Way down yonder, in the land of cotton...

COTTON UPDATE

I would like to report that the cotton jag has not lifted, even though it was interrupted for a few days with the retreat.  I'm finally feeling like I'm getting the hang of the spinning of the cotton although I'm still having trouble with the regularity of that spinning, i.e. the unevenness of it all.

However, I got impatient last night.  I had one prety full bobbin (ok, it was half full but with another half full bobbin, it would have been a full bobbin when it was plied) and had started on the second one.  I kept thinking, "I wonder what this is going to look like.  I wonder if this is going to work. Hummmmm...." until I could stand it no more.  I whipped off the partially filled bobbin and whipped on a new bobbin for plying (I really did whip them off and on - I was curious) and got to gettin'.

Here's what I got.  About 248 yards of cotton.  Real. Cotton.  I mean, can you believe it?  There were a couple of places where it came apart so I had to knot it but for my first real go at a skein of spun cotton, I don't think that's too bad.  It came out fairly fine but you can see that it's not very even but it'll do until something better comes along!

I'm now trying to plot what sort of summer top I'm going to make.  This should get me some distance down the line in making something before the end of the summer.

I should mention that it's only 1 1/4 ounces or 36 grams.  Raw cotton is much, much lighter than the commercially spun yarn one finds.  I suspect that's to do with making something that will take a lot of wear (commercial) as opposed to what I've done.  But it's like air.  Most unexpected.

Once I got the hank spun and onto the niddy noddy, I tied 4 ties around it to prepare it for the boiling.  With this kind of cotton, boiling helps set the twist and helps clean off the naturally forming substances that you don't want in your finished yarn.  Some gunk came off but not a whole heck of a lot and the color did deepen a little but not as much as I'd expected.  Not to worry.  I've got me 248 yards of my very own handspun cotton yarn!

Gone Loopy

One of the things I said I was going to start trying after the Retreat was over, is art yarns or specialty yarns.  Well, here's my first try - a boucle yarn.

OK, I didn't say it was great boucle yarn but it's boucle, all the same. 

I began by following instructions in an articly by Jacey Boggs in the Summer 2010 issue of Spin Off.  The basic recipe she quotes out of Judith MacMc's book, The Intentional Spinner, is that you need 1 yarn S spun, 1 yarn Z spun, 1 thick ply, 1 thin ply, one high twist ply and one low twist.  I followed her sample by using some mohair for a high twist, thin Z spun single (photo insert on the right).  Then I used some merino to make a low twist, slightly thicker S spun single (photo insert on the left).  The idea is that you make the first ply step by spinning in the direction of the merino (in this case).  By plying in the direction of the low spun single, you add twist to that ply while removing it from the high twist single. 

You're supposed to make loops with the high twist singles as you ply them together.  I found that really difficult but she says that's normal.  My loops were, for the most part, more like fun fur than anything else!  And anyone who knows me, knows how much I love fun fur (said with every ounce of irony at my disposal). 

Once you have this first ply accomplished, my previously low twist merino singles became a high twist ply and I also found it difficult to move fast enough to keep this from happening.  The next step is to use a "binder" to cable with skein.  Jacey suggests using seaming thread because of its high tensile strength.  I don't know what that is so for the first sample, I just used regular sewing thread.  You can see the sample on the left side of this photo.

It was okay but I decided to go back to the Intentional Spinner and see what Judith says.  Now she suggested you could cable the yarn back on itself.  So I tried that.  First, I took my bobbin of merino and ran it back through the wheel, removing as much twist as I could while still holding it together.  The I plied the merino and mohair together.  I found that if I kind of rubbed my fingers together as the mohair got to the merino, it helped me form the characteristic boucle loops a little better.  Once I finished all the mohair that I'd spun, I wound off half the yarn onto a second bobbing and started the cabling process.  You can see this skeinlette on the right side of the photo above.

Oddly enough, the cabling step evened out the twist and both skeinlettes were perfectly balanced.  Much to my surprise.

Too Much Fun

I've finally got some pics from the weekend.  We had a table full of patterns and resource material for participants to dig through and we used these a lot through the weekend.

The facility turned out to be more than perfect and the staff at the RiverBank Lodge were fabulous. I can't say enough good things about them.  We had little gift bags for everyone that become project bags.  There was a workbook (with companion cd full of period pattern books), projects, and other fun bits and pieces.

We had four absolutely terrific ladies and they were such a great mixture of personalities but all of them came game for anything and ready to try their hand at whatever we threw at them.  That attitude always makes it so much fun to teach. 

Jane and I found the worst written pattern that could ever have been produced and used it for our first session.  It was a great way to learn the common terms of the time and laugh.  Plus it's a really cute pattern!  I'll show you one day.

I could go on and on and on but I'll stop here and let you enjoy some pictures of the area around the RiverBank Lodge....

Heritage Knitting in Progress

Sorry I don't have any photos yet.  I have the camera and I have the laptop but I forgot to bring the little cable that connects the two.  Details, details....

We're getting ready for our last sessions in our Heritage Knitting Retreat and it's been more fun than I could have imagined.  We have had 4 wonderful ladies participating and it's been a hoot.  We've learned how to read the world's worst written pattern and actually gotten a cute project out of it, we've learned a new knitting language, we've laughed, we've learned new stitch patterns, we've laughed, we've eaten, we've had fun with digging through the 19th century pattern books, we've learned about modern yarn equivalents to yarn selections like andalusian wool and berlin fleecy, we've eaten, we've laughed.  A good time was had by all, in other words.

Wish you could have been here.  We're going to rework the workbook a little bit and it will be available a little later if you're interested.  The hard copy workbook with companion cd is going to be $15 and $10 for the cd only.  The cd contains an electronic version of the workbook and a collection of digital copies of 19th century pattern books.  Shipping will be added to either type.

It's been 2 years worth of research and planning for Jane and myself and it feels wonderful to have this tangible outcome here at the end with both the workbook and the time we've had together this weekend.  It feels maaavalous, Darling!

Cotton Country

Boy, it's hard to believe it's almost here.  The Heritage Knitting Retreat.  Jane and I have been working for 2 years for this weekend and we're more than excited.  If you can still join us, please let me know.  If you're not able to join us, we've developed a workbook and companion cd that will be available for purchase. 

In the midst of everything else, I've been bitten by the cotton bug.  It's causing a little bit of distraction.  I think we're going to get there but it's definitely a distraction.

I started with this dyed cotton from the Woolery:

As you can see, I haven't gotten much further with this cotton, mostly because I got drawn into this cotton:

This is organic cotton which is naturally colored.  It actually grows this color, commonly called coyote.  The interesting thing about this cotton is that, once it's spun up and boiled (to get the natural goo off), it will be a darker color.  It's doesn't go quite brown but it's definitely towards that color.

This is this almost 1 ounce spun on my Fricke using the fastest whorl using my version of a long draw.

And this will be my next project, tri-colored cotton, all naturally colored.  But it will have to wait until after the weekend!

Edited because I completely forgot to show you this.  My mother, who can grow anything on God's green earth, accepted the challenge to try to grow some cotton plants from seed I spun from.  Here's her little babies:

Almost and nearly

I finished the first part of the BFL lace weight.  I was able to get almost 900 yards from almost 4 ounces.  This is being spun on my Fricke using the 8.7:1 ratio whorl.  This is project that I'm doing half on the wheel and half on the drop spindle.  I think they're going to be pretty indistiguishable but we'll have to wait and see.  If anything, I think the drop spindle spun will be better because I have to make sure there is absolutely enough twist to avoid dropping the drop spindle. 

I have to say, this drop spindle project has been the best public relations tool ever.  I think I've convinced about 5 people to take up spinning by working on this project in public.  It's also opened up some wonderful conversations with non-fiber people.  Fun.

If you extrapolate it out, this skein works out to about 3,600 yards to the pound or about 26 wraps per inch.  That's a little more than 2 miles worth of yarn.  To get some yarny perspective, Jaeggerspun Zephyr is 5040 yards to the pound; Baby Ull is 1,645; Silky Wool is 1,790 and Cascade 220 is 1,005.  It's about what I was aiming for in my attempt to spin a true lace weight.  If all goes well, when I'm done I should have about 1,800 yards which should give me plenty for a nice large shawl, even a Shetland-type shawl if I want to do that.

Not for lack of trying

I got some pictures taken finally yesterday and tried to get them posted but there was some problem with Blogger. 

While I was working on some stuff yesterday, I was watching some old movies.  One of them was a really weird movie called, "The Villain Still Pursued Her."  Came out in 1940 with people like Alan Mowbray, Buster Keaton, and Margaret Hamilton (the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz movie).  If you click on the link above, you'll see a plot description but the better description is at the bottom of the page with the User Review.  This is a satire on the melodramatic dramas out there and is so bad that it's hysterical - by the way, it's bad on purpose.  Basically, every moment that could be overacted is overacted and every contrivance is used, all the way from the beginning of the movie which finds a newly widowed mother and her beautiful daughter discussing how their husband/father had left them with little money and the mortgage is coming due.  The slimey lawyer tries to convince them that the land owner is going to kick them out.  In reality, he is trying to get the beautiful daughter to marry him.  Fast forward to the daughter finding out that the handsome young land owner is kind and marries him.  On the wedding day, the young man declares that he never drinks and the new young wife says, that's great because no lips that have touched the demon liquor will ever touch my lips.  The lawyer realizes this is his in and tricks the young man into taking a drink, which turns him into a raging alcoholic.  And it continues from there.   Definitely worth a viewing if you're up for a laugh.

In getting ready for the Heritage Knitting Retreat, I decided I should probably get my silk beaded purse finished.  This is one of those projects that started out just to try out how the Gudebrod silk would work in a 19th century reproduction purse that would have originally used silk thread.  I learned a lot experimenting with the materials for this project.  Things like sizing for silk thread.  A is small, FFF is large (FFF is like smaller fingering weight).  "A" is thin, like thread thin, really thin.

I love the feel of the silk with the beads and would highly recommend you trying it if you have any desire to knit a beaded purse.  The thread is softer than mercerized cotton and accommodates the beads much more easily, although it will go a little hinky if it snags on a bead.  It only happend to me once and I used almost an entire tube of 11/0 beads.  It wasn't too bad, just not something that happens with the mercerized cotton. 

I've been working for quite a while on spinning a truely lace-weight yarn out of some Blue-faced Leicester.  It was my first project on my Fricke wheel and it's been a whole lot of spinning.  A.Whole.Lot.of.Spinning.  Now part of this roving has been spun on my Ashford drop spindle (which I've currently lost sight of - I know it's here somewhere) but the majority of it has been worked on the wheel.  I have no idea what the yardage is going to be but I suspect it's going to be in the neighborhood of about 1,200 yards.  1,200 yards is actually 2,400 yards plus plying so it's really 3,600 yards of spinning.  Like I said, a bunch of spinning. 

It's also been quite the learning experience.  Even though BFL is a longer stapled wool, when you're spinning this finely, it takes a whole lot more twist in the singles than you realize.  I've hit patches where I obviously didn't have enough twist in the singles.  It would be interesting to know what happened during those periods of spinning to make me not be paying enough attention. 

I haven't posted anything yet about the cotton roving I bought from the Woolery booth in Lexington.  The color is called Terra Cotta.  It's dyed, not one of the natural colors, but I'm thinking I may ply it with the natural coyote color.  The natural colors darken when you finish them and I think it might look nice with this.  I've been spinning this on the fastest whorl of my Kromski Minstrel using my own modified version of the long draw.  I find this modified version to be much easier to control than a proper long draw.  I'm sure it's just because I haven't practiced enough with it but this seems to work fine for what I'm doing.  Here's the start of the bobbin.  I'm not spinning it super, super fine but it should work out to a heavier lace weight sort of yarn.  I'm wondering if I can actually get enough spun for a summer top before it gets cold again.  That's my challenge, should I choose to accept it.  And will I accept it?  I'll let you know along about September time : ).