5 posts tagged “carding”
This is the next batch of black alpaca carded with purple merino. More than half of the fibre is carded now, and it's going much quicker with the drum carder than it did with hand carders :-) I've actually spun one batch of this, but I don't think I've taken any photos. It's about 5m/g, and will either stay as singles or end as two-ply, depending on what I decide to do with it. It's probably going to be another woven wrap, but at the moment everything looks like a weaving project to me, since the loom is spread across the library floor in pieces having been varnished at the weekend. I'm resisting the urge to assemble it for as long as possible, because I can't start using it for another week and a bit, so barriers are good ;-)
The grey-pink alpaca for my MiL's Christmas present is finally all spun and plied. The first picture is a closeup of two balls of singles ready for plying, and it's really just another excuse to show off the macro capabilities of my new camera! The second picture is of the finished yarn, about 500m of two-ply. I spent some time the other day swatching from my sample of this yarn, and I didn't come up with anything I liked, so this is starting to look like a weaving project as well. Of course, weaving it also means the finished item (a scarf) will be larger, since weaving uses less yarn than knitting, so this is solidifying into a plan.
I bought a drum carder. I also bought several little bags of pretty fibre in amounts too small to be anything on their own. An appropriate justification for both of these facts is carding different fibres together to design the composition of the yarn as well as its colour and shape.
Left to right: carded and uncarded fibres next to each other; four different uncarded fibres; carded batts; spinning in progress.
This is my lovely new drum carder, which arrived yesterday, and which has already got through hours and hours worth of hand carding in a very short time indeed :-) I've now carded all of the lilac alpaca which is destined to be my MiL's Christmas present, and spun the first lot of it; I'm intending to spin most if not all of the rest of it this evening, and then it will be ready for washing and plying, hoorah. I've also made a start on carding the black alpaca, which will end up carded again, with the purple merino, to make goth-coloured yarn.
I was intending to make this into a wrap for me, and had originally thought of one of the beautiful spiky lace shawls I keep seeing on Ravelry, but in the same delivery from Fibrecrafts as the carder was another package, which I'm not entitled to enjoy for about six weeks: the loom R is giving me for my birthday. I've got two projects planned for this, and one of them is the gothmerino-alpaca - a nice simple rectangle of plain weaving to make the kind of wrap I like best. The other weaving project I'm planning is one I've already talked about: the autumn coloured wrap, with one ply of burgundy merino and one of variegated autumn-leaves colours. For a while I looked around for fibre in the colours I want, and then when I gave up on that, I looked around for undyed fibre and dyes to produce it myself, but then I remembered that Freyalynn (who dyed my Wisteria and Caribbean fibre) also does custom dye jobs, so my autumn leaves fibre has now been commissioned! This will be a birthday present from my parents. I believe in planning ahead in such matters :-)
And Clessidra is coming along nicely. The heel is turned, and I'm into the ankle, and am just about to take measurements and make calculations for the calf increases.
So, in slightly bizarre order, my latest adventures in fibre:
- (top picture) this is my first attempt at carding, using all the stray bits of fibre from my other projects, which I've been collecting in a pretty wooden bowl on a shelf next to my desk. It needs more work still, but I'm intrigued by the possibilities in carding
- (second picture) this is the end result of the purple and mauve I've been spindle-spinning, although it's not this bright in real life (actually, take this comment as applying to all of these pictures. Apparently there was actually light in my library this morning when I took the pics). It's three ply, two of bright purple and one of mauve, 200m, and really soft. I plied it on the wheel, because spindle-plying is the dullest thing ever. Not completely sure what I'm doing with this, but then that's true of so much of my spinning!
- (third picture) bright purple singles left over from the above. Maybe around 130m; not sure. I might leave this as singles, or I might two-ply it with itself, or I might just wait and see what other inspiration strikes
- (fourth picture) Remember what I said above about these pictures being too bright? That's especially true here. This yarn isn't actually glowing. Honest. This is Valentine merino from Violet Green that Dyddgu traded me for the ex-Jaywalker sassy stripes. I still think I got the better part of the deal :-) This is my first real wheel-spun, and technically it's a bit of a mess - the singles are over-spun, and then I underplied it, so it's pretty hopeless. But the colours are gorgeous, and it feels beautifully soft and velvetty knitted up, so I don't care :-) Talking of knitting up, the knitting visible in the pic is my second attempt with this yarn. I started off thinking I'd make something in reversible entrelac, because the way the colours work seemed well suited to entrelac's small blocks, but I don't much like its onesidedness. Alternating squares of stocking and reverse stocking stitches seemed like a great idea, and I intend to try it again sometime with smooth yarn to see if it's inherently flawed, or if it was just let down by my uneven yarn. Anyway, I frogged it, and am now making an attempt on the Dashing fingerless gloves from Knitty. Which I like so far, although I've been neglecting them for other pursuits (such as the Shadow and Ghost socks, and the next picture...)
- (fifth picture) Peacock yarn-in-progress! This is my current project. I'm a bit over halfway through spinning the dark green (Petrol from Texere), and then I'll do the dark blue (Rich Royal, ditto) and the light blue (Cornflower, ditto ditto), and ply the lot together. And then I'll look at it and think about how pretty it is, and fail to decide what to knit with it but I Don't Care :-)
- (sixth picture) The rest of the Texere order that supplied the above. A big (400g) bag each of purple and dark red, and a bunch of small (50g) bags of other colours. When I made the order, I was thinking about doing some blending with the hand cards that came with the wheel, but having discovered that it's actually quite a lot of work, and that I like blending-by-plying, that might not actually happen. Still, should keep me in fibre for a while.
- (seventh picture) This is the sample for the Peacock. It's spindle- rather than wheel-spun, just because it's easier to do tiny quantities that way, and I was sampling for colour rather than for spin.
