sweetgeorgia

From Russia with Love

Okay, so they’re not actually from Russia.

My first Russian spindle is from Carney’s Turnings, which I picked up at Fibres West about a month ago. And then I became so enamoured with it, I hunted down other spindle makers, finally discovering the amazing Lisa Chan at Gripping Yarn. She’s turned over 1,000 spindles and hosts an Etsy shop here. But of course, due to the popularity of her spindles, the shop is empty. So I convo’d her to ask about having a couple spindles made.

Lisa came back with a HUGE list of exotic woods that she has in stock and ready to make into spindles. She makes recommendations about what woods produce the most balanced spindles and even lists the density of each wood, so that you can make better decisions about what kind of spindle you want. Initially, I was hoping for one in East Indian Rosewood, but it wasn’t available… so I chose Purpleheart (dark red/purple colour), Bloodwood (warm orangey/red colour) and White African Pear (blond). Galina Khmeleva of “Gossamer Threads” spinning-fame, notes that traditional Russian spindles are made from birch which is quite a light wood, so I opted for the White African Pear because it was closest to this. The two darker woods are heavier, but so gorgeous. Each spindle is approximately 33g (just over 1 oz). The shape of each spindle is the same and looks like a large, full paintbrush with a tapered tip.

Lisa’s custom spindle process runs like clockwork from my customer perspective. She is prompt with the emails, turns the spindles, invoices and then ships all in a matter of days (of course, depends on her workload). She also makes French supported spindles as well as an original design called the “Rose” which is a French/Russian hybrid spindle (can be used either supported or suspended). Here’s a drool-worthy collection of her spindle photos.

Armed with Lisa’s spindles and the new spinning video by Galina (from Interweave), I’ve been spinning nearly every night before bed while watching tv. It’s been remarkably productive. I can spin nearly soundlessly and not disturb anyone, and I can spin in bed. It’s awesome.

Supported spindles don’t get along with commercial top fibre preparations… unless you get a short-stapled one and spin from the fold (or something like that). So I’ve been spinning up the batts I carded back at the 2009 SOAR with Abby Franquemont. I sort of wish I had written down what was in these batts, but I think the red one is a combination of merino, camel and sparkle… and the grey one is a mix of alpaca and silk. I think.

I’m hoping to try the crazy Russian plying technique from Galina’s video when I finish filling these spindles. You basically ply your handspun single with a commercially spun silk and wind the freshly plied yarn directly onto a round disc-shaped cardboard bobbin. The bobbins are then steamed to set the yarn and are ready to knit from right away. Hope to be sharing some plied yarn with you in the next several weeks!

First puff

Here’s the first puff of merino bamboo silk spun and plied on the new Arbutus turkish delight. I love it. That is all.

FibresWest 2012

FibresWest comes and goes so quickly each year. It’s like a rush to pack and ready everything on the Wednesday, getting the car rentals and driving an hour out to Abbotsford (each way — over the weekend, it’s over six hours of driving) to set up our booth on Thursday. Then Friday and Saturday whoosh past, meeting and greeting customers and friends, both old and new. We drove through a monsoon to get to Abbotsford and throughout the show, there were moments when the whole festival collectively paused to listen to the intense hail coming down around us. But despite the harsh March weather, it’s a wonderful time to reconnect with fibre people… and learn new things.

Two years ago, I attended Interweave’s spinning retreat, SOAR, in Delavan, Wisconsin and watched a classmate (Stetson) in the Margaret Stove Lace workshop spin on a Russian supported spindle. It was the most fascinating thing to watch and I desperately wanted to learn how to do that. So I looked around the SOAR marketplace but couldn’t find anyone who was selling Russian spindles… only tahklis for cotton. It’s been a while, but just this past weekend at FibresWest, I met Caroline Sommerville of Ancient Arts Fibre Crafts who had a huge table FULL of supported spindles.

I managed to escape their booth with just one supported spindle. A bottom-heavy Russian spindle in Jatoba wood, weighing 43g (#1 in the photo). I tried practicing on it with some of our merino bamboo silk fibre, but Caroline says the fibre is not appropriate to the spindle… rather, the spindle is better suited to cashmere and yak and very very short stapled fibres. Excuse me while I paw through my fibre stash for some extra cashmere to practice with?! I’m torn… I want to spin beautiful wonderful fibres with this spindle… but I don’t want to waste said beautiful wonderful fibres as I practice. Teresa was also bitten by the supported spindle bug and ended up going home with a gorgeous blonde wood Tibetan spindle… and then sent me this video:

Carina, the unintentional enabler, bought a larger Turkish spindle on Saturday morning (possibly to do some plying?) and announced that there were only four more Turkish spindles at the Fibres Plus booth. I had to go look and the warm, red Arbutus wood was too seductive to refuse. So I unintentionally ended up with a second tiny Turkish spindle. My parents also have a large Arbutus tree in the front of our family home, so of course, there is a bit of sentimentality thrown in there too. This spindle is lovely and TINY at 21g (0.74 oz) and even smaller than the first one I bought at SOAR in 2010. And it’s a wonder why I always end up spinning fine yarn.

The Arbutus wood has an otherworldly kind of wavy grain to it and very interesting but soft figuring also. It’s small enough to carry around in my purse but so delicate, I’m afraid I’ll crush it. Maybe I should get a little plastic box from the Daiso for the spindles so that I can carry them around in my bag. I did see another spinner carry her series of Tabacheck Russian spindles in a hard wine bottle case. Very smart.

Despite all the hard work to set up, the many hours of driving, and the long hours in a very very cold venue, I’m so happy that I got the chance to be at FibresWest and get inspired by all the other fibre artists and craftspeople around us. From potters to button makers, from dyers to weavers, I’m grateful that everyone made the effort to come out and share their passions too.

On patience, on persistence

I’ve been working through my stash of spinning fibre… methodically and ever so slowly. I’ve been trying to stick to just one spinning project at a time and I don’t know why it took me so long to realize why I’m so slow… it’s because I spin everything so fine! I must have fallen into a dimension where I believe everything needs to start off being spun fine, so that if it gets plied, it will make it knitable. I think of plying fine lace singles into a balanced 2-ply lace yarn, or plying it navajo-style to make a three ply for socks, or even plying three bobbins of lace singles together to make a strong sock yarn. I don’t think fat, floopy yarns wear very well and it just negates making your own yarn… but the way I am just means that everything takes super long.

I’m about 1/4 of the way through spinning this Merino Bamboo Silk fibre… I checked the blog and it’s from way back in August 2010! I’ve taken the pound of fibre, split it vertically and spinning both halves very thinly. At the end, I’ll have two bobbins of lace singles that can be plied together. The colour chunks should roughly line back up and I’ll get broad stripes of colour when I finally knit this up.

Let’s see if I can get to the end… there is much spinning to do. And of course, I spin short-forward draw worsted-style, meaning it takes even longer. I hope good things come to those who wait.

Patience saved me upwards of $350! When “The Principles of Knitting” book was out of print, I was sorely tempted to buy it off E-bay but I just couldn’t afford or justify trying to afford to pay the $350 the book was going for at the time. Miraculously, June Hemmons Hiatt was convinced to come out with a revised edition of her book. Of course, editing the nearly 700-page tome took a long time as the entire book had to be re-typed by hand and all the 900 illustrations had to be re-created by her son. Now, it’s available for $30-something and it will forever live in my library as the most comprehensive book on knitting ever written.

When I heard June Hemmons Hiatt speak about the book at Vogue Knitting Live earlier last year, I had already pre-ordered and was waiting for delivery before Christmas. But she spoke up in her live interview with VK editor, Trisha Malcolm, and said it’s unlikely the book would be ready by Christmas. So, I would have to be patient.

I need to constantly remind myself to be patient, to be persistent. Small things done consistently to produce big results. Just keep at it. Maybe I’ll have all this spun up by next Christmas.

Grace’s Handspun Scarf

We loooove when people stop by the studio to show us what they’ve made. Grace, on of our long-time club members, came to pick up her Fibre Club package yesterday and was wearing the most awesome scarf. It’s handspun from our BFL+Silk fibre in Maple and navajo-plied to keep the colours clear and distinct. I believe she said the pattern was one of Yarn Harlot’s… oh here it is: Yarn Harlot’s One-Row Scarf. If you’re on Ravelry, you can see Grace’s original handspun yarn here. Beautiful!!