sweetgeorgia

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.

A little less tomato juice, a little more “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”

Didn’t you know… this blog is 98% knitting and spinning and 2% vampire slaying?

Anybody who adds a little slayage to their singing is ok by me, no matter how corny their video is. But back to being a productive grown-up, here’s the weaving in progress…

This is the [handpainted silk/wool warp that was overdyed in cochineal](http://blog.sweetgeorgiayarns.com/2006/03/adventures-with-bugs/). We had a little adventure deciding on what to use for the weft… weaving short sections with some plain weave with silk noil, some twill with more handpainted silk, twill with black boucle, twill with natural-coloured silk/camel… It seemed like most weft yarns would take over the fabric and obscure the handpainted-ness of the warp yarns. Even the plain, natural coloured silks were taking over with their high shine factor… So I finally decided on using a single strand of natural tussah silk noil (not shiny). It blends right in so that the warp yarn really becomes noticeable. But it also helps to desaturate the whole fabric a bit.

The scarf is actually all cut off the loom and finished now — I did a twisted fringe to finish both sides (after ripping out the test weft sections) and washed the scarf in Eucalan. It’s all ready for close ups this weekend.

That basket is full of carded puffs of Gotland now… and I’m still not done carding! Even with an electric carder, the process is still slow slow slow. I think it took me about 2 hours to card 150g of fibre. Maybe I’m being too fussy about it, but I’m flick carding both ends of the staples and then feeding in “cut” side first. But being fussy allows me to do a single pass rather than splitting the first batt and then re-carding a second time. Garbage in, garbage out, right?

The handspun Gotland project is going to be a big blanket woven on a floor loom at Place des Arts. They have a loom that’s already warped and ready for blankets. All I have to do is tie on each of the “ends”. So that’s 450 ends at 10 ends per inch to make an approximately 45″ wide blanket. I will probably do 3 yards of warp. So I need to spin about 1350 yards of DK to worsted-weight yarn for the warp… And then another 2500-2700 yards for weft. I think that’s enough to keep me busy for now.