Episode 147 Live: Felix Cardigan & Crafty Jaks handspun

UPCOMING Yarn Substitution Content – May – August 2020
Our mini-series trailer was released back in January and I have been working on this content in the background for a long time! I hope you will watch the TRAILER and find out more. An Intro video will be released at the end of April/early May to get you started.

Q&A Sessions for our YARN SUB content! On May 1st at 8am PDT, a new tier will become active on Patreon for those wishing to participate in Q&A sessions for the YARN SUB content! These will occur twice per month for an hour with LIMITED SPACE AVAILABLE. The sessions will run Saturdays, May 16th & 30th @ 8:15am PDT. They will repeat in June, July & August for those wishing to continue to participate! Dates TBA.
Thank you for being here today, especially those who were able to make it to the Live Stream. I appreciate your time spent here in this place and me. I hope you feel most welcome because you are welcome here.

Enjoy the show!

Community Participation

For April, James and I have been carding up a storm and we would like to send out a batt made from the Friesian wool to someone in our community! It is a spongy, downy wool in dark brown and spins like a dream – more on it in the show today! What do you love about the Down breeds?
PLEASE NOTE THAT SHIPPING WILL BE DELAYED FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE DUE TO ACCESS ISSUES.
For March, I’ll be sending out another 4oz of Shetland in pin-drafted form from Disdero Ranch in Tappen, BC. Please enter in the March Episode Thread and answer: What is your favourite YARN you’ve even spun & why? Post no. 6 in the thread – MPTANG – Mary! Congrats!
@creekcrafter (post no. 5) says about her favourite yarn:

It was a little spin that I did with some lovely natural targhee top. Although I spin a lot of merino, I really don’t love working with it. So I had shoved the targhee to the bottom of basket – why spin another merino-wanna-be when I had masham and shetland and bfl in the stash? I didn’t have much of the targhee, so I decided to use it for our last year’s 51 yarns thick-and-thin month. It was love at first ply! So soft and squishy. And I really loved the way it looked as a slubby yarn. I knit it up into a little cowl for a relative. I think I will get a bag of it to make a full-size slubby scarf.

For February, we’re still looking at the answers to Amy’s question: what is the item that you made that you love to wear the most and why?
@lizzieH (post no. 9) says:

My most worn item is a pair of fingerless mitts I made from the second spindle project I spun. It is a combination of BFL and mohair. In the winter, I wear them while driving and taking the dogs for a walk. Despite wearing them a lot, they have yet to pill.

We talk sometimes about not using our hand spun. This yarn was sitting on my shelf for years with several unsuccessful starts of projects. To make myself do something with it, I boarded a 4 hour plane with the yarn and needles- so no magazines/books, music, or other knitting. By the time the plane landed, I was well into my second mitt.

Book Club

#booksbooksbooks channel on Slack

As a community, we are delving into a Jane Austen Book Club. We will be reading Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen. Reading can begin anytime and @bethy40 (Becca) in our community will be coordinating Zoom Book Clubs for us to meet within to discuss chunks of the book at a time.

Made with Love – ALONG

Community-wide call to everyone in the community to participate in our Crafty Jaks Along to honour some of the people in our community! Cast on date: April 1st, 2020 with cast off deadline July 31st, 2020
Prizes! There will be fun prizes! Read the post linked above for details!
This is a time to do what we do best and get creative. This is the time to make and lift up others – please read Rebecca’s blog post to learn more about this Makealong and event if you would like to learn more about the creation of this amazing event.
Excited to be casting on with Katrina’s B-fabu-licious yarn in an OOAK that she had in stock (that I love) and making Anker’s Cardigan by PetiteKnits, a PURELY selfish knit at this time!

#zerotohero Make-Along – Spinning from fibre -> yarn -> item

Wilma (@always-happy-feet, post no. 129) says:

Here my Zero to Hero project> first time spinning a none–sheepy fibre mix ….It was a challenge to spin, but I got used to it and loved the result … I made a 2-ply and dyed the yarn (…twist is tricky > next time I definitely need more twist )….After 23 years living in Canada we moved to the Canary Island. The climate is lovely but I had to try to spin now different fibre content …. It wears really nice , light and cool, very soft ..but without any memory, very flat no bounce….With the climate getting warmer , I guess we have to learn to spin none-wool fiber ? It will be a challenge . It is so different to any wool-mix

51 Yarns SAL – Community-Wide Participation (2019 – 2022)

51 Yarns – Group A – Tweed
Kelly (@tomatl, post no. 919) says:

Ta-da! My tweed is all done! This was my first time making a tweed yarn (even though I love them!) and I’m pretty smitten.

For the base, I used 50% columbia and 50% black welsh mountain, which I drum carded together. I then added 5g (or 10%, following Bethy40’s guide) of recycled sari silk that apparently I had bought eons ago and forgot about. I took the batt, stripped it down, and did it in layers – so put down the wool, added a quarter of the silk, more wool, more silk, repeat. Pulled the whole thing off, and drum carded again twice more to mix it all up nicely.

I then stripped the batt down to spin and made little nests, and spun long backwards draw.

The yarn was originally quite lifeless when I skeined it up for finishing, but a soak and thwack fixed that problem, and now the yarn is bouncy and absolutely lovely.

I spun my singles at about 18 WPI, and the resulting yarn is in the 11-12 WPI range. I have about 103 yds here out of 45g of fibre, so my grist is about 1038 ypp. Both fibres were on the shorter side, so I went for a TPI of around 3 twists per inch. I might have been able to back that off even more, but I was slightly worried about the singles drifting apart if I went much lower on such a short staple.

I have all sorts of ideas now about making sweaters out of tweed batts now

Kat (@kokori, post no. 923) says:

I have made tweedy yarns before, so for this I played around with a slightly different approach where I carded cut up yarn thrums and blended those. And one of the older projects, which rather fittingly for the monthly thread is also one of my most worn items (at home):

https://www.ravelry.com/people/Kokori/handspun/everything…

Not sure if this technically is a tweed yarn? It’s a slightly different approach, where I blended all sorts of small amounts of fibre with a neutral base.

51 Yarns – Group B – 2-, 3- & 5-ply, Cabled Yarns – Yarn Structure
Joann (@jojannnnnn (post no. 328) says:

18/51 2 Ply

Failed to photograph the 2ply by itself. It is the bottom one.

Southdown wool, 24g, 106yd, 18wpi

19/51 3 Ply

Southdown wool, 94g, 225yd, 14-15 wpi Traditional3ply

All spun short forward mostly except when digressing to short backward.

20/51 5 Ply

Southdown wool, 6g, 10yd, 13 wpi

22/51 cable ply, short forward, Dorset Horn, 26g, 44yd, 14-15wpi

Singles spun clock, 2ply counter clock, cable clockwise

Thanks so much for sharing Everyone!

Make NINE Progress – Image Capture on Product View

Making some changes to my projects that I would like to make this year, based on some purchases from ‘Fibres West’ last weekend & thinking about what I would like to make, wear & add to my wardrobe.
Many recent changes have resulted in some major purging of my closet so I have been thinking about what I’d like to add & make!
Thoughts have lead me to some simple, cropped sweaters & some really lovely lace, open-front cardigans that can double as ‘jackets’ in the Spring and Fall
Make Nine Ravelry page – changing & fluid project page as things progress, my thoughts solidify & I think about what to commit to going forward

Works in Progress – Spinning

Three Waters Farm & Unlabelled 100% Falkland – Combo Spin

• Ashford eSpinner – mindless spin
• Aiming for 18WPI for a finished 11WPI DK yarn
• Don’t want tons of yardage – would like to make a good-sized shawl
• Stash busting – #groomyourstash with Sasha of Sheepspot

Gotland/Romeny Fleece – Sampling for Gentle-Morning by Trine-Annalie

• Processing by hand – was combing but finding it just wasn’t getting finished; wasn’t super keen on the finished prep
• Decided to sample a carded prep by making a smooth batt, slow carding to prevent tangling & neps
• Love results – knit sample lovely

Friesian Fleece – Sampling for the Shore Cardigan by Carrie Bostick Hoge

• James is helping me to card it all — very downy and spongy
• Lovely dark brown with heathering from the lighter tips
• Spun to a DK (11 WPI) and very light to the hand – sample is just a few grams
• Knit sample on 5.00mm, 4.5mm, 4,00mm needles

Crafty Jaks Boutique African/Sari Silk/Firestar

• Crafty Jaks Boutique Turkish Spindle
• Divided batt into multiple strips, pre-drafted
• Worsted draft, short forward, smoothing

Finished Objects – Knitting

Felix Cardigan by Amy Christoffers

• Back to this cardigan again! Ripping to re-knit in a slightly different shape that I will wear more!
• Decided to do some stash diving for some forthcoming content that I am developing & felt inspired by this yarn
• Swatched on Monday morning – dried quickly due to the loose gauge & stitch count
• Loving knitting with it – enjoying the simplicity of this design & quickness

Finished Objects – Spinning
CraftyJaks Tussah/Bamboo/Tussah Silk (80/10/10) in “Fractured Dawn”

• Blended 3-ply yarn – lots of nests of fibre, spun randomly
• Spun on Ashford eSpinner & plied
• Short backwards, smoothed fibres as I spun
• Re-wound singles to first-spun end to ply from weaving bobbins
• Unwashed & unfinished at this point – finished yarn next show!

CraftyJaks Tussah/Bamboo/Tussah Silk (80/10/10) in “Pesuta”

• Fractal 3-ply
• Divided fibre to begin spinning – Ashford eSpinner
• Plan to spin to one bobbin with ‘divider’ fibre as with Fractured Dawn spin to then re-wind singles

Reflections on spinning for this larger project – 2 more braids of fibre to spin for this large project

• Thoughts on how it’s progressing, planning final project & make
• Article for Ashford Wheeler magazine – thinking about something practical to make versus sharing process

CraftyJaks Targhee in “Arctic Berries”

• Traditional 3-ply, minimal nests of fibre – stuck to same colour sequence each time
• Divided to spin a traditional colour management style

Housekeeping
Be sure to sign up for the Wool n’ Spinning Newsletter at welfordpurls.com.

For softcover copy of How I Spin: A Sock Study, follow here.
Unbraided – EBOOKS available here & book orders can be made here.
Thank you so much for joining me today!
Until then, Happy Spinning!