My First Spin-A-Long

Goodness, it's been awhile since I've posted anything! It's good to have some time to be here!

I've been busy with Christmas, the shop, my oldest turning 16 this past Wed (and a big 'ol party coming up tomorrow!) and playing with my friends in a spin-a-long. My good friend and fellow Phat Fiber contributor, Sue, owner of The Critter Ranch, hosted a Spin-A-Long featuring batts from her animals in colors inspired by Birthstones! The group of us are on Ravelry talking about all the colors, posting photos of the batts we received, and keeping each other updated on our spinning progress.

I chose tourmaline in honor of Kitty turning 1 in October. Here are the photos of the batt, the yarn in progress, the finished yarn and my first swatchings (with Kitty approving along the way). I haven't decided if it'll be a hat for her or a sweater. If it's a sweater, it'll have to be a top-down, seemless yoke with the rest of the body finishing up in a complimentary color. I'd love to hear some opinions about how to use this!!

Enjoy the slide show!

 It's Fiber Arts Friday, so head over to Wonder Why Alpaca Farm and enjoy some other fiber-friendly blogs!! I'm off to make fudge and clean for a party!!

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



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!!

My Creations in the World

I love getting to see what people do with the yarn and fiber I've created. I plan, I make, I admire, then I send it off into the world to be loved by someone else. Sometimes it's hard!

One of my best friends brought over a neck warmer she's knitting for a friend, and, being the good friend that I am, I ooohed and aaaahed over it. It really was beautiful--she'd spun the yarn herself and then knit the warmer in an Entrelac pattern.

She smirked at me and said, "It's your BFL."

Oh. Don't I feel sheepish? It was a Color Blending Kit of BFL that I'd dyed more than a year ago and she bought from me. The woman she's knitting for had bought the finished yarn from her and then gave it back to have it knitted as well.

I was so pleased with myself. Especially after finding out that the woman who owns the yarn, and will soon own the neck warmer, loved the yarn so much that she took it with her to hold during her meditation sessions. That just warms my heart! Of course, the beautiful spinning  and knitting done by my friend is what makes it soft, loveable and squishy, but I'm pretty happy with my role in the finished product, too!

On top of that, I had a past customer send me a link to her Ravelry picture of her finished yarn with another of my Color Blending Kits!! It was called purple pansy and included a roving of brown and a roving of purples to be plied together.

Heiress21's Purple Pansy Hand Spun YarnThis was only her second hand spun yarn! Can you believe it? Just beautiful. AND she spins on a drop spindle. I know that's how most of us learn, but I'm still amazed at the patience you need to finish a whole skein of yarn on it. I really take my wheel for granted!

Really, I love seeing the Color Blending Kits most of all. I plan two colors to be either drafted together or plied together, and even though I base them on color theory, I really don't know what they'll be like once spun up. It's hard for me to turn some of them lose without spinning them myself. They're little mysteries that are just too tempting!

Thank you to all my past and future customers for creating such beautiful and inspiring work with my supplies!

Happy Birthday Nana! A Gift of Conceptual Knitting

Today is my mom's 60th birthday, and I can't be with her. She lives in Texas and I live in New York, so getting together right as school is starting is a little hard.

This year, we decided to treat her to a hand made gift from each of us. Hannah filled a package with a hand-sewn bunny, some shrinky-dink jewelry and a beautiful card. The boys hit the kitchen and Josh made brownies (my grandmother's recipe!) and Seth made cookies. Mike sent her a very funny book with a nice, lengthy note, and I sent her a little piece of togetherness.

Mom's lace scarf.

This is one of the most conceptual pieces of knitting I've ever done. I began by spinning up some of my own hand dyed Targhee, then I wanted a little bit of Mom to ply with it. And guess what I had in my stash? A nice, 1 oz. cloud of cashmere from Granbury, TX--the town she lives in! I had bought it the year before without a clue as to what to do with it! I hand carded it into little rolags and drafted with a long draw to make it soft and halo-y. I plied the two together for a nice, sock-weight yarn.

So I had a yarn with Mom and me twisted together, but I needed a project. I only had 2.5 oz. total. And Mom lives in Texas. It's not like she really needs a wool sweater with lace trim, or a wool hat with a decorative border. It's hot there. There's very little need for what I do!

We were packing for our July trip to Texas, and I knew I needed to start whatever it was I was going to knit, or I wouldn't get it done. (I know me!) When I found it!!! Lisa Lloyd's book A Fine Fleece, which is one of my favorites, has a great scarf pattern called Road Not Taken. On Mike's to-do list the morning we left was "make copy of this pattern." I caste-on on the plane to see Mom and Dad, and worked on it all the time we were there, not letting on that it was for her!

That was my best decision of the whole project. You know when you look at knitting you've finished how memories of what movie you watched, or what group of ladies you were with when you were knitting it come back to you? I was with my mom when I knit this. I have memories of riding in the car with her and sitting by her pool. That's such a rare thing in my life because we only see each other a few times a year. I'm so happy that I could capture that time together in knitting, and send it to her on her birthday.

"Road Not Taken" 20-row repeat scarf from the book A Fine Fleece

I mailed it earlier this week, and she opened it last night and loved it! I'm hoping she'll use her new birthday camera to take a picture of her in the scarf so I can add it here as a follow-up. Hint. Hint.

Happy Birthday Mom!!!