WnS Ep. 194: New Knits & Spins! Yahoo!
Dear Spinning Circle,
Live Stream: Saturday, April 10th @ 8:30am PST
Direct YouTube link here.
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 with me. You are most welcome. I hope you feel most welcome because you are welcome here.
Enjoy the show!
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If you are curious about what happens in our community, please click the links below, reach out to me: rachel @ welfordpurls (dot) com, or reach out on Instagram/Ravelry/Slack (if you are a Patreon member, @welfordpurls_admin).
On & Off the Bobbins
Bowmont & Huaycana on Lendrum Saxony; long-draw; 3-ply
Kingdom Fleece & Fiberworks CVM on Kromski Minstrel; long-draw; 3-ply
Spunky Eclectic Gotland in “Thread Box” – Turkish spindle; 35gm; short forward with smoothing; low twist
On & Off the Needles
In Progress – Knitting
Fanel by Orlane Suuche – Disdero Ranch 100% Romney; woollen spun; Ashford eSpinner3
Florence Tank by Sari Norland – Drops Lace Unicolor (70% Alpaca/30% Mulberry Silk)
Community Participation
For April, share your favourite mitten pattern — share in the episode thread here or comment below here on YouTube!
Breed & Colour Studies – Shetland
Bridget shares via Ravelry: Here are my finished skeins. I spun each end to end, Longdraw on my Ashford e-spinner. Plyed on the e-spinner as well. My plan is to weave with them but I am still thinking about that. My last attempt to weave with handspun woolen was a fail but these skeins are sturdier and more consistent. I am a bit stuck on how to handle the two darker skeins as there doesn’t seem to be much difference in their values. I may use each one as a separate warp and weave three individual fabrics in plain weave and use a lighter weight weft so that the warp dominates. I am looking forward to getting started.
51 Yarns – Group B
Jen shares via Ravelry her most recent spins for her study: #4 Down Wool. (did I post this earlier???) My spin is Suffolk. Very enjoyable. I like working with the Down breeds. It can be tricky, as the bounce, stretch means that sometimes I THINK I am keeping the single even….but then when not under tension, like once plied, I see the variation. I have another unidentified Down fleece that I spun over a year ago, but for the life of me I cannot find the skein. The fun story with that was it came from a friend, who got it from a local demo education program farm. She left it in her garage and it became infested with moths. Out of morbid curiosity I went ahead and cleaned it. YUCKY smell. But it was very good learning about what happens with such an infestation. The smell alone will now be a good cue. A very springy fleece, it was fun to spin. I also dyed some of it and liked the chalky result. I know by the color – red – that some of the scraps – meaning what was left from fiber prep – became part of this 3D art quilt. #15 Low Twist singles. OK this may be cheating a bit because the form of this skein is now a two ply. Spun as a test to see if I could replicate the super thick roving style yarn now so popular, I spun very low twist singles. The fleece is from a local mill, with some VM – Cormo pin drafted. Now the adventure was spinning – which my friend did, with me feeding her the roving – on a Country Spinner to get the needed big roving style. We lighted felted the single, to hold it together. This shows the yarn and the “test swatch” – very wide. As I recall, the fleece is also a Cormo, likely from the same mill.
Linnea shares via Ravelry: # 24 – corespun. Time for me to give corespun a go. My first sample ( the white one) i made with a cotton core, after reading Sarah Andersons describtion in The spinners book of Yarn designs. She sugests using a dropspindle as a tool to manage the coreyarn and the twist that builds up while spinning. i tried spinning it from a ball of yarn, but i could not make it to work. I had my problems and thought it a bit boring in white. I stripped a length down a full braid of handdyed Rambouillet. Found a singles i had spun earlier and wanted to use this as a core. This kept breaking on me, so i ended up navahoplying the core on a dropspindle and leaving the core on the spindle, as i was spinning. After a while i started getting the gribs on it, and after realising i had to use a more carded like fiber. Spinning from a top caused problems aswell. So now i just have to try again, and not get as much twist in the finished yarn. Some of the twist disapeared in the finishing, but not quite enough. I do find this spin very interresting, challenging in a good way and fun to do when it starts working for you and you can see it looks right.
Linnea also shares her self-striping explorations: Inspired by Hollys self-striping hat, i hat to try. I had some gradient rolags from crafty jaks, wanting to make a 3-ply yarn. Divided the rolags into 3 piles spinning to 3 bobbins. ambitious yes i know, and too ambitious. And yes you have guessed it. My thoughts about the spin and the finished yarn did not match up. i knew it would go wrong, since one pile had 4 rolgas and two piles had 3 rolags. and the luck of spinning to 3 bobbins making a self-striping yarn, well you know the story. I continued anyway – i learned a lot- i like the yarn – but it is not self-striping. i had one rolag left, spun it to one bobbin, chain plying it and got a very nice self striping yarn. Regretting i did not do the same with the others. i have been dreading chain plying. When i did it for the first time a year or so ago, it went awfully wrong, and i have been pushing it in front of me… well for too long. I am pleased with the yarn sample, wanting to make more self-striping and chain plying in the near future. Realising now that this 51 yarns SAL, really is a perfect way to get you out of your comfort zone, challenge you and make you grow as a spinner.
Luxury Fibres ALONG
Megan shares via the Slack Channel: i’m….stilll…..spinning…….cashmere……it has felt like forever. i think i’ve done around 15oz?
Jenny shares via the Slack Channel: I am finally making solid progress on my natural shades-along/sweater spin! The brown is 100% Romney, and my just-completed cream is a Romney/Icelandic 50/50. I don’t have quite enough yet (350 yds of each colour, so I might spin up some light grey next. Any sweater suggestions? It’s a light worsted. I made worsted yarn! Wooohoo!
Zero to Hero // #sweaterspin
Florence shares via Slack: The Great Grey Mountain of Romney has become 2400m of yarn. This was the first spin on my new Ashford e-3, I plyed on my Suzie Pro. I am really (really) pleased with this yarn, it is soft and drapey with a sheen. Having the single wrapped on card is the visual feedback that I have found works for me as a consistency check.
Iris shares via Ravelry: Shifty is coming along nicely! I’d be even further if I didn’t have a few other projects to work on at the same time. I will probably end up using only three of my four contrast colours. I like this first one so much I want to use it all, and I still have some of it left, maybe for a few cm’s. Next one is red-pink and the last one blue-purple, which I already used for the first blips in the yoke.
Christine shares via Ravelry: I finished my Stasis sweater over the weekend. It took longer than I expected it to* and I had to do some re-jigging of the upper yoke (tip: it’s a very nice sweater to knit, but read project notes about the yoke before starting). Best of all, it still fits, even though I lost weight (at least 7lbs*) between casting on and casting off. This was the BFL/silk blend yarn (main colour – the purple is dyed BFL) I spindle-spun last summer/autumn. * both Covid-related, but I’m hoping to lose a few more lbs in weight (but in a more intentional way!) as I know my weight’s crept up a bit over the last few years.
Vikki shares via the Slack Channel: I wanted to share a little something I have been working on for awhile now. I dyed some roving in January. I purchased an Ashford merino roving bundle and did a semi fractal spin and plied them as a 3 ply. I thought it was going to be a cowl. As I plied I thought maybe a shawl. 700+ yards… sweater? (I had many photo shoots with this yarn lol). I cast on for a love note and 7 days later, it was a sweater. I don’t love the fit. It grew more than any sweater I ever made (and I swatched). If I could go back, I would have alternated skeins when changing colours, made a bigger neckline but overall for my first hand spun sweater, I’m happy with it. (And my boyfriend says this style of sweater is trendy right now so I’m gonna pretend it was knit this way on purpose lol) I have way more notes on my Instagram feed. Even though most people here are only seeing and reading it here, I feel silly writing the same thing out in three places (also in the School of Sweet Georgia )
Thank you so much for joining me today!
Until then, Happy Spinning!
