sweetgeorgia

Spinning for Lace with Margaret Stove

Last year before SOAR, I was so concerned about leaving my work for a mere three days to go participate in a few retreat classes. But after the first day, I just knew, I’d have to come back this year for the entire week. Similarly, today, after the first day of my SOAR workshop with Margaret Stove, I am convinced that I absolutely need to come every year.

I’m taking three full days of workshops with Margaret Stove on Spinning for Lace. I picked up a copy of her book years ago when I first became addicted to spinning and wanted to discover the Holy Grail that is merino. I found myself flipping through the book, enamoured by the photos of her washing single locks of merino by hand over a bar of soap but thought to myself, “That’s a lot of work, I’ll never do that…” and here I am, doing it, and being amazed by it.

Margaret gave us each a package of three different merino fibres — all unwashed, raw fleece — labelled fine (14-15 microns), medium (19 microns), and strong (23-24 microns). We spent the morning picking staples out of the medium fleece and… washing them individually over a bar of soap. It was a challenge to get through 17 students trying to wash their locks in all of two tiny plastic basins in the workshop room, so many of us ran back to our own hotel rooms to wash them. Somehow, Jen and I managed to book a quad room for the two of us (I vaguely recall us being ambitious about finding extra roommates) and luckily, that gives us 1.5 bathrooms. So the second bathroom has become the official fleece washing room. There are bits of merino and all colours of alpaca (Jen is in the suri alpaca workshop) strewn all over.

Following lunch, Margaret showed us her technique for spinning fine worsted merino singles which involves straightening the tiny crimp of merino with a “guide” hand as the fibre hand drafts backwards in small amounts. Usually, we spin worsted with a short forward draft, pinching and pulling forward… but this technique seems to result in slightly blobbiness. So Margaret’s method makes for a very consistent singles. I also blame the conventional short forward draft on giving me tendonitis in my thumb early on when I learned to spin and so often, I can’t spin for very long because my thumb will get sore. And the genius part of Margaret’s technique is that I barely need to involve my thumb at all! Oh, the joy of painless spinning!

After about 2 1/2 hours of this fine spinning, Margaret gave us a final challenge of spinning half the diameter of what we were already spinning. All the movements become ever more minute and she showed me that the drafting hand was only moving back not even half an inch. Simply tiny quarter-inch to half-inch movements.

The ultimate revelation was plying a length of these singles back on themselves. The yarn is stretchy! It looks like sewing thread but it acts like elastic! I don’t know why I should be so amazed — maybe because I was super exhausted by the end of the class, but seriously, I’m so amazed. My sad little two feet of yarn wouldn’t show up on film very well, but here’s a basket of Jenni C’s beautiful gossamer handspun:

Truly, not only are the mentors are SOAR wonderfully experienced and knowledgeable, but also all the participants are as well… and they all love to share their passion. I’m lucky to be in a class where I’m pretty much one of the least experienced spinners — most of my classmates say they learned to spin around mid-90′s and earlier. They all have so much skill and knowledge. Everything from being inspired by Jenni’s handspun (she also knit the shawl that I fell in love with last year) to watching Stetson spin so effortlessly on a supported spindle across from me to talking to other spinners about my arms going numb on occasion… well, I’m just learning so much.

Drum Carding with Abby and Spinning for Socks with Janel

Today was the final day of retreat sessions at SOAR and I had the privilege of being in Abby Franquemont’s morning session to learn about blending with a drum carder. Abby is a powerhouse of knowledge about all things related to spindles, fibre prep and spinning in general. She just seems to know everything about everything. Luckily for us, she is a prolific writer and you can read her articles on a huge range of fibre-related matters on her website. She also makes fabulous blended batts… and so we came to her to learn the magic behind making such batts.

We blended up colours that we disliked, colours that were garish, colours that definitely looked ugly together… and got some really very beautiful blends out of them. The beauty of the drum carded batts were that we broke up all those colours and desaturated them, making surprisingly harmonious combinations of colours and textures. We used a wide range of fibres including Corriedale, Merino, alpaca tussah silk, bamboo rayon, tencel/lyocell, camel, and firestar.

The magic or secret behind making these beautiful batts was really simply patience and building the layers of fibre slowly. Working too quickly or trying to put too much fibre on the drum carder simply resulted in clumpy, bumpy and streaky batts. We worked slowly (in fact, we were late for lunch), and put the blend through about three times. Another thing Abby confirmed was that (depending on the fibre), you can’t card something too much. She related it to brushing your hair… it’s not really possible to brush your hair too much and damage it. Same with fibre, generally.

Most of the drum carders in the session were Strauch Finests or Petites and a few Pat Green Deb’s Deluxes. I brought my own Pat Green Fancicard after a bit of encouragement and in the end, I was so glad I did. I got to learn all the blending on my own equipment without having to change from carder to carder. Some of the students got to use Judith’s personal monster motorized drum carders… crazy huge and super fast carders. It would have been so cool to have a go at one of those.

My afternoon class was with Janel Laidman and was on “Spinning for Socks”. I had been so looking forward to this session because… well, I came to SOAR to spin, and soon realized that all my sessions were about colour or dyeing and didn’t require a spinning wheel. So I was looking forward to finally doing some spinning. And spin we did. For three hours. Straight. Power spinning. Spinning for sock yarn requires high twist in the singles as well as high twist in the plying to help prevent abrasion damage.

Our first sock yarn sample was a three-ply sock yarn made with a ply of mixed BFL, dyed BFL and dyed superwash BFL. Spinning tight singles and then three-plying quite tightly as well. The second sock yarn was a cabled yarn of a ply of superwash merino, merino/tencel, Ashland Bay merino/tussah 70/30 blend, and dyed BFL. These singles needed to be spun super fine in order to make up a fingering weight after basically four-plying it all together.

Although Janel suggested that we use a tight twist for the singles to make harder-wearing socks, she did mention that we could spin softer singles and then ply tighter as that is how most “pearl”-looking commercial sock yarns are constructed.

Both classes today were pretty exhausting (in fact, I face-planted into my hotel bed shortly after Janel’s class for a 20-minute power nap before dinner), but the wealth of knowledge in these women is such an amazing resource for us. I am quite grateful that they are so generous and willing to share their knowledge, some of which is used to do the things that pay for their mortgages. These are just hard-working, truly passionate people who seem to love what they do. I just want to be in the room to soak up even a drop of their wisdom. I think that makes coming to SOAR worth it.

Dye Crazy and All About Colour

After a good nights’ sleep, I started Friday morning with a dye workshop with Amy King of Spunky Eclectic. Our dye room was actually one of the beautiful River Lodges with a wonderful view of the golf course. Great natural light lit up our session which was made even more cozy with the fresh hot chocolate and marshmallow break midway through the morning.

We partnered up and dyed BFL and Superwash Merino top with Amy’s oven method and also a cold-pour technique. In the oven method, we wet out the fibre, arranged it in the oven pans and then poured dye in whichever pattern we wanted. Then citric acid solution was poured over the entire pan and the pans were baked at 280 to 300 degrees, held at that temperature for ten minutes and then allowed to cool down. With the cold-pour sample, we put the superwash merino in a pot of cold water and poured dye over top. There’s more water in this method, but since we used superwash, the dye struck pretty quickly so we got splotchy fibre. Unexpected results… but it’s going to be fun to spin up.

It was happy times as I finally got to meet Jacey Boggs of Insubordiknit in class this morning. In fact, we partnered up for the dyeing and it was so cool to chat with her. There’s so much to learn from everyone.

Jacey is an absolute sweetheart and she is, at the same time, so confident and also very humble about her achievements. She’s the talent behind the new Sit n’ Spin DVD and teaches the technical skills required to be proficient at making art yarn. She podcasts and she blogs and she’s generally just a productive whirlwind of creativity. Yep, she’s awesome and she’s coming to teach at Madrona Fiber Arts in February 2010 if anyone in Vancouver is interested in really learning the skills to spin art yarn.

My afternoon session was all about drum carding with Deb Menz, a long-time hero of mine. Her book, Color in Spinning, turned me on to nearly everything I do today — dyeing, working with colour, creating colourways, and spinning handpainted yarns. So, of course, seeing Deb do simple things like strip a batt or pull combed fibre off a hackle was … like a celebrity moment for me.

I got her to explain to me her “major key” and “minor key” concepts from the book and I finally got it. Major Key colourways include the entire range of values but in different proportions so the yarn looks a bit more salt-n-peppery. Minor Key colourways include a small set of close values so the yarn looks closer to semi-solid with very little internal contrast. Good to hear it from the source, because that chapter in the book totally confused me.

Our class was about experimenting with the three different properties of colour: hue, value, and saturation. So we started with a single colour of fibre and split it into six portions. With each portion we blended in a smaller portion of another colour to create a variation… so a single colour was shifted warmer and cooler, darker and lighter, duller and brighter. Some of us used drum carders and others used the large hand combs or hackles. I went through all the trouble of packing my electric Fancicard, so I chose to use that for the entire class. Here are my batts:

Feeling very, very blessed, I was lucky enough to finish the day with a couple hours at the spa (a very special and lovely gift) and also a bit of a trip through the spinners’ market. After a test drive on the Schacht-Reeves 30″ saxony wheel and a few lustful glances at the Lendrum Saxony, I treated myself to some 80/20 Polwarth and Bombyx silk blend in a silver colour and some sock yarns from Blue Moon and Abstract Fiber as well as a Sheep 2 Sock kit from Blue Moon. It’s kind of nice to feel like a stash-hungry, wheel-coveting spinner again… at least for a moment.

Accidents in carding.

It was not a happy meeting today, the skin of my hand and the sharp metal teeth of my electric drum carder. However, it was a fantastic meeting this morning with a lovely fellow fibre fanatic who inspired me to unleash said drum carder. But rather than obsessing about my scraped hand, let’s obsess about the pretty puffs that it produced…

I swear, I’ve been trying to be completely authentic with this fleece. Purchased in raw form, I was on my hands and knees by the bathtub washing this thing. Then, delicately dyeing chunks of it in natural dye… my plan was to then card and spin all of it into worsted weight yarn which would then end up in a handwoven blanket… and then I got bored.

I didn’t want to spin a whole pound of cochineal-dyed fleece and then another pound of logwood-dyed fleece, etc. So instead, I just started to randomly drop hand teased fleece into the feed tray of the carder. These are like happy accidents. I hope they’ll end up spinning into some nicely heathered and randomly coloured yarns. And, most inauthentic of all, I have a large chunk of fleece that I overdyed in green acid dye. I thought all those natural pinks and purples needed a hit of green.

And for a nice hit of colour to dream about this weekend…

The Good Girl

I went to Fibre Fest and didn’t buy anything.

Well actually, I did. I bought Michelle and Jo each a ["Topknot" from Aurelia Wool & Weaving](http://www.aureliawool.com/topknots.htm) to see if it would push them over the edge and get them spinning. Heh. They both attended the drop spindle demo and then we spent much of the afternoon going from booth to booth to test the different spindles. The girls finally settled on a couple spindles made by Dave Smith/Shari Hamilton (similar to [the one I bought in November](http://blog.sweetgeorgiayarns.com/2005/11/pink_novelty/) at the Langley event). Michelle’s spindle is made from Jatoba. Sounds cool to me.

Over the five and a half hours that we spent shopping, I was such a good girl and didn’t buy anything. But Michelle bought me a ball of Bamboo yarn from Jane Stafford’s booth. Beautiful stuff. Laura Fry’s Weaving Studio was also offering a number of handpainted skeins of Bamboo yarn and I saw it woven up — lovely, soft and drapey fabric. _And_ I heard it doesn’t pill!

I didn’t buy anything because, well, I have lots of stuff to play with already. So, on Sunday, I spent some quality time with my carder and some bombyx silk/merino top that I dyed a couple months ago. I’m in love with the [carded batts at The Silkworker](http://www.thesilkworker.com/blends.html), so I decided to take my crumpled looking top and fluff it up with the drum carder.

I took one batt, stripped it vertically a couple times and spun it up from end to end. Andean plied the whole thing and washed the yarn. By evening, it was dry enough to knit up. This is going to be yet another Flower Basket Shawl (Evelyn Clark, Interweave Knits Fall 2004). I love how it feels kind of powdery and crunchy all at the same time — like fresh snow.