Stumbling upon Alpaca

My husband and I had a little time away from work and the kids. We went to Whidbey Island to a B&B that we had been to before. He brought books; I brought my spinning wheel.  I had the Bison to spin, but as I mentioned in a prior post, it wasn't exactly working out.

We went on a walk down by the water at Penn Cove and came across a little alpaca farm. My husband is the talkative one and insisted that we march up the gravel drive way and talk to the folks that live there. The woman who lived there had a little store where she sold her alpaca fiber among other things. Jackpot!

I bought two different kinds of roving, one being this "Ceno with Silk" blend. (My understanding is Ceno is the alpaca's name.) It was a delight to spin.

Frosen Acres Alpacas on Penn Cove Road saved the day.

Spinning Bison

 I had never spun bison before and finally got the chance. I bought 9oz of blended bison and kid mohair from a lady who owns a spinning shop in Tonasket, Washington. She had pick up the fiber from a local bison. She had decided to card it with her neighbor's kid mohair.

Sadly, I couldn't make a nice yarn. From the bottom up: the fiber as I bought it, spun straight from the batt, hand carded and pick, hand carded and pick out as much VM and little lumps of bison as possible.

The best I could do was to pick it really well and blend it with alpaca. This one is alpaca, bison, and kid mohair in equal parts. Still the lumpy bison fluff makes the yarn look scrappy so I'm not going to spin rest.  Lesson learned.

Spinning for Lace

I've been working on the Cold Mountain lace shawl and it has inspired me to spin some lace weight yarn. Above is a little sample. I started with raw locks from a Rambouillet-Polypay fleece that came from Maplewood North. I washed the locks by holding them in hot water with Dawn and then gentle swishing them in clean water. After they dried, I flick carded the individual locks. Then I spun them up into a two-ply yarn.

Since I'm pleased with the sample, I began washing enough locks to make a skein.

Now I'm on my third try for the Cold Mountain pattern. This time it's working out. I'm using a commercial yarn: Cascade Alpaca Lace. It much better than the soy silk that drove me bonkers.

New Color Combintion

Back when I was dyeing a lot of roving, I attempted to do a black/turquoise combination. The black turned out gray, but I still like the effect. This is merino. Here it is spun up into a 2-ply yarn.

A Brown, Yellow, and White Skein

The Thanksgiving roving has been spun up. I doubt if I'd ever use this color combo again. A little too dull for me.

Just Photos Today

Making yarn on this cold cold day

Mon

27° / 14°

Snow showers

There's several inches on snow on my picnic table. That's where I usually lay my skeins when I take a photo, so today I took the photo in the snow. This yarn was spun from a roving that I dyed. It's 50% wool/50% silk.
Now I'm spinning some wool that I prepped a long time ago. It's Corriedale that I cleaned, dyed, and carded into some fluffy batts.

Orange you glad I got rid of the Teal

News flash: teal does not go with orange. When I dyed this roving in the oven the teal dye seeped out of the plastic wrap and leaked into the orange---yuck. After it was dry I pulled the teal parts out.
I have decided to spin the orange Blue Face Leicester into a 3-ply yarn---and then knit it into a sweater of some sort. I have spent more time looking for a pattern on Ravelry than actually spinning this yarn. Speaking of Ravelry, one might think that I have an Orange/Teal fascination.
The knitting part of the Danish Shawl is done and now I have to weave in all of these ends!

what I'm doing on my summer vacation

I'm taking a break from work and enjoying the summer. I took a trip up to Vancouver Island and Vancouver (the city) last week. I figured I'd be blogging more, but I haven't actually sat down to focus on this yet. I've been doing a little bit of everything in regards to crafts. My knitting project is a Danish Shawl. This project seemed like a good one for using up my vast collection of hand spun yarn.
My spinning project is the wine-colored batts that I dyed and carded last summer.
When I went back and looked at my blog to see what the fiber was (I didn't record it), I noticed that it was exactly one year since I made these batts. I started spinning them on July 25th. They are spinning up nicely even though the fiber only had one pass through the drum carder and then it was stored in a plastic bag in the closet for a year.
Of course my weaving class has been keeping me busy. Soon I will have to produce projects for the class and I'm thinking that I'll have to give all my free time to that. For now we are just trying out different patterns for our homework.

More Yarn from the Weekend

This week is passing quickly. Here's another skein from last weekend. This is Merino top that I spaced dyed with lots of bright yellow, some teal green and some lime green.

Weekend Spinning

Last weekend I got some spinning done. Mostly I was spinning roving that I had dyed a while back. Sunday was sunny and gorgeous so I took this photo outside in the bright light.

One Skein of Blue Merino

This Merino top was spaced dyed with blue acid dye.
The singles took many hours over the last few weeks to spin.
I spent a little over an hour plying this morning.
This photo was taken outside on the picnic table.
Compared to the fat skein I made yesterday, the blue one took at least four times as long to make.

Couldn't Wait

I just had to spin the batts that I carded yesterday. I couldn't wait. The three batts made one large skein. My new big bobbin can hold more that 3 batts at one time! I've never actually filled it yet. This was my attempt to make a thicker yarn.

The Latest Yarns

Here's the first skeins from the dyeing day last week.
This pinkish orange yarn was suppose to be one big skein on my new large bobbin, but it kept breaking and turned in to four smaller skeins.
This yellow skein is from some dyeing and carding I did around Christmas time---that seems like a long time ago! I had blended Yellow Tarhgee with silk---I'm not too fond of it---I didn't blend it very well and there's unintentional lumps of white silk.

The common denominator for all of the yarns pictured here: #601 Yellow Sun Jacquard Dye---can you see it in the top greenish/blue skein?

Let the Spinning Begin

My family has gone to Seattle and I'm here in Montana with a heap of fiber to spin. I have already spun half the pinkish purple batts and have begun to spin some of the solar dyed roving. I'll be posting photos as the month goes on. My car is going to be so full when i head out to Seattle at the end of the month. I think I should spin up all the fiber so it will take up less room. We'll see how far I get.

Truely Worsted

Here's my first all hand made worsted yarn. It's natural colored shetland spun in a 2-ply. As mentioned before, I used my hand combs for the prep.

Roving vs. Batts

During the past three years that I have been spinning, I have only spun one skein of yarn from processed roving. Yesterday I tried again and spun some 60% Merino/40% Bamboo from Sweetgrass Wool. I chose this roving because of the color combination and I thought it would be fun to try bamboo. I prefer spinning from batts or strips off of hand carded batts. My spun roving was very uneven and it broke a million times while plying. I'm sure it's something that I would get better at with time, but at this point I prefer spinning from batts.

Merry Christmas

It's nice that I finally have time to sit down and update my blog. I try to take the photos with daylight, but daylight has been scarce these days. At night, when I finally have time to get on the computer, it's too late to photograph my projects. Today I got an early start.

There were many presents exchanged in my household and everyone is thrilled with their gifts. I want to show off my fiber-related presents...

My husband gave me these little stitch markers. They are cute little wool and clay sheep! He got them on etsy from Wee Ones.

OMG! My husband, the best husband in the whole wide world, gave me these wool combs!!!

Here are my current projects:

Now that I've done sweater from raw wool to the end, big projects don't seem that intimidating. So with the next spinning project I decided to do a "sweater's worth" of yarn. I blended the charcoal colored Coopworth with some black merino top. I put all the batts on the couch so you can see what I think a "sweater's worth" is. OK, so it might be a small sweater.

Speaking of small sweaters, I started knitting the Something Red sweater by Wendy Bernard from Knit and Tonic. I hope I have enough yarn. It's a short sleeve cardigan so my 8 hanks of cranberry colored Coopworth should do.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Do you have to be so negative?

The Cranberry Colored Coopworth is done being spun. It was a joy to spin after the hideous amount of Romney-Cotswold.

Here's the forcast for my area:
Helena , MT
Tonight-- / -3
Friday-2 / -16
Saturday-6 / -18
Sunday-5 / -5

It looks like we won't even hit 0 for a while.

Oh Snap!

We are having a serious cold snap here in Central Montana. It's -13 F right now and our high today was -8 F. So yesterday I bought a bunch of groceries and today we stayed inside almost all day. I carded all of the Cranberry Coopworth and began to spin it.