MSW sock yarn #3

This yarn is the same in structure to #2, but the goal was to try to get something a little softer, though (hopefully) still with good durability. So, we switched out the Border Leicester for some angora (bunny fluff!).

Sock yarn #3

‘Z’ twist Angora bunny, unwashed and spun from lock
’Z’ twist Perendale, unwashed and spun from lock, spun finer than for #1 and #2
’Z’ twist Polwarth, unwashed and spun from lock

These three singles were plied with a ‘S’ twist, and it ended up almost perfectly balanced (no tendency to twist itself up). The finished skein weighed 198.8 grams before washing, and 189.6 g after, so there was 5% loss in washing.

The angora single:

At one point my sister had pet angora bunnies, and while I don’t think any of this angora came from her bunnies, we did get it at that time, so I feel entirely justified in sharing cute bunny pictures.

The fiber was a bit matted and felted, and looked like it had been shoved into the bag directly after being plucked from the bunny. I decided to go ahead and spin it as it, without any preparation, so it wasn’t my most even of singles. It wasn’t too uneven, but for next time I will be carding it first.

We plied the yarn with an ‘S’ twist, and it came out balanced. Mommy, the official plier for this project so far, says that this yarn is finer than the other two-we’ll see how much so when I start knitting! It certainly is much softer, though I’m not sure that it is quite ‘next-to-face’ soft. The finished yarn weighed 198.8 grams before washing, and 189.6 grams after, so there was 5% loss in washing. It makes sense that the loss is half of what it was for #1 and #2, since for this yarn 2/3rds of the fibers didn’t have dirt and lanolin in them, whereas for #1 and #2, two of the three singles were fresh from the sheep.

MSW sock yarn #2

The second yarn is much like the first, but the key difference is that #1 had the Border Leicester spun with a ‘S’ twist, while #2 has all the singles spun with a ‘Z’ twist.

Sock yarn #2

‘Z’ twist Border Leicester, unwashed and spun from lock
’Z’ twist Perendale, unwashed and spun from lock
’Z’ twist Polwarth, washed pre-prepared commercial roving

These three singles were plied with a ‘S’ twist, and it ended up almost perfectly balanced (no tendency to twist itself up). The finished skein weighed 218.4 grams before washing, and 191.9 g after, so there was 12% loss in washing.

The singles all looked the same as for #1, so instead of pictures of the singles, here are pics of my sheep inspecting the fleece. Grumpy sheep now has a monocle!

Oh, and here’s some pics of the yarn, both before washing (on the scale) and after…

And here is a picture of a real live sheep we saw at the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival! Grumpy sheep tells me that he wants his top hat to be taller…

MSW sock yarn #1

Mum and I got three fleeces and some prepared roving at the sheep and wool festival, and we’re turning it into sock yarn! The plan is to do several slightly different yarns, using the three fleeces and some roving we bought from MSW, as well as some angora I had in stock. Each of the yarns is a three ply, and the goal is to figure out how to make a sock yarn that will hold up well to wear and not be too harsh. We’re using a lot of longwools, which are very durable but can also be scratchy. The first yarn used two fleeces and the roving, with a mix of twist directions.

Sock yarn #1

‘S’ twist Border Leicester, unwashed and spun from lock
’Z’ twist Perendale, unwashed and spun from lock
’Z’ twist Polwarth, washed pre-prepared commercial roving

These three singles were plied with a ‘S’ twist, increasing the amount of twist on the Border Leicester and decreasing it on the other two. The yarn was plied until it wouldn’t split easily when knitting, so it ended up unbalanced with a tendency to twist up on itself.

The singles

The first fleece is a Perendale. It’s a lovely dark, variegated colored fleece, not particularly fine. The staple length is around 6 inches, it doesn’t have too much crimp, and it is super clean, even though the sheep wasn’t coated. One of the nice things about longwool sheep is that they tend to be relatively free of vegetable matter and dirt-it falls right out. The only prep I did before spinning this was to flick the tips of the locks open, and I spun this straight from the locks. The breeder did an excellent job of including information about the breed, which was one I hadn’t heard of before. It’s a cross between Cheviot and Romney-a dual purpose meat/fleece breed, and comes in white as well as pretty colors like this.

The second fleece we got was a border leicester fleece, and my mum is spinning this one. Border Leicester is another longwool, and the fleece is beautiful. The staple length is just a bit shorter than the Perendale fleece, so around 5.5 inches. Mommy wanted to play around with making a different, more bouncy yarn, so she spun this single with a Z twist, while the other singles were spun with a S twist. She also spun this from the lock.

The last ply of this sock yarn is from Polwarth pre-prepared roving. The MSW festival had breed information and sample yarns and knitted swatches from various breeds, and the Polwarth stuck us as particularly soft. It typically has a staple length of 3-7 inches, with a fiber diameter of 21-26 microns. I’ve spun prepared polwarth/silk dyed roving, however I hadn’t spun pure Polwarth before. We wanted something soft since the longwools can be a bit harsh when spun finely, so I decided to use this Polwarth roving.

We then plied the two ‘S’ twist and the one ‘Z’ twist single together. After plying it, we washed it. The skein weighed 261.5 grams before washing, and 232.1 g after, so it lost 29.4 grams (11 %) of dirt and lanolin in the washing process. It isn’t a balanced yarn in the slightest, but I’m really excited to see how it knits up into socks!

More fox yarn!

My mum had given me 2 kg of the arctic fox/merino blend, and I had planned to spin it all (even though I am allergic to it). I spun at least 0.5 kg of it before my mum decided to save me from it and take it back. We plied some of it with the silk and bamboo blend, but here is the stuff that we only plied against itself. This is a three ply yarn, a thinner worsted weight. While I did the spinning I got mum to ply! I supervised though.

Mommy used the 100% merino/fox blend to cast off the shawl that was otherwise knit from the merino/fox/silk/bamboo yarn. It turned out really well! She had to use the 100% merino/fox to bind off because we were playing yarn chicken, and were just shy of having enough of the other one to cast off with…

Mommy was worried that the pictures show the ends not sewn in on the shawl, so ignore them everyone!

yarn: merino, silk, blue fox, and bamboo

I’ve got four different pairs of socks on the needles right now, so I should have all sorts of done socks soon, but until then here is some yarn I just finished plying. It’s being turned into a shawl-I started knitting the shawl, but as it turns out I’m allergic to the yarn, so my mom is finishing it up for me. What a nice mommy.

The yarn is four plies of a blue fox/merino blend, with one ply of a silk/bamboo yarn. It’s a worsted weight yarn, and it’s knitting up quite nicely. It will be a really warm shawl when done!

and here’s some pictures of the shawl in progress

The shawl has some shoulder shaping, and a line of increases down the back. It’s a fairly simple lace pattern, but I like how it looks. I’m really sorry that I’m allergic to it!

White wool blanket

I made this blanket as a gift for some friends. They saved some fur from their dog, and I then spun it into a yarn, and used that yarn as an interest yarn in a blanket.

The dog hair was fairly short, and not super soft. I decided that it would do well as an occasional yarn in a larger project, and that a wool lap blanket would be nice. That way I could use a softer wool for the majority of the blanket, but the dog hair could still be part of it.

In spinning the yarn I had several considerations. Mainly I wanted to make sure that my yarn didn’t shed. I also wanted to use some angora bunny fur to help with the softness. What I ended up doing was to spin two medium/fine singles of dog and a single of angora, both with a Z twist. I also spun a medium/thick (all on my scale of such things, and keep in mind that I typically spin for lace projects) S twist single of shetland wool. Each of the Z twist singles were overplied against a thread (S twist), and then those three single+thread combinations were plied (Z twist) along with the wool. The plan is that the finer single and thread will help to bind the dog and angora into the yarn, so that the yarn doesn’t shed, while the wool helped to provide some bulk and elasticity. I’m really pleased with how the yarn turned out, and I really like how it looks. I’m planning on doing this again, only with two strands of bunny (and no dog) for interest yarns in other projects. This time I used a light blue thread to ply the bunny against, and next time I think I’ll mix that aspect up with more/brighter colors. If you look carefully you can see the blue occasionally in the pictures of the yarn below.

The yarn turned out to be a heavy worsted weight.

After spinning the yarn, I then travelled home to use my mother’s 8 shaft floor loom. I wanted a good sized blanket, and I’d never done double weave before, so I decided that this was a good excuse to learn a new technique. Using my mom’s 8 shaft (instead of my own 4 shaft) allowed me to still do a twill (plus I don’t own a reed with a low enough number of dents per inch). I filled out the blanket with some Leicester Longwool from Seven Sister’s farm, a big spool of wool my mom picked up in Ireland while we were on a family trip (it was super cheap and pretty looking, though I’m glad I didn’t use it as the warp all by itself as it also was not very strong, as it turns out), along with a wool cotton blend from the Green Mountain Spinnery (the grey you see is their yarn, and there is also some white of theirs in the blanket as well).

Double weave, the way I did it, means that for a weaving width of 10 inches the final blanket ends up being 20 inches, i.e. I wove two layers at once. I chose to do a twill because twills drape better than tabby. At each dog and grey yarn I changed the direction of the twill in the warp, so that I could weave zig-zags instead of diagonals. If I’d been really ambitious I would have woven diamonds, but I decided that a double weave twill was complicated enough, particularly since I was working under some time pressure in that I wanted to get the blanket woven in a single visit to the folks.

The pattern ended up being a dog interest yarn, then 6 strands of alternating longwool and unknown irish wool, followed by a strand of the cotton/wool blend, then five strands of alternating longwool and irish wool, followed by two strands (treated as one) of grey cotton/wool blend. Mirror that and repeat for around 20 repeats, and that was the warp. Ideally the weft followed that pattern as well, but I did have some trouble at times keeping all those yarns straight for the weft.

The finished blanket is around 2 yards by 2 yards, and has lovely twisted fringe (not pictured here, as these pictures were all from before we got in the car to drive to the airport to go back home, and the fringe was twisted on the drive). I am very pleased with how it turned out. The fold was not as obvious as it could have been, and I think with a washing it will start to disappear. I don’t think my mistakes or lack of consistency in beating are at all obvious, and it is a nice weight lap blanket, big enough for two people. I also got it woven (winding the warp to taking it off the loom) in less than one week!