inches to show for it, having had to rip out one inch. However, I think I am 'getting' it. It's all about eye patterns (as opposed to project instruction patterns) and knowing how to see them. This instruction pattern is based on 6 rows, but every second row is a plain purl row, used to bind things together. So really it is just a three row pattern. Easy as pie, really. Except, somehow I can't make pie easily but I am working on it.
The yarn is 70% Romney wool, 10 % mohair and 20% Alpaca, purchased already dyed and in a roving from Hummingbird Fibres. I spun it up to a fingerling weight which I thought might be perfect for a simple lace scarf. I am hoping to have the scarf done as a Christmas gift for next year.

Flax to linen

[Photo: Tow and line linen]

I have been spinning linen...or flax? I guess I have been spinning flax and at some magical Rumplestilkskinian moment the flax turns into linen. And like the captive maiden's spinning, mine too turned into gold!

[Picture from Franz Eugen Köhle'sr,
Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen 1897]

I didn't think I would enjoy spinning flax but I do. There is something about the neat, tidy, golden threads that tugs at your ancestral memories. It is comforting. Well...maybe not comforting in the same way that spinning wool is comforting, but linen satisfies. I don't know why, I am just reporting how it effects me. And satisfying is the way I feel after spinning flax into gold linen.

"The life of a flax plant is 100 days of thought..."

Be Linen

[Photo:Flax stem cross-section
Photo: Ryan R. McKenzie]

So here are a few things I learned along the way. Flax is a plant and the fibre comes from the inner bark or bast of the stem, so the fibres are, at the longest, the length of the plant, maybe around 2 feet. To make a long story short, during the processing of separating the fibre from the plant, you can end up with a pile of short fibres (the tow) and a pile of long fibres (the line). Okay, okay linen spinners, I know, I know, I am over simplifying, but we have to keep up the interest of non-spinners. If you want to know more about the very interesting processing of flax, check out this beautiful video 'Be Linen' video. I digress...

Each of these types of fibres can be spun. The tow will produce a fuzzy yarn and the line...oh, the line flax, sigh, will produce a beautiful golden yarn. There are a variety of spinning techniques from using the classical distaff to accordion folding of the fibres. Each method is designed o allow only a few threads to draft out into the yarn yet also allowing those threads to grab their following threads to keep a continuous line of yarn forming as you spin. Then, you can spin wet or dry. Wet spun will smooth the yarn and give it a higher gloss, and dry spun allows more frizz to show. Then we can get more technical and spin with water or spit. Yes, spit, as in drool, saliva. I haven't seen proof of this, but rumour has it that saliva works on the flax enzymes, making the fibres glue together, while water helps control the flax and makes it softer, easier to spin and creates a smoother yarn, but doesn't create the glue.  

But here's the thing...you can blend linen with wool, or cotton, or silk or....who would have thought? Endless possibilities!

EDITED Dec 31, to add 2 more pictures.