It's the Little Things

This has been a very busy week, for me, the kids and Mike. Tuesday was Seth's end-of-season volleyball party that he volunteered me to bring cupcakes to. Wednesday is his final game, Thursday is a Girl Scout meeting that I'm set to bring snack to, and Friday is Hannah's Halloween class party and Kitty's Birthday party. It's not a ridiculous schedule, but it just seems like a lot of baking this week.

And to top it all off, I'm trying to get my Phat Fiber samples out the door. The batts are made and the samples assembled; all I have to do is tie them up and box them. But I just can't find an hour to do that. Well, actually I should be doing that right now! So this will be a quick post and I'm off to tie and curl ribbon.

The nice little things that have made the week more manageable are: Kitty is walking (not so little!!!), and I got the nicest message from a customer about some hand-spun yarn she bought. Her name is Autumn Summerfield, which I think is one of the best names ever, and she has a beautiful blog dedicated to her passions as an artist (she does EVERYTHING!). She blogged about some hats she made for an upcoming art show, and she used my yarn! I'm so honored.

Here's the hat:

Follow the link to her blog!The top is my handspun, the ear flaps are three strands of commercial yarn held together. Just lovely! Thank you so much Autumn for letting me know about this.

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Pulling Roving and Planning Stripes from Striped Batts

Happy Fiber Arts Friday and Crafty Friday everyone! If you're viewing this as a link from one of my groups, the photos are missing. Please click here to see the post with photos; it'll take you to my main journal page. Below is my latest tutorial, this one on pulling last week's striped batts. I'm behind on everything as usual, so I don't have the second ball of yarn spun up and no, the vest isn't finished.

But I'm publishing this here and permanently in my tutorial section, so when I have the second ball of yarn finished, it'll be added over there. For those of you involved in Fiber Arts Friday or Crafty Friday, and you find pulling wool batts boring, check out Wednesday's post about my adventures with West Texas cotton!

Have a great week!

Most of us that spin from batts know that there are quite a few ways to handle your batt for spinning. This particular tutorial will deal with pulling side strips, specifically to create stripes in your finished yarn from a striped batt. It's also a great method to use if you have a well-blended batt--you just won't get stripes!

Step 1:

Plan.

Uhg. I know, planning isn't fun. Touching, pulling and spinning fiber are fun. But planning is necessary for a great finished product. If you know what you're going to be spinning the yarn for, all the better! I'm planning to use my yarn for edging at the neck and arms on a vest for my daughter that is knit in the round (all important information). The neck opening is a larger circumference than the arms, and as many knitters have experienced, if you use yarn with the same stripe length for both, the neck will have little bitty rings and the arms will have thick rings (think Noro!).

Now, I know there could be math involved here, but I plan, I don't obsess. The arms are roughly 1/2 the circumference of the neck, so we're sticking with that ratio!

I have two identical batts with a striping pattern (for a tutorial on creating striped batts, click here). They will be A and B (creative, I know). Batt A will be for the neck and Batt B will be for the arm holes.

Step 2:

Pull into mini-batts for roving prep.

Batt A: Split the batt in two horizontally. Put your hands in the middle of the batt, then separate them until you can pull and feel movement. Go ahead and rip it in two! These will be Ball A1 and Ball A2 for you to make singles A1 and A2 which will be plied together for yarn A. Most of the pictures here are of these two mini batts.

Batt B: Split the batt in two horizontally, just as you did for Batt A. THEN, split each of these again. You will have four mini-batts. They will come together into two balls: Ball B 1&2 and Ball B 3&4. You will spin singles B 1 then 2 on the same bobbin, and singles B 3 then 4 on the same bobbin. By splitting each singles into two, you are creating shorter striping areas, and a repeat of the stripes for each roving ball and the final yarn.

Review: Final yarn A's stripes will not repeat and will go purple, blue, red, white from one end to the other (perfect for the neck opening). Final yarn B's stripes will be shorter and repeat once. They will be purple, blue, red, white, purple, blue, red, white from one end to the other (perfect for the 2 smaller arm holes)

If you don't know what you'll be using the yarn for, I recommend following the splitting process for Batt B or even further separating the batts horizontally, depending on how fine you plan to spin. Just make sure you split and even number so that you have singles that match up for a 2-ply.

Step 3:

Pull off a strip of the batt from one side.

Batt A strip

Step 4:

Continue pulling strips across the batt until you have even lenths of color. I do this on a table with no children, cats or dogs around so that nothing gets messed up! If you don't like how the colors lay next to each other, now's your chance to move things around. And you can choose whether you want your colors to be definted, or slightly blended by how you choose where to separate them. I like the section between colos to blend a little and you can see that easily in the purple/blue strip and the red/white strip.

Batt B pulled into strips (notice the shorter length)

Step 5:

Start with your first strip (mine is purple) and begin gently lengthening it just as you do when you pre-draft. When you get to the end, split the last blub (a technical term) of fiber instead of pulling it. Open up the beginning of the next strip in the same way.

End of strip 1 and beginning of strip 2

Step 6:

Lay these into each other, grasp as one, and stretch gently to create a join.

Step 7:

Continue across your strips, pulling and joining as you get to the next length of batt. For Batt B, work across you colors in Batt B1 then join your last color (for example, mine is white) with your first color (purple) from B2. Continue until you get to the end of B2.

Roving all ready to go (notice the color play between the stripes!)

Step 8:

Gently roll the roving into a ball. Here is Batt B completely in balls, and Batt A needs to have the second batt pulled. If you look closely, Batt A is on the left and you can see how thick the white area is. Batt B is on the right (and in back) and the white is thinner because only half the white was used at the beginning. The other half of the white is in the ball.

Step 9

Spin it up.

You'll have four balls of roving, two with no color repeats, two with the colors repeating once. Make sure you ply the correct singles together!! Control your plying so that the colors match up as you go.

Here's my final Batt A all spun up with long sections of color.

And here it is stretched out so that you can see how the colors only repeat once.

And here's what it will look like with the vest it's intended for!

Final Tip:

Pull all your roving at once before you begin spinning. This will keep the thickness of your roving more even for spinning later, AND will help with organizing which rovings go together for plying. I even put matching rovings into zip lock bags together with labels simply because I'm known for beginning a project, and when I get back to it in a year having no idea what I'm looking at. I always assume I'm not going to finish the project in a timely manner and make notes to myself all over the place!

Happy Spinning!

Amanda



Walkin' in High Cotton

I'm an Air Force kid, my dad was a fighter pilot, and so I was raised all over this great big, beautiful country (and for a while in Japan), but home to me will always be Tahoka, Texas.

Tahoka is a very small town south of Lubbock in the plains of Texas's panhandle, and where both my parents were raised. Needless to say, I'm related to most of the town! Every summer, and most Christmas's were spent with my extended family there, and to this day, I drag my Yankee husband and four Yankee kids with me to Tahoka every Fourth of July (there's nothing like a Fourth in Texas!).

And what do we all talk about? Cotton. Both my grandfathers, all my uncles, a cousin, and most family friends have been, or are, cotton farmers. Tahoka is surrounded by cotton fields, and it is the sustaining resourse for life on the plains. Everything revolves around cotton.

My Grandfather, his brothers and their wives and kids on tractors--farming cotton.

Last year, in the midst of all this cotton talk, my uncle Gary turned to me and said, "Why, you could spin us up some of that cotton." Let me take a minute to address the type of cotton grown in the heat of Texas. It is not long-staple Egytian cotton that glides through your fingers at the wheel. Nope. It's short-staple, denim or T-shirt cotton. As all you spinners out there can understand, I froze. Ummm . . .  I could physically spin it, with a lot of patience and determination, but what in the world would the finished yarn look like and how would I use it?! I had images of finished yarn simple drifting apart once it hit water!

Gary, hilarious and determined man that he is, was set on my daddy buying me a bale of cotton for spinning.

And here it is:

That is 30 pounds of compressed West Texas cotton from my uncle's co-op. Luckily, my dad now works for FedEx and got it to us for a reasonable price! 30 pounds! AND, luckily, my mom was with Dad for the purchasing, and got me a little tourist version so that I don't actually have to open the big bale (could you imagine 30 pounds of cotton popping out of those metal bands?!). It's currently being used as a footstool/cat bed. And a good one at that.

I opened the small, 1 pounder, washed a bit up (when wet, cotton closely resembles a spit wad), and sprinkled it onto a batt. There is no way to card it by itself for a resonable puni unless I get out my hand cards (I'm soooo not getting out my handcards!).

And, besides, I'm loving this:

This is Bluefaced Leicester dyed in shades of denim and Texas sky. The white, webb-y stuff on top is the cotton.

I knew I didn't have time for spinning this, but wasn't really ready to put it up in the shop (Frankly, I wasn't sure at all how the cotton would react once spun! And this was just one of those batts that was hard to let go of.)

What to do? What to do? Fate would have it that my best friend, and fantastic spinner, Petra, fell in love with it!!! So it was gifted over to Petra as long as she promised to spin it up and let me take pictures of the finished yarn.

Ta-Da:

Isn't she a fabulous spinner?! Didn't the yarn turn out awesome?! I love the texture of the cotton, and Petra assured me that she really enjoyed spinning it up. She's encouraged me to make more for the shop, so that's on the to-do list, right after I get November's Phat Fiber samples ready! And battle more laundry.

I'd love to hear what you think about this little adventure!

Art Batt Spinning

Update: These yarns are now up and for sale at Inspiration Fibers on Esty.

I had a lovely time this weekend spinning up some of my art batts, and was so excited about the end results, I thought I needed to share!

Art Yarn #1 will be called "Leaves" when it goes up in the shop later today.

It was made from a batt that I had for sale, called "Buffy" and another smooth, BFL batt in the shop called "Cozy Teal." I spun Buffy thick/thin and then plied it with the smooth Cozy Teal.

BuffyCozy TealThey came together well, didn't they?

This next batt I made specifically for spinning, and was never available on the shop. But it was also plied with Cozy Teal.

It will be called "The Life Aquatic" in the shop later today!

Hope everyone enjoys the gratuitous pics!!

New Tutorial--Carding Striped Batts with My "Layers" Method

Last week I promised a new tutorial, and here it is!

Carding Striped Batts

I was going to make one big tutorial about making the yarn I'm using for Hannah's vest, but as I was writing, I realized it really needed to be two different tutorials. One on making the batt and one on pulling the roving. So next week, it's all about pulling striped roving and spinning it up (a little trick here, too!). AND, you'll get to see the final yarn. I just may have the vest finished, but don't hold your breath!

I'm struggling to get my laundry caught up after a week and a half of no washer or dryer (tough with a family of 6!), and getting the whole house unpacked and set up. Busy, busy! Aren't we all!

Have a great Crafty Friday and Fiber Arts Friday!! Follow the links to a ring of artsy blogs!