Spinning and weaving

Spinning Wheels

I recently purchased another spinning wheel – a Wee Peggy, made in New Zealand. That picture isn\’t mine – I picked an image from the internet and give full credit to a lady named Melanie who lives in Queensland Australia. She had a better picture than I could provide. Here  is her blog if you want to visit.

\"Wee

And just yesterday I drove down to Seekonk (yes, that\’s a real town – this is Massachusetts) to buy an electric spinner – the Electric Eel Wheel. Hard to call it a spinning wheel as it really is just a box. Here is a link to the website, and a picture of the wheel, linked from the website:\"ElectricIt\’s made of laser-cut plywood and is driven by an Atmel ATtiny45 microcontroller, which likely means nothing to you, but to me it means I can hack the software. I know the processor family and the program is written in C, where I claim some expertise. The Electric Eel is open source, meaning that the designer has made the plans, the code, the entire design available to the general public. He only restricts that one cannot make them to sell – he (rightfully so) reserves that for himself.

I\’m now up to six wheels, two looms, and an e-spinner.

 

The Fermented Suint Method

Most of you know that I\’m deeply involved in fiber. I deal primarily in wool, as a knitter, dyer, spinner, and sometime weaver. Most of you know that I am also on a quest to become omniscient, or all-knowing. In order to achieve that goal, I figure I have to know only know everything, but know how to do everything. Toward that end, last year I bought a couple of raw fleeces – either at the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival or the Fiber Festival of New England (both of which are just a hoot to attend), figuring that I could learn how to process raw fleece into dyed yarn.

One of the fleeces I bought was washed in the \”conventional\” way, that is to say, it\’s divided into several mesh laundry bags, then gently placed into the washing machine, prefilled with the hottest water the water heater could produce. I used Dawn dishwashing detergent, and let the fleece soak for about a half hour. Then I used the spin cycle to spin out all of the (really nasty) wash water. I washed it three or four times. I neglected to take notes. (I don\’t even remember what kind of fleece it was – I think Border Leicester). Then I rinsed it three times the same way – very hot water, soak, then spin. NO AGITATION. That would turn it into a big felted mess. But it didn\’t get as clean as I\’d like it to be. I am carding that fleece right now, and it\’s rather a tough slog. There has to be a better way.

Enter the Fermented Suint Method (FSM). Apparently it\’s been used for centuries. It\’s very cheap. It works very well. Oh, did I mention it\’s cheap? But is is disgusting. No, make that DISGUSTING.  I had it on good authority that it might smell a bit. Or a lot. Something akin to a barnyard. In the summer. Having grown up on a farm between two farms, and having raised chickens and even a couple of goats, I forged ahead. And the smell is nowhere as near as bad as chickens.\"fsm\"

When sheep sweat, they produce this substance called suint, which is, by itself, something of a natural soap. This stuff helps the sheep healthy by continuously pushing dirt away from the skin. The dirt migrates out toward the outer tip of the fleece, and the suint keeps it stuck there, where it remains until the sheep is shorn, typically in the spring.

Washing a fleece with FSM is just dead easy. I have a 10-gallon container from the \”big box store\”. It\’s opaque, which helps prevent the growth of algae, which I understand can be problematic. I got a couple of 5-gallon buckets, too, at another \”big box store\”. They are orange, if that gives you a hint. I collected 10 gallons of rainwater in the next storm, and poured the bulk of that into the big container, and submerged a whole fleece into it. That\’s the FSM to the left. Looks nice, right? (Apparently, the odor has killed one of Peg\’s plastic flamingos.)

Then, following the incredibly easy instructions, I waited. Of course I checked it a couple of times. But when I returned from Maine (oops – with two more fleeces) the next Sunday, I checked, and quite amazingly, the fleece was clean. No dirt in the tips. None! That was in stark contrast with the fleece that I\’d washed \”conventionally\” four times.

I then washed the fleece \”conventionally\” but with considerably less detergent, and rinsed once. I set the fleece out to dry on a sweater drying rack (one that I use specifically for fleece – I am not stupid!), and it turned out lovely.\"fleece\" You can see that in the photo to the left.

I immediately followed that fleece with another, a Lincoln fleece from Minnesota (below). After pulling it out four days later, it\’s also very clean. Washed once  and rinsed twice, it is now drying, and another fleece is in the FSM. While the fleece is still wet, you can see that the dirt has come right out of it. I was questioning that two days ago. Now I\’m very happy!\"lincoln\"

I have several other fleeces to process, but now that I have a method that is not too painful, I don\’t mind. I\’m still working on the first fleece – picking and carding, to produce something that I can spin. Subjects for more blogging. Plus I am making a picking machine.

Happy Spinning!

The Wool Picker

I\’m making a wool picker, which is a device used to break up clumps of wool from a sheep\’s fleece into individual fibers, which can then be carded or combed before spinning. You can Google it if you want to know more.

I\’m documenting this for my spinning audience, where this might be of some interest.

I don\’t have any pictures to post at this point, so a progress report and a simple description is about all I have to provide.

I started the picker by cutting the sides, top, and bottom to length. The sides are made out of 1×10\” pine, which is really about 3/4\” x 9 1/4\”. The top and bottom, which will be inside the sides, are 1×8 stock, or about 3/4\” x 7 1/4\”.

I fashioned and attached (glue and countersunk screws) a couple of cleats (1×3\”) at the top inside of the sides, about 3/4\” from the top edge. The top piece is intended to rest on the cleats with the top flush with the top edge of the sides.

I don\’t yet know where to place the bottom of the box. That all depends on how the teeth of the picker end up, so making those is the next step. I failed in my first attempt, so I purchased more lumber for my next try.

I started the toothed inserts with 3\” 20d finish nails. The nails are angled about 45 degrees from the vertical, with five rows angled left, the next five rows angled left, and the last five rows angled left again. I drilled slightly undersized holes for each nail (13 nails per row x 15 rows = 195 nails. Then I started hammering in the nails, row by row. Due to my miscalculation, about two rows in, the board split right down the middle.

The next run at it I\’ll use a 1/8\” drill bit, which just allows the nails to slide through.

Living and dyeing in 3/4 time

I have no idea why Jimmy Buffet popped into my head. Sorry…

 

On March 5, 2016 I took a couple of fiber dyeing courses taught by Kate Bachus of A Hundred Ravens.  I don\’t know anywhere outside of the fiber world where people will divulge their secrets and tell you exactly what they do to achieve the results they get, be it a particular knitting stitch, how a quilt corner should turn out just so, and in Kate\’s case, just that perfect shade of fuschia. She explained the basic principals of dyeing (at least for us – we were using wool that Kate supplied). And the principals are quite simple – you need a protein fiber (wool, alpaca, goat, rabbit, etc), an acid dye (no, no, the dye itself isn\’t an acid, an acid (vinegar works, citric acid works better), and heat. Water is there only as a suspension medium for the acid and dye, to help evenly distribute it over the fiber. (Dyeing stuff like cotton is an entirely different process, which I\’m not interested in learning yet.)

In the first class we each got two ~400 yard skeins of so-called sock-weight superwash merino yarn. Merino is the sheep breed, and they are known for their fine, soft wool. Superwash is a processing technique that makes the yarn less likely to shrink or pill, so the yarn is delightfully soft and about bulletproof. The yarn was in a plastic bag, still wet with a citric acid solution in which they were pre-soaked. I was completely winging it, and mixed two parts of fire-engine red, one part of sunflower yellow, and got this horribly blinding orange, which is not where I wanted to go. I added one part of black, which toned it all down to a nice rose color.  I dyed both skeins the same – dipping one-third into the dye bath for a while, then another third for a while, and then the rest of the skein for a while, all roughly ten-minute steps. I then squeezed the bulk of the dye out of the yarn and stashed it in a plastic bag. Done with Lesson One.

\"yarn2\" \"yarn1\"

In the second class (mostly the same people) Kate and her minions passed out bags with pre-soaked \”blanks\” of sock-weight yarn. The blanks were just knitted rectangles about eight inches wide and long enough (almost a yard) to contain about 400 yards of yarn. The pretext here was to design a gradient color pattern. I chose root colors of approximately turquoise and mauve, so I dipped one end of the blank into a dark turquoise, then about two thirds of it (same end) into a lighter turquoise bath, which added some color to the already-died portion, then I moved to the mauve bucket, and gradually slid the other end into the dye, resulting in a dyed blank that started at dark turquoise, progressed to a lighter turquoise, then into  a light mauve, progressing (in a gradient) to a fairly dark mauve. It\’s going to make a wonderful shawl…

 

Spinning wheels go \’round and \’round

Not being enough of a geek already, I\’m adding to my bag of tricks. I took a class on spinning fiber into yarn a few weeks ago with Ann Corbey at The Fiber Loft in Harvard, MA. I got to try a couple of wheels that were OK, but didn\’t really enthrall me, but I learned a bit about spinning, and I learned a bit about what sort of wheel I might like to own.

This past weekend Peg and I were in Maine anyway (for another hobby-related event – Lobstercon ), so while in the area I took the opportunity to test drive two spinning wheels in two different shops. At Halcyon Yarn in Bath, ME, I tried the Kromski Fantasia, and at Spunky Eclectic in Lisbon, I tried the dual-treadle Fricke.

I ultimately settled on the Fantasia, and a lot of the reason falls to Peg. She said that the look on my face when I sat down at the Fantasia told her I\’d found the right wheel already.

UPS should be delivering the wheel tomorrow afternoon. I\’m kind of excited.

Of course, one does not need just a spinning wheel. There are all manner of accessories to purchase over time. One of the first is a niddy-noddy, a device upon which yarn is wound from the bobbin to both balance the twist and measure the yarn. Some folks dye the yard on the niddy-noddy as well.

Looking around at various vendors, I found that the durn things range in price from about $28 for unfinished wood to $50 or $75! It\’s three sticks, people. Yes, they are often lathe-turned and beautiful, but I don\’t think so. I read the Wikipedia article referenced earlier, which mentioned that \”budget spinners\” have fashioned them from PVC. A stop at Home Depot last night yielded two 10 foot pieces of 3/4\” rigid tubing and four TEEs. A bit of measuring (two 6\” pieces on either end and a 18\” piece for the main bit), and a minute of assembly provided me with a niddy-noddy for a price I haven\’t even calculated yet. I paid $6.20 for the materials. I have enough tubing left for at least three more, TEEs enough for another, and the TEEs were cheap. I estimate that they are going to be about $2 each – not even in quantity. (I wonder if the local yarn shop might have a market for dead-cheap niddy-noddies?)

Stay tuned!

 

Spinning wheels go \’round and \’round

Not being enough of a geek already, I\’m adding to my bag of tricks. I took a class on spinning fiber into yarn a few weeks ago with Ann Corbey at The Fiber Loft in Harvard, MA. I got to try a couple of wheels that were OK, but didn\’t really enthrall me, but I learned a bit about spinning, and I learned a bit about what sort of wheel I might like to own.

This past weekend Peg and I were in Maine anyway (for another hobby-related event – Lobstercon ), so while in the area I took the opportunity to test drive two spinning wheels in two different shops. At Halcyon Yarn in Bath, ME, I tried the Kromski Fantasia, and at Spunky Eclectic in Lisbon, I tried the dual-treadle Fricke.

I ultimately settled on the Fantasia, and a lot of the reason falls to Peg. She said that the look on my face when I sat down at the Fantasia told her I\’d found the right wheel already.

UPS should be delivering the wheel tomorrow afternoon. I\’m kind of excited.

Of course, one does not need just a spinning wheel. There are all manner of accessories to purchase over time. One of the first is a niddy-noddy, a device upon which yarn is wound from the bobbin to both balance the twist and measure the yarn. Some folks dye the yard on the niddy-noddy as well.

Looking around at various vendors, I found that the durn things range in price from about $28 for unfinished wood to $50 or $75! It\’s three sticks, people. Yes, they are often lathe-turned and beautiful, but I don\’t think so. I read the Wikipedia article referenced earlier, which mentioned that \”budget spinners\” have fashioned them from PVC. A stop at Home Depot last night yielded two 10 foot pieces of 3/4\” rigid tubing and four TEEs. A bit of measuring (two 6\” pieces on either end and a 18\” piece for the main bit), and a minute of assembly provided me with a niddy-noddy for a price I haven\’t even calculated yet. I paid $6.20 for the materials. I have enough tubing left for at least three more, TEEs enough for another, and the TEEs were cheap. I estimate that they are going to be about $2 each – not even in quantity. (I wonder if the local yarn shop might have a market for dead-cheap niddy-noddies?)

Stay tuned!